Ashley Gets Lost

I know you’ve all been practically dying to hear about my trip to Albania. I’ve been wanting to tell you all about it, but I have been practically dying since I got home. I had maybe 36 good hours before a neck injury I stupidly gave myself on Friday made itself very much known on Saturday morning. AND THEN I GOT A SCRATCHY THROAT. That’s it. A scratchy throat with some coughing. No other plague symptoms, but it really sucks having to cough when your neck is a big mess. We’ll get back to my ailments later, I promise. I’m nothing if not great at complaining when I don’t feel good.

Anyway, check out how rich I was in Albania! Ok fine, those 2000 Lek bills are worth around 20 Euros each, but I felt rich. Especially because almost everything was so cheap there. We could go out and feast like kings and drink multiple glasses of wine for 20-30 Euros for both of us! And if we wanted, we could and did eat very well for around ten bucks.

I arrived in Tiranë, the capital of Albania, around 6 pm, where an absolute babe with an “Anita Alibi” sign was waiting for me in arrivals. I picked up my rental car (again, cheap, $60 for five days and I could’ve gone way cheaper), and we headed to the apartment I rented us for a night in the city. I’m going to sound like a broken record here, but it was only $40 for a very nice, clean place. I do have some complaints in that I picked this apartment because it had two bedrooms, and they locked one because there were only two of us. I was like listen up sir, I booked two bedrooms because we are two lady friends, not two LADY FRIENDS.

I’m sure I could’ve complained my way into getting the guy to come unlock it for us, but I was tired and dealing with feelings that I’ll tell you about later. I didn’t want to deal with some man at night when all I wanted was to go have some fun. So I made Olya sleep in the same bed with me, and apparently I snored. Oops!

Something felt a little off about the place, and we eventually realized that everything was tiny. Like it looked so big in photos because the furniture was made for 12 year olds. It was an apartment for ants!

We picked a restaurant with good reviews and set out. Then I was like, is that Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy staring us down from across the restaurant? Yep. Also there were tvs around showing footage of children playing. It took a minute to figure it out, but this place had a kids’ play room. The tvs were so the parents could monitor their kids. It seemed like a lot of dads were in charge of their children that night. I didn’t see monitors in other restaurants, but I did notice that restaurants having play areas is definitely a thing.

After dinner we walked around and ended up at a bar in a youth hostel, where I had a fancy cocktail that gave off swamp witch vibes.

I have no recollection of what this was, but it was strong and, you guessed it, cheap.

On our walk back towards the apartment I noticed the first of several COFFIN STORES. So that’s cool. I like to think of someone just out doing their business and impulse buying their future coffin. Why not?

Apparently the water in Tiranë is unsafe to drink, which the apartment manager did not see fit to tell me about. Olya knew this, but didn’t think of it until we were back for the night and had no drinking water. She gave me this juice as a consolation prize, but I informed her that I am a thirsty bitch who requires proper hydration. She was nice enough to go out and get us some water in the middle of the night.

The absolute cherry on top of this apartment experience was that the parking provided was in this underground garage. I hope the nightmare of this steep grade comes through in the photo. I almost fell walking up this because it was so steep and didn’t think to pack my hiking boots for leaving a parking garage. When the time came to leave, I tried to drive up it twice with absolutely no luck. Olya thought for sure we were never getting out of there, but I backed up deep into the garage, picked up as much speed as I could, and gunned it out of there. Of course, it was still a challenge, and my poor rental car lost some tire tread. It smelled like burning rubber by the time we got out, but we did it!

Wether or not I should drive in Albania was a big question before I left. It was a lawless free for all. Sometimes there were lanes, sometimes there weren’t. Giant round abouts where the rules were every man for himself. People park anywhere, even worse than here in Crete. Like a two lane street will have someone just parked in the right lane, and then a second later someone parked in the left lane. It was wild, but I did just fine. I wasn’t in any hurry and kept my wits about me!

Remember how I said I was having feelings? Well, it turns out this guy isn’t doing so hot. The antibiotics weren’t helping, so we went in for an xray. Lungs should show up as black because they’re full of air, and poor BMO’s lungs show up white, meaning they are fibrotic. Unfortunately this condition is fatal. I learned all this the night before my trip.

I decided to go anyway, knowing I wasn’t far and could easily get back if I needed to. I’d been looking forward to visiting Olya for a long time, and I really wanted to get away for a bit. Before I left, we stopped into the vet to learn how to give our dog an inhaler. We decided to try oral steroids as well, which seem to be helping! He was doing very poorly when I left, but I feel like he’s 75% of his usual self with the steroids.

In great news, Glommo is still handsome. I went to a physical therapist for my neck. Crossing my fingers that my throat is better soon. Be back soon with more tales from Albania, including, but not limited to, ancient bridges, (sort of) skinny dipping, street dogs, and thrift shopping!