Italian food

When I got back to Albania, Jan, my Peace Corps mom, asked me what the best food moment of my trip was. This really got me thinking about the food that I had in Italy and actually how disappointed I was. Here's the problem: while I know that there is truly incredible food in Italy, I just didn't get much of it because it was way out of my price range. As we've already established, everything was really expensive. First, unlike on other trips, I was unable to conference crash, couch surf or be a groupie on the tour bus, so we had to pay every night for a hostel. I am really proud of myself for my hostel finds, actually. They were all clean and well managed and none of them tripled in price for the holidays. But staying in the hostels meant that about half my daily budget went to that and that we had to eat out almost every meal (the hostel in Florence had a restaurant downstairs that we ate at once and the place in Venice served breakfast of a roll and juice/coffee). I found that there were basically two categories of food available to us that we could afford: sandwich/pizza/street food and mediocre sit-down fare. Of the two types, I actually enjoyed the fast food more in general- the sandwiches were made with really good fresh ingredients and the pizzas were really good (the cheese makes all the difference!). What I was most disappointed with was the standard sit down places. We went to several places in which a plate of pasta cost an average of 7-12 Euros ($11-18) and was no better (and sometimes worse) than what I could make at home. I worked in an Italian chain restaurant for 3 years in which the prices were pretty comparable - I didn't think I would ever say this, but the food at the MacShack was much better. Our biggest disappointment was in Venice on New Years Eve. We went to Murano Island to look at the glass there and by 4:00 were starving. It seemed that most of the places were closing down, so we ducked into the first place we saw that was open. The staff was anxious to get out and were not happy to have last minute customers and so hovered over us as we ate. On top of that, the food was terrible! I don't think I have ever paid more for a plate of bad spaghetti. I won't say that I love the food in Albania most of the time, but at least it's cheap!

I don't want to make it sound like we never ate well. I found several surprise moments of goodness, like falafel in the Jewish Quarter of Rome, Suppli (Roman rice balls sold for 1 Euro), wonderful salad at a cafe in Venice and the food highlight of the trip: wine tasting held at the hostel in Florence.

Since we only had a few days in Florence and knew we wouldn't have time to go into the wine country, when we saw that the hostel was having a wine tasting we decided to go for it. Both Connie and I were really glad that we did as it was one of the best parts of the trip. One of the hostel staff (who is in culinary school) and a wine maker from the nearby Chianti region were our hosts. We tasted 5 wines (all excellent) and paired with simple fresh foods like cheese, meat, bread, honey and olive oil. We learned how to smell the wine and taste it slowly, about the wine making process and the differences between the different varieties. It was great.

Like I said, I know that good food is available in Italy, but unfortunately most of the affordable places in touristy areas are overpriced and awful. I need to go back to Italy when I have the money to really enjoy the food there.

Florence is much more of a manageable city than Rome. In Rome, we spent 5 days, walked A LOT (and had lots of adventures on the metro and buses) and I still only feel like I scratched the surface. Florence, however, in just two days, I fell like I really got the feel of the city. Florence also seemed more calm and refined than Rome and had the art to go along with it. In addition to seeing David (you just have to, you know), we also had a truly wonderful intimate opera experience when we went to see Carmen performed in a small church. Unlike the giant opera house in Rome, this performance was simple and didn't have elaborate staging. The actors were literally just a few feet away from us.

We also had a bit of a scare in Florence when our hostel room was broken into in the middle of the night. We spent a rather sleepless night up with the hostel staff and the police, but we are happy to report that the intruder was caught thanks to the wonderful staff of the hostel and their superior security system. Caught on video! No doubt! Lesson learned- always lock up your stuff, even when you feel pretty safe . . .

Missed the Pope . . .

But still had a great time at the Vatican . . .

On Saturday (the day after Christmas) we got tickets to go to the Villa Borghese- one of the oldest art museums in the world. The art was fantastic, including several incredible Bernini sculptures, the only downside is that you only have exactly two hours to go through the whole gallery (and they are serious about it), so I didn't even get to part of the upstairs. After the museum, we walked around the mostly shuttered Rome with our new friend from the hostel, Sean. We went to the Spanish steps and to the designer shopping district. In America, the 26th of December is one of the busiest shopping days and we expected all of these stores to be open. To our surprise (and probably to the benefit of our wallets) the stores were all closed. We even had a hard time finding someplace open to eat that night!

On Sunday we got up early and headed to the Vatican. At least we thought it was early, when we got there we found out that early really means 6AM on free Sunday . . . and by 8:30, the line was already all the way around the outer walls and nearly spilling into St. Peter's Square. We got in line and got ready to wait. Some part of me loved all the lines in Italy, just because people in Albania don't really know how to line up. I did not relish standing in line for 3 hours only to have to rush through the museum (they close at 12:00 on Sundays), so when one of those annoying guys offering a guided tour and a chance to skip the line came by, we actually considered it. Maybe if I had been by myself, I would have just waited, but with Connie and the fact that we were already pretty tired from the last few days, we decided that the 20Euros to skip the line didn't sound like a bad deal. That is until we got near the entrance and got accosted by another tour guide! She railed at us for a few minutes about how these people pulling groups out of line were illegal and that no one had the right to skip the line and that the people in the front had been waiting since 6AM and that she was an "Official" guide and that she was going to call the police and . . . . .We were of course a little bit taken back, but our guide assured us that there was no problems and that we just needed to wait until she went inside with her group (she wasn't going to worry enough about us to miss out on her money) and then we could skip the line and go in as promised. We got inside and were put with a group and given very official feeling headsets and it felt mostly on the up and up to us, but who knows. I know that it is not uncommon for there to be guide groups that can skip the line at museums and I don't know the Italian or Vatican rules on the issue, but anyway . . . We were really happy that we got the tour as I think that the museum would have been very overwhelming without the guide. Even with the guide it was a bit overwhelming and I felt that I only really saw pieces . . . Of course, the Sistine Chapel was incredible, but so was the hall of maps and all of the ceilings and all of the statues and there is just too much! And that is not even counting St. Peter's Basilica, which was on just a whole other level. It seems that every Pope has felt the need to add something to the church, so every inch is covered in decoration- and there are a lot of inches to cover.

In the afternoon, we headed back out to stores that had been closed the days before and did some shopping. Let me tell you, it is hard to be in Italy on a Peace Corps budget! Just to give you an idea . . . in the 10 days, including accommodation and travel I spent almost 5 months of my living allowance! But is was worth every penny . . .

Roman Holiday

Italy was the only place left on my list that I felt like I just had to visit before I left Albania . . . it is just across the water! I started asking around my group to see if anyone wanted to come along for the holidays. I knew that I wanted to go to Italy and I also knew that I did not want to go by myself, especially for Christmas. I was lucky that Connie, one of the volunteers in the more recent group thought Chrismas in Rome was a great idea and we started the plans for the trip.

Our plan for the week: squeeze as much culture as possible into 10 days without actually killing ourselves. This started with seeing La Traviata on Wednesday night just a few hours after landing. You know the best part about only going an hour and a half away for vacation? No jet lag! We also had tickets for The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve. Opera, ballet, now we needed some religion! After the ballet we headed over to the Vatican, but found that they closed early for the holiday. After much discussion we decided to forgo the craziness of the Papal visit on Christmas and instead did a much calmer and very beautiful midnight mass at the basillica near our hostel (which happens to be the second largest in the city and seriously amazing!). It was all in Latin and Italian and I didn't really get much of it, but Connie was raised Catholic, so really understood what was going on.

For Christmas, we decided to go another rought- we did Catholic, now lets get some Jewish in there! Rome has the largest Jewish population in Italy and has an excellent Jewish museum and Jewish quarter, which was perfect to visit on Christmas since most everything else in the city was closed. I was able to get one of my long time cravings- falafel (not so Italian, but you really can only eat so much pasta and pizza!). We also had Chinese food for dinner (the only other thing open!).

Our plans for the next few days include a trip back to the Vatican and lots of art, then on to Florence!

Let it snow . . .

Winter has arrived in Peshkopi. I know that some of you in Denver have had a pretty harsh, cold and snowy winter already, but here in Albania, the winter so far has actually been pretty mild. This is of course mostly good news because when it gets cold here, it gets really cold because there is no insulation or central heating. This week, however, the winter has arrived. On Friday night I was lucky enough to be out to dinner with Dylan, Turi and Dylan's counterpart Habibi when it started snowing for the first time this winter. I say I was lucky because it was beautiful and also because by the morning there was barely a dusting and by the next afternoon the snow was gone. Driving home from dinner as the big, wet flakes fell on the lit city . . . gorgeous. I wish that I could have effectively captured it on film, but I'm afraid that I couldn't. Over the weekend it continued to snow off and on and I snuggled into my wood-stove heated room. Up until this point, I've felt pangs every time I started up my stove- is it really cold enough? Do I want to waste this wood? (not to mention the pollution pangs I always get), but when it is really cold, I feel less bad about using the wood for some reason. Anyway, don't ask me . . .

Next week I'll be going to Italy for Christmas and New Years with Connie, another PCV. When I get home, hopefully I won't have frozen pipes like I did after my vacation last year.

Happy holidays and let it snow!!!

After living in Albania for nearly two years now, I think that I have become (as much as you can be) somewhat of an expert in Albanian transportation. There are some ways that Albania seems to really be coming along in terms of development and as far as being a PCV here, it is definitely the Posh Corps in many ways, but in terms of transportation, it is clear that Albania still has a long way to go and I'm entirely convinced that this country will not be considered "developed" until major changes are made in many areas of transportation.

For most foreigners, Albania's public transport system is a mystery at best and can be a frustrating experience. First, to be a tourist here, you really have to mean it. It is not that easy to get to Albania. Since it is the one European country not connected to the rest of the continent by rail lines, it is impossible to be sitting in a train station in Vienna wondering where to go and hop on a train to Tirana (like you could with basically every other capital city). This lack of effective train system also makes in country travel more difficult than in the rest of Europe. There are a few train lines going in between a few of the major cities, but the trains are run down and slow and very few people use them. In the summer when I was traveling with a few volunteers from Macedonia (which has an incredibly advanced transportation network compared to Albania) what the Albanian word for "platform" was, I couldn't tell them, because I realized that I had never used that word!

So, without trains, you are left with buses, taxis and mini-buses (furgons). I was contacted a few days ago by a guy that is in the process of updating a guide book for Tirana and is wanting to add in a bus schedule to his guide. He was hoping that he could help with the bus schedule for Peshkopi. The problem with this is of course that a schedule doesn't really exist as far as I have been able to figure out. There are a few buses, I think two that leave at 7 and 8 in the morning, and maybe another one later in the day, but it is not as if they sit at any sort of "station" or that there are "tickets." I have only taken the bus twice in my time here. Usually I take a furgon, which is kind of like a combination of a bus and taxi. Usually a mini-van or mini-bus size (with 8-15 seats), they circle the town until they find enough people and leave when they are full. There is no schedule, but I have been able to figure out that certain drivers like to leave at certain times of the day and that if you can call these drivers and reserve a seat the day before. Even so, if I call a driver and he says he is leaving at 7AM, we will only leave when the furgon is full, so if he doesn't have enough reservations it may still be a while before we are on the road.

Travel is easier for some other parts of the country, particularly the larger cities in the south and close to Tirana. For many sites, there are scheduled buses and there is even a "bus station" that serves many cities in the south (but even this "station" is a challenge to find in Tirana- there is no sign outside, you just have to know it is there . . . ). But for the rest of us, the "stations" are spread out at rather random spots along the side of the road and parking lots of Tirana. I honestly think that a major tourism development priority for the Albanian national government should be a central bus station- how can they expect tourist to find their way to Peshkopi when the "station" is an unmarked strip mall parking lot on the road out of town?!

Once you find your furgon or bus, that is usually not the end of your challenges. On my way to Rreshen last week, we were talking about all of the things that might delay your journey . . .

Top 10 best reasons your trip might be delayed when traveling in Albania-

10. Road Construction
9. Sheep
8. Overloaded Donkey
7. Overloaded gjushe (grandmother)
6. Someone in the furgon wants to buy fruit
5. Pilaf/kafe/cigarette stop
4. Stopped by the police (for a bribe?)
3. Someone in the furgon gets sick (although to be honest, this usually doesn't mean the furgon stops- just throw the bag out the window and keep going!)
2. Driver stops in the middle of the road to say hi to friend in furgon traveling in the other direction.

And the number one best reason that you might be delayed . . .

1. Driver stops to test drive a new truck! (not kidding this happened on our way to Rreshen last week- we stopped for about 15 minutes while the driver negotiated the purchase of a truck.)

Happy travels!

District XI: Beso tek Une!

Last week I was invited by another volunteer to come to her site and help her in putting on a musical extravaganza with 45 Albanian students and 5 other volunteers. It was a show that her and some of her students worked on last summer when she took them to a theater camp in Texas and then adapted slightly for Albania. The show included singing and dancing as well as small scenes of school life and I have to say it was pretty amazing. The kids worked incredibly hard on it as well as an amazing amount of effort by Sarah, Tauchia and Travis to get the kids ready. Amanda and I came in to play the role of teachers in the show and to help corral the kids as well as joining in on the singing and dancing. The show had the potential to be cheesy or bad and I have to admit that when I first came up two weeks before I was a bit worried. But as these things often do, it all came together in the end and we had three really great shows.

The shows took me back to my days in theater in school and made me realize again what many students here are missing out on when these programs are not available to them. It was great that Sarah has formed a theater group in Rreshen, but this is something that doesn't happen in every town and it is likely that unless the next volunteer to come to Rreshen is interested in theater that the program will not continue after Sarah leaves next year. This is one of the real challenges to being a volunteer- finding ways for the projects you start to continue on after you leave. It has to be a perfect storm of circumstances- a local person that is committed to the cause or other foreigners willing to take it on. But we can only start something and try to build the right conditions, we can't be here forever.


Anyway, even though they were a pain in the butt sometimes, the kids in Rreshen were great and I am really proud of all of them and really proud to have worked with them. Congrats to all the kids that participated on a job well done. Together we can!