Category Archives: Albania

The Perils of Public Transportation Busses

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When I was in Albania I rode the train exactly once. It took nearly two hours to cover the 38 kilometers (23.6 miles) from Tirana to Durres. Basically, it moved slowly and stopped frequently.

As result, if you wanted to go somewhere in Albania you either splurged for a taxi (which would deliver you to another town for the right price) or you took a bus. Taking a bus was fraught with its own perils.

First, the buses assembled in fields and it took a while to figure out which bus was going where and which was leaving first. After figuring out which bus was leaving next in your direction. You acquired a seat and waited. The bus would only leave when the bus was full, and by “full” I mean every seat had to have a butt in it as did every “jump” seat between the regular seats. If even one “jump” seat was empty, the bus would wait. This filling process could take a few minutes or it could take over an hour.

I remember one bus taking so long that I and another passenger started a revolt. We said we’d go to the next bus and I would pay double my fare. A bunch of passengers started agreeing with us and the next bus driver climbed on and started counting passengers with one of the largest grins I’ve ever seen on a bus driver. Finally, our bus driver huffed and got going and did exactly what we all new he would do: he stopped to pick people up on the side of the road. One person was carrying a goat. (Don’t know if the goat had to pay full fare.)

On another bus ride, from Tirana to Shkoder I nearly had a fight with the ticket taker. Usually, I tryied to sit at the back of the bus but every now and then one of the staff offered me the “honor” seat up behind the driver. This would have been fine, especially as it had more legroom, but every now and then someone wanted to talk when I wanted to read. On this day, the ticket taker wanted to talk in a bad way. Even though I said I had work to do and actively started ignoring him by reading, he kept tapping my leg. After one tap too many I grabbed his hand and twisted it around and we about came to blows. Finally a cop intervened and I got a different seat and learned several new colorful Albanian phrases for describing unreasonable people.

On another trip from Berat back to Tirana, our bus suddenly stopped in the middle of nowhere and we were apparently supposed to change busses but nobody seemed to be moving. I walked up and went into “don’t understand if it’s not convenient mode” and pretended I couldn’t speak much Albanian to find out if the bus was going to Tirana (yes) and get my way onto the bus. Of course, I got the “honor” seat, but since I’d established I couldn’t speak much Albanian I didn’t have to talk.

However, about half way back to Tirana, the bus stopped again, this time for lunch. The bus driver bought me lunch and beer and suddenly I could remember a few phrases in Albanian and hold a decent conversation.

 

 

Reckless Self Behavior Destruction Vices

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When I was in Albania, one of the things I noticed was a propensity for volunteers, myself included, to suddenly engage in self-destructive behavior of one sort or another. Some of them involved basic vices while some of them involved automobiles.

Partly as a result of culture shock, and partly as a form of self-defense, volunteers who’d never smoked before they came to Albania suddenly became smokers. Volunteers who had smoked before they came to Albania became chain smokers. Granted, when you’re surround by groups of locals chain smoking, and science says secondhand smoke is more dangerous than smoking, it is actually safer for you to start smoking cigarettes. (Something like that.)

Alcohol consumption sky-rocketed (one of my favorite vices at first) especially because the prices were relatively low. Skenderbeg Cognac was especially popular, but I tended to stick to beer, raki and cheap vodka (I think it was 15 cents a bottle but it might have been cheaper).

My other vices were
1) Chasing the wrong woman and ignoring the right one (a novel would be required to explain more) which is something I was prone to do before (another novel) and it got worse in Albania.
2) Being cheap. The latter involved always managing to let other people pay for things and never volunteering to pay for the group when a bunch of us met for coffee (total cost for everyone, 50 cents to 1 dollar). As you might imagine, that didn’t win me many friends, especially among the Albanians with us.
3) Blather and Gossip. Not only can I talk a lot without seeming to breathe, but for a brief time I was the guy you told things to when you wanted everyone to know (but God help you if you told me and you didn’t want people to know).

The other thing that happened, especially in our second year was we started to get reckless. Albanian traffic was a remarkable thing as it was made up of people who’d just earned their licenses and were finally able to acquire cars. This made them a group of teenagers who believed the rules, in so far as they understand them, were mere suggestions. Despite this, it was normal for groups of us to suddenly cross the street without looking, often to the horror of newcomers who’d made the mistake of trying to follow us. (It was their own fault for not looking.)

We used to talk about why, and I’m not sure we reached any conclusions. I always joked (constantly that I did it because if they killed me I’d go to a better place (most likely although this blog may be held against me) and if they didn’t I’d still get to go to  a better place when I was airlifted to Germany.

I think, though, it was an odd symptom of culture shock. Albania was an exhausting and frustrating place to work and overtime that frustration built to a low level anger and everything around us. I suspect we were playing chicken with the country. Daring it to try to knock us out if it could. We wanted to go home but we didn’t want to quit.

Eventually it would knock me out temporarily, but I did get to go to a better place for three weeks.

Money Beauty Queens and Boy George Boys

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Soon after I got to Albania, for reasons having to do with politics and me being posted to the Faculty of Foreign Languages in Tirana and the fact you can fool most of the people most of the time early on in the relationship, I was asked to chair the entrance interview for what was described as the first free and fair entrance exam in the faculty’s history.

This amounted to first double checking the written test and then convening with four of my future colleagues (which they were, sort of, in a way) to interview and rate potential students. I vaguely remember that we agreed on which order we’d ask questions and what kinds of questions we would ask.

To this day I don’t remember what questions I asked or even if I asked questions. All I remember is that I welcomed the candidates and introduced myself and that things proceeded from there, for better and for worse and for interesting.

Most of the interviews were relatively bland and I remember faces more than what they said. The first interview that stands out was a stocky kid with a rustic look that screamed farmer. He spoke English slowly, but seemed to understand everything. One of us asked what his family did and he said they were vegetable farmers. One of my fellow interviewees then said. “You must be making a lot of money now.” I went “What the f–” but he gave the greatest knowing smirk and soft “yes” I’ve ever seen and we all knew he was getting in because money.

The second was an especially attractive young woman–you’ll see why that’s important in a second. Her English was excellent and she had the Balkan poise the vegetable farmer didn’t. One of my fellow interviewers, who had a bushy head of hair and aviator/Elvis style eyeglasses asked her if she’d ever heard of the Miss Albania pageant. She said yes. He asked her if she’d ever considered entering it. She said no. He said “but you’re very beautiful” and encouraged her to enter it right about the time I was thinking “Are you fucking kidding me!” but saying something like “ANYWAY, moving on to the next question.”

The last one I remember was a frail, rather effeminate kid with a style that would later be described as Emo. He was wearing dark aviator sunglasses that were twice as wide as his head in the interview, so I was torn between liking him and thinking “poser”. His English was good, though, so it was hard to complain about him. Later, the man who’d asked about Miss Albania, asked the kid if he’d ever heard of Boy George. The kid said no. The man said “But you have a lot in common with him you–” I never heard exactly what they had in common because I interrupted at that point. I don’t even remember what I said. I just remember interrupting.

All three of those candidates were chosen for the faculty, although I would only teach Miss Albania and the vegetable farmer (both were really nice, although it was a lecture class so I spoke at them more than to them). I saw Boy George boy a few months later. He was still sporting the aviator shades and actually looking more confident and cool.

All I could think was “poser”.

The Corner Marks the Time and the Punishment

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A short one today for your mercy and mine and since I’ve been in an Albania state of mind I think I’ll stay there.

Even though the Albanians were surprisingly fast language learners, my students all had a casualness toward class and studying that I think stemmed partly from Balkan machismo and partly from doing everything as a group under communism.

The first issue I encountered was keeping my students quiet and keeping them doing their own work during exams. Earlier in our first year, our TEFL trainer and her colleague from the British Council concocted one of the most complicated honesty schemes I’ve ever seen. They had a short test but the first few questions in the first part would be chosen randomly from 30 possible questions. The questions from the second part would be chosen from 50 possible questions. They gave the questions out only a day or so before the test.

Despite their best efforts, every student had the exact same answers.

I can’t even do the math on how the students arranged for different students to write the different answers and then share them with all the other students so that they could memorize them. I can only imagine they just had a giant group collaboration session somewhere and wrote them all together.

In my case, as soon as I handed out my British Lit exam–yes, I was in the United States Peace Corps teaching British Literature and no, I don’t understand it either–the men in the back row started consulting on answers. I stopped them and all was well.

However, the thing that bothered me the most was all the random student holidays the students used to take. The Faculty of Foreign Languages was a long walk from my apartment and at least twice a month I’d show up for work only to discover it was the 3rd anniversary of the fifth student summer uprising. Finally I told my students that I liked holidays, too, and I wanted a list of all their holidays. I told them that if I made it past the corner of the US Embassy (which was on the way to the Faculty) and discovered it was a holiday, I’d find a way to fail the entire class.

The students did all that. One time I knew there was a holiday but I had to go to the Peace Corps office (which at the time was just past the Faculty) and four different students told me it was a holiday.

I don’t know if that was the best thing to teach them, but at least I know they learned something.

The Beating Will Continue Until Morale Improves

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It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that I spent a good portion of my Peace Corps experience preventing myself from being kicked out of the Peace Corps.

Granted, my charming personality didn’t help things much and neither did my tendency to blather on and on about things (more on all that in another post). Mix all that with shocking levels of bad people skills and obliviousness and, well, I didn’t win many friends or influence many people, except to have them avoid me at all costs.

The first time I knew something was afoot was when I applied for the equivalent of a grant to help partially fund a trip out of Albania. I’d been helping out the local branch of the Open Society Fund for Albania (a George Soros joint) and they’d invited us to some shindig or other in Hungary. This request led to a long, well conversation is too weak but argument is too strong, so perhaps bitchfest would be more accurate. Our country director, let’s call her Bitchy (I normally use another word that rhymes with punt, but I’ll refrain from mentioning it, sort of–see, told you I had a charming personality) recited a litany of Peace Corps crimes I’d committed–and there were many–and I argued, er, bitched back.

Eventually I paid for the trip myself (and never went to the conference) and all that went away, until the the end of my first school year. At that point, Bitchy Punt (her full name) approached me–and in all fairness, she was quite nice and genuine–and asked me to leave Tirana. She said she’d mistakenly allowed a huge chunk of Albania 001 to be clumped together in the center of the country rather than spread out around it. She gestured to a large map of Albania with all our faces pinned to it. (Still one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen.) She asked me to move down South to Gjirokaster on the Albania/Greece border.

She paid for me to travel down there and look around and I will say it was a beautiful town. It’s old quarter may be one of the most beautiful places in Albania. Also, because it was within an hour of a national border, I could leave Albania at my leisure without needing any kind of special permission or official leave. Also, there was another volunteer there who could show me the ropes. I did consider it, but I realized 1) all my friends were in the North 2) you can only look at pretty buildings for so long before going insane 3) I didn’t have the money to zip back and forth across the border enough to actually enjoy being able to do it.

I told Bitchy Punt I was happy where I was and didn’t want to move. She more or less crossed her arms and went “Hmmm” which is Peace Corps speak for “We’ll see about that.”

A week later, Peace Corps staffers, US and Albanian, were in my school passing out surveys about me to my students and conducting short interviews with them. This freaked out my students who said it was just like the old ways under the old communist government.

A few days later I was “invited” back to Bitchy Punt’s office. At that point she basically said “I’m not asking; I’m telling” and told me if I refused orders I would be kicked out of the Peace Corps. (And you thought the name Bitchy Punt was just me being an obnoxious punt.) She also praised me for getting such positive evaluations from my students. At that point I went “Hmmm” which is Dwayne speak for, well, use your imagination and as many bad words as you can think of.

I consulted with some friends, both in Albania and in the USA, and they encouraged me to find a compromise. The compromise was that I would move an hour or so away to Elbasan, which had lost its volunteers for various complicated reasons, but I could still teach two days a week in Tirana. The Peace Corps would pay for the travel and the hotel and Bitchy Punt could move the pin with my face on it a little bit away from the capital.

Elbasan was nice enough, and the university was nice too, but I didn’t really know anybody there and it never felt like home. I had a much better time teaching in Tirana. That said, I lost out on being the gathering place for my friends who were left to wander the cold nights in search of warmth and cheap food in Tirana.

The move to Elbasan would eventually give Bitchy Punt the chance to get rid of me, but that’s another post.

Carbo Loading on the Bus

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One of the consequences of living in a developing country is that little changes become mood-altering events. In Albania that little thing involved bread.

One thing we learned quickly in Peace Corps Albania One is that the Albanians would rather eat only bread than risk not having bread in the house in case guests stop by. In fact, one of their oldest sayings is that the three things they always have for a guest are “bread, salt and heart”. (This seems simple, but it’s the first level of the martial art that is Albanian hospitality.)

Unfortunately for us, because Albania was recovering from decades of Communism the bread choices were limited to government bread stores and their large, uniform loaves which were about the size and shape of a four inch partition block. They all had a groove in the center marking where to cut if the customer only wanted half a loaf. They were usually decent if you could get them and eat them fresh, but after a couple days they were dry and, I’m 90% certain, used as construction materials.

During our first year, the government liberalized the grain market and by the second year wheat and flour were cheap enough that small independent bread shops began to appear. The first I remember opened just down the street from my host family’s home and served fresh Italian loaves a few times a day, if you were lucky to be there when they opened. One day I camped out for half an hour to buy a couple loaves.

By the time I got home, one loaf was gone. I broke about every rule of etiquette on the way home including eating while walking and eating while on the bus. In my defense, they were steaming hot with crispy crust and I believe it pisses God off if you let bread that fresh go to waste. Also in my defense, it really was a mood lifter.

The other interesting part was that for some reason, the Albanians were more courteous in the private shops than at the government shops. Every government shop had three “lines” (more accurately described as “clumps”: The men’s clump, the women’s clump and the “I’m in a #@$%ing hurry” clump between the other two clumps. Within each clump the technique was to simply shove money between the bars (the government stores all had barred windows and doors) and grab the first loaf that came out.

The private shops had actual lines, with the occasional jerk. (Oddly, it wasn’t me as I missed out on bread a couple times because I was too far back in line.)

Oddly, those loaves of bread are one of the few things I truly miss from days in the Peace Corps.

You Just Keep on Having Tantrums Over the Borderline

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Right around Christmas of 1993, for reasons I don’t fully remember and still don’t fully understand, I traveled with a friend from Albania down to Athens, Greece. I remember that she was heading back to the USA for a vacation but I don’t remember why I was tagging along. (Let’s just say there was some history there and a novel would be required to explain it.)

The first trouble occurred when we were crossing from Albania to Greece. We had to depart the bus and stand in line at a passport office. When it was my turn, the Greek border agent looked through my passport with contempt (remember, I was coming from Albania and no one in the Balkans likes their neighbors). He then found two visas from Macedonia (now the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) which I had visited earlier in the year. That’s when things got absurd.

The Greeks didn’t (and still don’t) recognize Macedonia, partly because they are convinced that naming it after a region in Greece implies ownership. The closest parallel I can give is if Mexico suddenly declared that Northern Mexico was now called Texas and that its natural capital was, and would some day be again, San Antonio. The Greek border guard then proceeded to have a temper tantrum in my passport. He crossed out with ball point pen all references to Macedonia in my passport and stamped the visas with “This Crappy Bullshit Fake Country Not Recognized by Super Awesome Greece” (something like that). He tossed the passport back at me and sent me on my way.

After my friend departed, I decided to visit Istanbul and caught a train to Thessalonika. The part of the city I was in was beautiful but because I was only there overnight I didn’t get much of a chance to explore. I did wander around the coast a bit and see the White Tower, but then, as I was wandering around, I found a cinema that was playing Sliver and I bought a ticket.

That’s right, boys and girls; I was in the area that received Paul’s epistles to the Thessalonians and I watched a crap Sharon Stone thriller because English.

The next morning, I took a train and a bus to the Greek/Turkish border. This one looked more like a gas station and I expect that some of the Greek signs actually said “Last Gas for 1000 kilometers”. The border guards came on the bus and collected our passports and then went back in the gas station. A few minutes later, a guard returned and asked me to step off the bus and led me into the gas station. I was then subjected to my second official interrogation by the police (the first happened on my 21st birthday.)

Now keep in mind that I was tired and cranky and that my mother has always cautioned/cursed me that my mouth would eventually get me in trouble and there I was at a gas station/border crossing facing a border agent who barely spoke English and his translator (a fellow passenger) who spoke only a little more. The cards, therefore, did not look to be stacked in my favor.

The agent first asked why I’d visited Skopje (Greece’s word for Macedonia). I explained that I’d lucked into a free ride there. (He looked at me as if I’d just explained why I’d killed his dog.) That was strike one. He then asked why I was in Albania. I explained I was working for the US Government. Those were strikes two and three. I explained about the Peace Corps, the whole time thinking “Do you know what Greece would be without my country? The shittiest part of Turkey.” Miracle of miracles, I didn’t actually say that, though, and the guard finally sent me on my way.

A few minutes later (with my passport back in hand) I was standing next to the bus when the guard came back to get me. I just waved him off and got back on the bus. He didn’t follow and I never went to jail. I eventually got across the border and into Istanbul.

I had a great time in Istanbul, even though I celebrated the ringing in of 1994 by myself. My hostel was halfway between Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque and every place I wanted to visit was within walking distance. (Ironically, given where I now live, I had no interest in crossing the Bosphorus into “Asia”.)

To get home, I climbed on board a bus to Albania and got ready to face the frightening legend of Turkish border police. Keeping my mother’s caution/curse in my head, I kept replaying the most brutal scenes from Midnight Express over and over in my head with a Giorgio Moroder soundtrack. I was convinced that something I’d bought would turn out to be an antique and I’d go to jail. And because I was thinking that, I’m pretty sure I looked guilty.

We had to take our bags off the bus, set them on the ground and open them up for the guard. When he got to me, I couldn’t help but tense up. He asked if that was my bag. I managed to say only “yes” instead of “Yes, and the two kilos of hash taped to my body are mine too!” He nodded and moved on and that was the end of my Turkish border guard encounter.

I still don’t know if I should be disappointed in that or not. I still kind of wish I’d tried to smuggle something out, though.

Blood Lust and the Art of Making Bad Bugs Good

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A couple posts ago I mentioned that one of the more entertaining things in Albania was watching bugs fry at the Taverna Tafaj once they got a bug zapper. Today I thought I’d talk about the Great Albanian Fly Massacre.

In Albania, I started out with a host family and then, for complicated reasons deserving of another post, ended up de facto homeless for a while and stayed a month here and there with a couple fellow expatriates and through part of winter with a fairly stern lady and her daughter and their other boarder before finally finding  a place of my own.

Because I had a place, and despite it being a good walk from the center of Tirana, and because as I’ve mentioned before everyone had to come to Tirana for immunization shots and money, my apartment ended up as a kind of hostel for several friends.

However, because there was a large trash pit behind my apartment building, my apartment was also a tourist destination for large groups of Albanian flies. (Note: To any entomologists out there: I know that’s not their real name; no, I don’t know what their real name really was; shut up.)

One summer, my friends Nancy and Eddie were in town for business and/or shots and we were basically hanging out in my place as we were either waiting for something to happen or were too hot and lazy to go do anything. Either way, we were suffering from the heat and humidity and the sudden infestation of flies.

The fly infestation was bad enough that we were constantly brushing them off our faces and away from our ears. Finally, one fly too many tried to settle on my face and I got tired of brushing them away and something deep inside snapped. I remember feeling a sort of frustrated rage (similar to what I now get dealing with computers) rising up. I rolled up an Albanian newspaper and started swatting flies and the walls, on the ceiling, on furniture, anywhere. My goal was to turn them into “good bugs” (As my mother is wont to say: the only good bug is a dead bug.) At first there were enough flies to turn two at once into good bugs.

After about five or six kills, the glare of crazed joy in my eyes and the fun I was having inspired Eddie to roll up a paper and join the massacre. Nancy didn’t join the killing but directed us to flies we hadn’t seen yet. We went off into other rooms to find fresh kills. I remember that Eddie also had a glare of crazed joy. I also seem to remember him getting more kills despite starting late, but that’s because he’s from Georgia where most insects were invented.

By the time the blood lust settled, the mangled corpses of over 80 flies decorated the walls of my apartment. It took a while to clean the mess up (meaning I didn’t clean the mess up for a while) but the cathartic release was well worth it.

Also, survivors must have got word out to other flies (everyone knows flies talk to each other) to avoid the crazy human because I never had a fly infestation that bad again. All I had was a few teenaged flies buzzing my apartment on a dare. Not that many made it out. (See, I told you something snapped.)

The Invasion of the Little People in Green, Orange and Red

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In an earlier post about the World Cup and my strange connection to soccer, I neglected to mention one of my direct connections to soccer which is odd because it’s the only one to which I can pin a specific date: May 26, 1993.

Basically, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, Albania managed to pull itself together enough to field a national soccer team and compete in World Cup qualifying. A couple teams had already come and gone but the one that got me occurred when, for reasons I don’t remember, I headed down toward the stadium and encountered a bunch of sunburned, freaked out people dressed in orange and green.

They were followers of the Republic of Ireland national team and lot of them had just stepped off a bus from Corfu, Greece where they’d gotten too much sun. Others had just stepped off the plane direct from Ireland and were pale white and freaked out. Because I was cleaner than the average Albanian, not hitting them up for cigarettes and/or money, and because they interpreted my shirt (which I thought had blue stripes) as having green stripes, I was immediately declared a member of the tribe and shanghaied to act as translator. They paid my way in (100 lek or about a dollar) and started handing me cans of beer.

Who was I to say no?

It was my first experience with football culture and the groups of people who follow the team around. One woman, who eventually became a pen pal for a while, planned to follow the team all over Europe. I didn’t ask how they afforded all that, but years later met someone who said, even if they were on the dole, they’d been saving since the last World Cup to follow the team.

The group I was with carried a flag with “Hill 270 is here” on it (or maybe 271 or 272 I don’t remember and my journal from that time is buried).  Whatever the number was, because they had Irish accents I didn’t fully understand the explanation of what that meant (Ahh, havingitalittletingwedofordelaods”) but I gleaned it had something to do with a pub. As I drank more and came to understand Irish better, they explained some basics of the game (Ayedeyaredoinmoredenjustrunninoutderdeyare) and some rule changes. If I understood them correctly the powers what are had either changed the rules or were about to change the rules to prevent goalies from picking up kicks from their own teammates. This was apparently supposed to speed up the game and encourage scoring. (Mission accomplished. ???) There was also talk of making the goal bigger and shrinking and or eliminating the penalty area or the goalie’s box or, ah, hell, UhI’llbehavinanoderbeerderbroder.

My favorite moment was when an Irish midfielder made a weak effort to get the ball past an Albanian midfielder. One of the Irishmen I was with yelled “Commitment, WhateverHisNameWas. We need a little commitment.” He and another Irishman then made eye contact and said “UhAye, we need the bleedin’ Commitments.”

Albania scored first but ended up losing 2-1 thanks to a free kick and some very dodgy play on a corner kick (at least the Albanians thought so). Here are the highlights from Spanish TV as shown on Albanian TV. (Warning, they are in Spanish and there are some scrambled bits.) You can almost see me at around 1:50-52. I’m in the shadows a couple rows above the flag on the far left.

The Hill 270 flag was stolen by some random Albanian whilst the Irish were celebrating and, after a brief fit of anger, they all just decided to make a new flag with “Hill 270 is here AGAIN” or something like that.

I drank a few more beers with them and got them back to their bus. I stayed in contact with the one lady for a while and then lost touch. It happened during one of my many transition  phases during my service and it cheered me up. I was having a great time I did.

 

Familiar Places with Raki and Beer and Bug Zappers

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Since yesterday I talked about how I got through three years in Niigata, I thought I should talk about one of the ways I got through two years in Albania.

Sometime after we arrived in Albania we had an oath ceremony where we met then Albanian President Sali Berisha and where we took the Peace Corps oath and swore to protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic and to never commit such acts as might require the constitution to suddenly require defending. (Something like that.)

After that, if my timeline is correct, we had food and drinks at a bar called the Taverna Tafaj. Part of the the Tafaj was underground, but it also had a beer garden at the back. I don’t remember what we ate, but the odds at that time (summer 1992) were that we had beef steak, potatoes, feta style cheese, and ferges (a yogurt meat dish). We also drank lots of beer and raki. Somehow we all managed to get home, despite that fact that all the street lights in Albania had been shot out during several months of anarchy and the city was as dark as if it was suffering a black out.

The food and service at the Tafaj was good enough that it eventually became a Peace Corps and expatriate hangout. It was cheap and actually kind of relaxing. Eventually the Tafaj was successful enough that the owners were able to doll up the beer garden, including adding an upper deck. All of this without raising prices very much.

The problem was that Albania at that time had lots of trash scattered about which meant it also had an impressive infestation of annoying flies. Because of this, the bug zapper became a kind of status symbol for restaurants with outdoor areas. The first one the Tafaj had they stuck over a table in the center of the garden and it became clear within a few minutes, and a rain of charred bug bits, that perhaps a different location might be in order. Eventually they installed a small bird bath and fountain to catch the charred bits.

The funny part is, and copious amounts of beer and alcohol might have played a role in this, the “brzzzt bzzzzap bsssszzzzrt” sound of the bug zapper became part of the entertainment at the Tafaj. We were all annoyed enough at the flies–someday I’ll tell you about the Great Albanian Fly Massacre–that we took a certain pleasure in hearing them fry.

I even remember a small round of applause when one particular large fly became, as my mother would say “a good bug” with a spectacular and loud flame and smoke show. It was better than fireworks.

Eventually, I had to move to a different city and no longer had the Tafaj to escape to regularly. Every time I got to Tirana though, I went to the Taverna Tafaj for the floor show of death. It was relaxing and calming. Well, that and the raki.