I’ve mentioned before that although I dabble in fiction, plays are the only things I can sit still for when they’re done live. However, I’ve rarely been blown away by a play to the point I was left speechless. That happened, oddly, in Albania.

First some background. During my undergraduate and Master’s Degree days I was smitten by the works of Samuel Beckett. He’s an Irishman who wrote in French, translated his work back into English (changing it along the way) and apparently used to drive Andre the Giant to school. His works are generally very bleak and darkly comic and feature old men who talk a lot (i.e. me) and are slowly running out of things to say (again, me).

After I got to Albania, the work that most reminded me of Albania (after William Butler Yeats “The Second Coming“) was the play Waiting For Godot. It’s the story of two old bums who are waiting for someone named Godot. They don’t know what he’ll do when he arrives, they don’t know if they’re waiting in the right place, and they don’t even know if he’s already been there and left. All they do is wait and pass the time by talking about random things and complaining about their various physical ailments (which, by colossal coincidence, is pretty much what happens when a group of Peace Corps volunteers get together).

Albania, when I got there, was like that. Things had fallen apart. Everything was broken. Everyone was waiting for this thing called “democracy”. They weren’t sure what it was and they weren’t sure what it was going to do when it got there. They just knew they were supposed to wait for it. They’d been told it was a big deal.

Then, during my second year, a local theater put on a production of Waiting for Godot in Albanian. Because I had an odd connection to the Open Society Fund for Albania (Soros), I managed to score a ticket in the second row. I ended up sitting next to a fellow expat I didn’t get along with very well (well, he didn’t like me much anyway), but the ticket was free so I didn’t care.

Waiting for Godot has only five characters who actually appear and Godot who is only talked about. The set is usually bare except for a dying tree. The Albanian set had a tree made out of pipes and was uncomfortably bright as they never turned down the auditorium lights.

Although it was in Albanian, I knew the play well enough to follow along. At one point, the main bums Vladimir and Estragon are joined by the pompous Pozzo and his slave, victim, friend Lucky. As part of Pozzo’s attempt to impress the other two, Lucky is encouraged to “think” and gives a long monologue that is 90% gibberish (but still more interesting than most State of the Union speeches). The actor who played lucky killed it. He actually got a show stopping ovation in the middle of the play. (I think I was standing, too.)

At the end of the play, the audience couldn’t stop applauding and the guy I didn’t get along with and I were suddenly temporary pals (mostly because all we could say was “wow”). The cast just stood around simultaneously looking uncomfortable and soaking in the applause as if they didn’t know what they were supposed to do next.

I somehow managed to acquire a poster of the event which I still own. I wish someone had made a recording of it.

Around the start of my second year in Albania I got see what I was like when I was still new. It wasn’t pretty.

For reasons I don’t remember, my friend Eddie and I were walking from the bus station past the Hotel Arberia, which was the hotel we stayed at upon our arrival in Tirana and which frequently served as our home-away-from hour Albanian homes. As we walked past, we stumbled across the fresh-faced and still foolishly hopeful faces of the members of Albania 002 unloading their stuff from vans and moving into their rooms. (They’d eventually be assigned host families, but for at least one night, they belonged to the Arberia.)

We immediately introduced ourselves and got a surprising amount of dirty looks. This was probably because 1) we were haggard old vets full of venom and cynicism; 2) they were in denial about what they were about experience; 3) being new, they already knew it all; 4) they were business advising volunteers meaning they really did think they knew it all and Albania was finally getting real help and 5) at least one of us old vets tended to be an asshole (hint, not Eddie).

Our main job that day was to tell them they’d just missed afternoon water and wouldn’t have running water again until around 2-3 a.m.

Later, as Albania 002 settled in, the best of them were a lot of fun to be around, but the worst were always convinced they were the real volunteers and we were just riff-raff that blew in from Italy. My favorite moment involved having drinks with a couple members of 002. One of them was pontificating about how some business volunteer in Russia had complained that although he was an experienced businessman, the Russians had him making copies.

My friend Robert said something to the effect of “What’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t he make copies? He’s there to do what the Russians want him to do.” I thought the guy from 002 was going to burst into flames.

In the mean time I was also thinking “They have access to a copier? Cool.”

Now, of course, I understand how lucky we were to have been part of Albania 001. Even though we were the experiment, we got to be the experts without anyone else around to burst our inflated delusionary bubbles. If we’d been Albania 002, we’d have probably been jerks too. Or at least I would have.

It started out like a forum post from a men’s magazine; it ended with musicals.

During my second year in Albania I had a chance to attend a Peace Corps conference in Slovakia. This involved pretty much the entirety of Peace Corps Albania 001 and 002 flying to Budapest and then scattering to the winds for a few days and eventually assembling at a ski resort somewhere in Slovakia.

I ended up traveling with two friends, let’s call them the Beautiful Miss A and the Beautiful Miss B (although their names are similar they were not related). From Budapest we caught a train to Prague. This involved all of us sharing a berth that consisted of two benches and just the three of us.

My brain started processing impure thoughts and possibilities and ways to get past all the baggage involved in order to act on the impure thoughts and possibilities. (I’m a Peace Corps volunteer currently serving in a developing country. I never thought these stories were real until one developed in a foreign country. Etcetera.) Unfortunately, there was way too much baggage involved: One of them was the right woman; the other was the wrong woman. Instead, we processed through the usual small talk and periodic fits of silence.

Somehow musicals got brought up. This triggered an impromptu karaoke session involving the Beautiful Miss A and the Beautiful Miss B who have apparently memorized the lyrics of every musical ever made and they proved it by singing most of them.

I was entertained at first because both of them were good singers, but eventually the male brain rejects musicals, even when sung by beautiful women. Somewhere during the second act of A Chorus Line I huffed/sighed and earned a “Well, why don’t you sing something you like?” To which I responded “Because I’d rather slit my own throat.” (something like that. Remind me again: why don’t I get invited to parties?). Eventually they ran out of songs and we all got a few hours sleep before our short yet complicated adventures in Prague. (Which are another post.)

Eventually we also made it to the ski resort in Slovakia and the conference.

I don’t remember the purpose of the conference and I don’t remember attending a single seminar. All I remember is cross country skiing with a different friend and almost the entire soundtrack to A Chorus Line.