A Small Problem

This past weekend I took a bus to Permet for the Balkan Music Festival. I decided to go there rather than to the big beach party in Durres that most of my younger Peace Corps cohorts were attending. Permet is about 38 air miles from Korca which would be about 20 minutes in a Cessna even allowing for climb and descent over the mountains, but the winding, narrow, mostly paved road that rises and descends from the steep valleys and craggy, pine covered, hills takes about 5 hours by bus. There were frequent stops to serve the small villages along the route, to allow traffic to pass (including backing up a few times to accommodate the semi trucks that also use the road), for herds of sheep or goats across the road and once at a roadside spring to allow a young girl and the old lady next to her to clean up after the girl lost her lunch in the hot, crowded, airless interior.

We passed through Erseka, a tidy city with wide streets set in a spectacular alpine valley with several visible cascades from snowmelt on the Southern mountains that separate Albania and Greece. There was also Leskovik which appears to have been a fortress city built on a saddle high above two valleys. It had more varieties of trees than I have seen in one place. They appeared to have been planted, judging by their maturity, during the long communist rule after WW II, but I have not been able to find out much about this. One large tree in the town center had a spring pouring from a tap set into its trunk.

Permet is about 20 miles from the Greek border. It is set in the narrow canyon of the Vjosa River. It has been a settlement since Illyrian times but was largely destroyed during WW II and rebuilt by the communists with typical drab, block architecture and heroic monuments to the people’s struggle against the fascists.

The festival which featured lots of clarinets, accordions, lutes and tambourines and dancing in native costumes was held on the plaza in front of one of the monuments. Performances were held in the morning and late evening to avoid the heat of the day. It was well worth the trip. Flags draped across the main street included NATO and the Stars and Stripes alongside the Albanian national and Permet regional banners. A food tasting event was held on the plaza in front of the city hall. When one of the Peace Corps volunteers I was visiting tried to ask for directions to the table serving white wine, we were introduced to the mayor, given plates of bread, cheese, olives, meatballs and shish kabobs and bottles of local Merlot along with glasses of the red wine. This being Albania, we accepted all this gracefully and were thankful we were not also given instruments and costumes and hauled onto the stage.

The apartments of the volunteers in Permet make my place in Korca look deluxe. I regret my previous complaints. My landlords, who live above me, are incredibly nice and quickly attend to any problems. My neighbors are friendly, and even if it is noisy and lacks privacy, the place has a nice community feel to it. There is a small store in a garage on the dirt road in front of my window. The owner is usually sitting in front on the curb playing backgammon or working on his motor bike. Whenever he sees me he asks me to coffee.

I think I have mentioned the coffee culture in Albania. I like coffee and I especially like the sociability of sitting around with friends at a coffee shop chewing the fat over a prolonged cup of the stuff. I have fond memories of the “Geezer Group” in McCall before I’d head up for skiing or at Dawson-Taylor in Boise on 8th street which seemed to attract pilots and offered the closest thing to hangar flying in the city. Albanians take this to a new level. It seems at times that every conversation or interaction here is punctuated with a coffee. You meet someone and it is either over coffee or you then go for coffee. You should have a very good reason to refuse as it is almost an insult. I find the most common reason I have to turn down an invitation is that I already have an invitation for coffee and I am running late.

For example, I recently had to contact my landlord because I was getting a shock from holding the shower head or touching the faucet while taking a shower. This produced a tingling sensation and twitching in the arm. I think this is unlikely to be fatal or it would have been already. I can avoid it by using a hand towel and I did think about another use for duct tape, which I brought with me, or trying to find electrical tape in the Pazar. He does not speak English and my Shqip is still not very functional. I knocked on his door and left word with his wife that I needed to talk with him.

Next afternoon he knocked on my door. I invited him in. Every conversation in Albania begins with an inquiry about how you are doing.

“Good”, I say.

“Good?” he inquires.

“Yes, good, and you?”

“Good”. “Your family?”

Of course, I haven’t been home in more than three months and the internet connection is down and, anyway, no one back home seems very communicative, so how the heck would I know. “Good, I say, and your family?”

“Good.” He smiles. I see we have gotten through the mandatory, first section of any Albanian interaction. Frankly, I don’t know how people are able to get on a bus here and maintain any kind of schedule. He lets me know his wife told him I needed to see him. I tell him about the electrical massage feature of my bathroom plumbing. Apparently this is a phenomenon throughout the building, but he is sympathetic, knowing that I am a wimpy American. He promises to fix it. He waits.

I remember my manners. “Coffee?”

He smiles. We go to the kitchen where I prepare a couple of cups of Turkish coffee. We continue our conversation about the gastric virtues of Turkish coffee vs. espresso, early morning walks up the mountain, relative merits of Korca vs. the other cities in Albania, which are nice, but can’t compare with Korca. This is a sentiment I share, but I suspect every other city in the country feels the same. Back home, we have had similar conversations on the relative merits of McCall vs. Sun Valley, but in Idaho the distances are much greater.

When he comes back an hour or so later, we repeat the whole process, just in case, we are no longer good or have had late word of some family catastrophe, or have not yet had our daily quota of caffeine. I should mention that I have not seen decaffeinated coffee in Albania.

He went around the apartment with a circuit tester, checking sockets and taps and light fixtures. I was amazed at how many were “hot”. He then went outside and pounded in a new ground next to the building. It seemed to fix the problem for a couple of days. Then a New Zealand couple bicycling through Albania spent the night with me (I was very well treated while trekking in New Zealand decades ago and have a resolution to be nice to Kiwis whenever I have the opportunity) and complained of being shocked in the shower. I need to go to the store for some more coffee before I tell my landlord.