I’ll preface this 4-part Albania series (UNUM Music Festival, Arf’s Visit, C’s Visit) by saying that order might not be reliable. If you put a gun to my head, I believe that it was UNUM, Arf, and then C. Yeah, that’s gotta be right. Let’s fuckin’ jump into ‘er!
So I’ve managed to survive Italy. Miss all those guys, just a really friendly, rowdy crew. Also missing C. It really was one of those weeks that just felt perfect. But we’ve left things open ended, we’re really far apart on what we are looking for relationship wise (more on this later), and while there’s certainly potential for her to come visit in Albania, as of now, we aren’t going to put any sort of label on it. Which could be a good thing, considering the absolute shitshows that are in the pipeline on the ole calendar.
First order of business is getting my life together. My finances are in absolute shambles at this point; Italy has completely drained my reserves. I find temporary accommodation through AirBnB for a few nights, while I start cruising Booking.com for a longer term solution.
After browsing through a few places, I stumble across something incredibly cheap. I get in touch with the landlord, we’ll call him Sparkles, and arrange to meet up at both of his locations on the north side of Tirana the next day. It’s only about a fifteen minute walk from my current setup, and given that he’s looking to rent out his two locations for 15 and 20 euros a night respectively, I’m feeling pretty good about everything. We may be able to survive out here after all!
Of course, life is never quite that easy. On my second day back in Albania, when I’m gearing up for a stream, I’m sticking my contact lenses in, and disaster strikes. One of the contact lenses literally breaks in half, as I’m placing it into my eyeball. This has never happened before, and it will certainly never happen again; I swear to god, I’m cursed.
I know that the lens has broken in half because I can see a jagged half of a contact lens on the floor beneath me. I have plenty of contact lenses still, so losing one is not the end of the world. The problem is, I cannot, for the life of me, find the other half. It’s not on the floor, it’s not in the sink, and it’s not on the counter; 20 minutes of blindly searching to no avail is enough to convince me that it’s most likely stuck in my eye somewhere.
I flush my eye out with water for the next hour. I can feel something slightly scratchy and poking in my eye socket, but despite all the water-rinses and pulling and prodding on my eye-lids, I cannot, for the life of me, locate the other half. This is a disaster.
On the bright side, I do have a few different buddies who are doctors. After a quick chat with Dr O, Ghassain, and Jbell, I decide that the only course of action is to get myself to an ER and see if we can get the rogue half-lens removed properly.
Of course, I only have about a thousand bucks to my name, zero travel-health coverage, and can’t speak a fucking word of Albanian, but there’s no away around it; once you have something stuck in your eye, it pretty much becomes the only thing that matters in the world.
I shoot K-dawg and Iris messages about my current situation, and Iris comes through for me in a big way. She calls several clinics and is able to find one for me that still has an ophthalmologist working late. She not only relays me the directions, but speaks on the phone for me to the cab driver to give him specific details on how to take me there (the clinic has several entrances).
It’s already night time by the time we pull up, but the cab driver is an absolute legend, and goes way above and beyond. He actually parks the cab, and helps me navigate from building to building, until we find the ophthalmologist waiting for me outside one of the buildings, smoking a cigarette.
Without any further ado, we follow the doctor inside the clinic, where he has one of those classic scanning light machines with the attached-chair set up. There’s no discussion of price, but to be honest, at this point, I don’t care; I’d pay just about anything to get this foreign object out of my fucking eyeball.
After a few questions, the doctor looks through the machines magnifying glass, pulling my eyelid around with one of his fingers, as he attempts to find the missing lens half. I’m incredibly happy to have this resolved so expediently , but my enthusiasm dries up extremely fast when he concludes that there’s no lens in my eye, and that I must have just scratched / irritated it when I was poking around myself.
Now, I’ve been wearing contact lenses for at least twenty years. I knew, with almost absolutely certainty, when I walked into the clinic, that there is something stuck in my eye. I can fucking feel something in there, scratching away at my cornea.
But when you have a trained professional, in front of you, who’s going over every corner and crevice with a fancy light-scanning device, and telling you that he’s not finding anything, it’s incredibly easy to start doubting yourself. Maybe it really is your imagination, maybe you’re just sleep deprived after too many long nights of streaming chess drunk, and your mind is playing tricks on you.
I get him to check one last time, but the diagnosis is final. Most likely I’ve just irritated my eye. He writes me a prescription for some antibiotics, just in-case, and tells me to come back the next morning if there’s more irritation.
The single bright spot here, is that the doctor is super nice. He says that since he didn’t really do anything, there’s no need to charge me. Seriously, Albanians are the fucking best.
Of course, the down side, is that now the cab driver, who’s been an absolute champ, probably thinks that I’m retarded, crazy, or both. He’s really friendly about it though, and still drives me home, and it’s only after I insist multiple times that he accepts my 20 euro tip, which he more than deserves after going way above and beyond.
I get back to the apartment, and immediately text my doctor friends. Both Doctor O + Ghaissen believe that there’s a 0% chance he could have missed anything; Jbell has a theory that the lens could be stuck in my fornix. After doing a bit of research, I decide that the best thing I can do is sleep it off, and hope for some more clarity in the morning.
Morning comes, and quite frankly, this may be the best day of my whole trip. Lo + behold, when I get up to check on my eye in the mirror, my eye is red and covered in mucus strands, but immediately under my eye, a large, dry, cracked, half-contact lens is sitting there immediately under my eyeball. Jbell’s fornix theory was correct, and as I had read the previous night, your eye is often capable of working foreign objects out of the fornix on its own over time.
I spend the next five minutes jumping around gleefully, cursing the incompetence of the doctor, informing Dr. O + Ghaissen of what happened, but mostly just celebrating with relief that I’ve managed to escape absolute disaster unscathed. No financial hit, no eye infection… nevermind that it was a 1 in a million freak accident, I’m alive and well and things are coming up Brando again! Absolute insanity, and chaos from nothing, but in the end, we live to fight another day!
The timing is good too, because I’m meeting with Sparkles today to take a look at his apartments this afternoon. Both of his units are on the north side of Tirana, about a fifteen minute walk up from my current location, and I’m looking to get set up for at least the next month.
I’m somewhat familiar with the area (The Greek and I had been propped up on the north side as well, though less far up), and make my way to the rendezvous point with little issue.
My first impression of the neighborhood is that it’s a vibrant, wholesome, community. The meeting point is wedged in between several apartment blocks, in a small but lively marketplace. There’s a fishmonger, a butcher, a baker, a couple of produce stalls, and a few fast food restaurants all bundled together around a couple of street corners. Everyone is smiling and friendly, kids are running around playing games, and a few elderly partake in a game of backgammon on a small bar terrasse.
Sparkles pulls up in his van with his daughter in tow. She can’t be more than 5 or 6 years old, cute and glowing with short dark hair. Sparkles has almost no hair, but he’s got a rosy smile on his face, and I get the feeling right away that I can trust this guy. He apologizes profusely for bringing his daughter along, but I have no issues with it. We shake hands firmly, but he tells me that it’s also customary for friends to rub the tops of our heads together.
I mean fuck it, dude seems nice enough, and I could use a friendly landlord. It’s not really any weirder than the French bisou. So we rub heads and chuckle a bit awkwardly, and then he leads me off to the side to show me his first unit.
As we pass by the various stalls on the way to the apartment building, Sparkles pauses to talk to some of the different business owners. Warmth and smiles all around, it seems pretty clear to me that he’s been plugged into this community for a long time, and he says as much; apparently, he grew up in this area, and one of the units was actually his family home for quite some time.
He’s only recently started renting properties on Booking.com and AirBnB, which is one of the reasons his prices are so low; he’s hoping to get a few good reviews so that it’s easier to market his property properly in the future.
This suits me just fine; I am beyond fucking broke, and need to find a place to settle down and grind some cash before I inevitably go actually broke during the upcoming music festival a few of us have planned to attend.
The 15-Euro a night apartment is on the second floor. It has a small terrace overlooking the market, with a laundry line hung out across it. The apartment itself is a studio; it has a small kitchen, a washing machine, Albanian style bathroom with the shower as part of the unit (with a drain right in the middle of the bathroom), and 2 small single beds, plus a tiny little table.
It definitely matches the “cozy” Airbnb description, but it suits my needs perfectly. I’m certainly not going to find anything cheaper, it’s clean, and it has aircon, which is huge given that May / June in Albania are a sweltering blend of heat and humidity.
I do my customary internet speed test, am satisfied with the results, and am very happy to handshake deal on the unit. We agree to go week by week, and I hand over the first weeks rent, 105 Euros, in cash. Started from the bottom, now we here! Well, we’re still at the bottom.
But at least I have a roof over my head, secured for the next week, and I can get on the stream grind and try to replenish my cash stores. I bid Steve farewell, and steel myself for the grind to follow.
In another week, Shaon will be coming to visit, and Shaon, K-dawg, + K-dawg’s crew will be sending it to the Unum music festival, and I need to get my finances in order if I’m going to be able to have any fun out there at all.
Aloha! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been pushing out the ole travel stories. But I’m going to do my best to pick up where I left off and try to catch up as quickly as I can to present day (mis)adventures.
C + I have wrapped up a fantastic wedding experience and a pretty damn idyllic week. Definitely a highlight of the trip so far. But it’s coming to a rushed close as we need to get back to Lamezia Terme for flights out (I’m headed back to Albania, and C is headed back to Paris).
For the most part it’s relatively uneventful. Ice Cream man is a gem and finds us a friendly old Italian man to give us a lift back out to Tronca. Actually incredible that we survived the whole trip without renting a car. We have a final night in Tronca, and manage to catch out bus and train back to Lamazie Terme the next day without any issues.
Our flights out are the following day, so we settle into a bed and breakfast for one last night. The bed and breakfast is about a 7 minute drive, or, a theoretical 20-30 minute walk, from the airport. Theoretical is the key word.
I wake up at around 3am for my 6am flight. Sky is still pitch black. Uber doesn’t exist in Lamazie Terme, and taxi’s are more or less non-existent.
But in my infinite wisdom, I figure that, with just my laptop bag, and small suitcase that I can wear as a backpack, there’s no need to navigate the transportation system; clearly I should have no issues walking to the airport and be able to catch my flight back to Albania with plenty of time to spare.
I give a bleary-eyed C a goodbye hug and kiss, putting a wrapper on what’s been a wonderful week, and boldly strike out on my own into the darkness, armed with my sense of direction and a fully charged phone primed with Google Maps, airport bound.
I’m so confident that I know which direction to go, that I don’t even bother to request walking directions; rather, I’m just using the map as general guidance to know I’m headed towards the airport.
The city (if you can call it that) is completely dead at this hour, but everything is going smoothly as my little blue dot on the map chugs slowly towards the airport. Of course, nothing in life is ever that easy.
What I’ve failed to notice is that in the direct walking path to the airport, the very last section between city and airport is a highway overpass. A long highway overpass, with no sidewalk. Oops.
Now, with my flight departing in about 2 and a half or 3 hours, I’m faced with a critical decision. Walking 10 minutes along a highway in pitch black darkness seems like a good way to wind up as a splattered hood ornament for one of the many senior residents here, and I’m starting to worry that if I just go back to the hotel to try and figure out how to get a taxi, there may be no taxis in operation at this time of night.
The highway overpass has been constructed to allow transportation across a narrow river (perhaps 40-50 feet wide) flowing through a gulch immediately below me. While the river doesn’t seem like the greatest obstacle, and I consider just plunging through and attempting to beeline it to the airport, it’s impossible to tell just how deep it gets in the darkness, and I don’t really feel like getting soaked for nothing if I’m forced to turn back.
I finally cave and request walking directions from my phone… something I probably should have done from the very beginning. Maps spits out a walking path that runs along the ridge I’m on, parallel to the river for about 20-30 minutes, has me crossing the river across a bridge, and then trekking the last 15 or 20 minutes to the airport along a road on the other side of the river. Seems simple enough, right?
I decide this is going to be the easiest way to get to the airport on time, and without too much hesitation, I start following the little dirt footpath on the ridge alongside the river.
Five or ten minutes into my walk, any semblance of the dirt path abruptly ends, giving way to shoulder-high reeds still wet from the morning dew. Keep in mind, it’s still pitch-black; I’ve been navigating with my phone’s torch light, able to see only a few feet in front of me at any given time. The end of any definitive path is rather disturbing; as I slowly wake up, I’m starting to realize that Google Maps is out to get me. There’s no fucking path… who knows when Google last updated their maps for this off-the-grid sleepy Italian town.
I’m acutely aware of the fact that if I double back, I’m going to have to sprint back to the hotel, annoy any staff (if they even exist at this hour), and pray that some sort of taxi is in service in order to make my flight on time.
I’m also painfully aware that this Italian stint, while completely worth it, has eviscerated the paltry remains of my savings. If I miss the flight, and have to book new accommodations as well as a new last minute flight, I’m going to be up shit creek without a paddle.
So steeling myself, I decide that the best option is to plunge onwards into the darkness. While there’s no path, there are sections of the ridge that are less reedy, and by navigating around the thicker clumps of shrubbery, I’m able to make decent progress towards the bridge.
It does cross my mind that stumbling down the ridge into the gulch would be bad, as would getting jumped by a random serial killer in the pitch black, but I’m comforted by the thought that to my knowledge there are no bears or wolves in Italy waiting to hop out and chomp me. Thick spiderwebs would also be a dealbreaker for me, but I’m fortuitous enough not to run into any of those either.
After another 20 minutes of making my way carefully forward, I can see on Maps that I should be getting quite close to the bridge. There’s just one problem; I can’t see a fucking bridge.
That’s right, I’ve just walked 40 minutes through wet shrubbery and weeds in the pitch-black darkness, trusting Google Maps with my life, only to find out that the bridge doesn’t exist. I do, in fact, see evidence that a bridge once existed; a single strong, wooden pole rises out of the ground in front of me, about twenty feet high, at the ridgetop overlooking the river gulch, a thick set metal cable dangling loosely from the top of it.
But that’s it. There’s no bridge. No fucking bridge, and no fucking time, there’s absolutely no way that I can retrace my steps and make my flight, and there’s no way to get into any part of the town proper on this side of the river, due to metal fencing and more highway. I can see a proper road with sidewalks on the other side of the ridge, but getting there could be a problem.
So once more, it’s big boy decision time. The drop-off to the river from the ridge-top is only about twenty feet, and at this point, the river has thinned out to only be about fifteen or twenty feet wide. It’s impossible to gauge exactly how deep it is, and there’s no guarantee I would even be able to get back up the ridge if I head down to check it out, but I’m pretty much out of options at this point.
Still carrying my luggage, I face backwards away from the river, and slowly start lowering myself down the ridge, which is steep, but not impossible to traverse, holding onto bundles of reeds as I lower myself down. Against all odds, I manage not to slip and fall, and clamber down til I’m next to the river.
The river gurgles lazily, and doesn’t seem that deep. But everything is too deep when you’re wearing shoes and jeans. I take off my shoes and socks, stick them in my bag, roll my jeans up past my knees, and start slowly blundering my way across the river, bare-footed, in the darkness.
For the first few feet, the water is only up to my ankles. As I continue to make my way forward, it starts to creep up my shins. By the time I get to the middle of the river, I’m standing knee-deep in slow moving water. The water isn’t super fast, but losing my balance and dropping my laptop into the drink would spell disaster and certainly result in the end of my trip.
Halfway there, there’s only one option; I keep plunging forward, and fortuitously, the water never makes it higher than my knees. The rocks under my feet are a sharp and slippery, but with adrenalin pumping, they are nothing more than an inconvenience, and somehow, I make my way all the way across to the base of the ridge on the other side.
I put my shoes back on, manage to drag myself up the muddy ridge using more reeds one step at a time, and finally find myself on the other side of the gorge, covered in dirt, water, sweat, and exhausted.
But it’s all worth it, I see a roadway, and by the gods, a lamp-post with a lit street-light. CIVILIZATION! I’m not out of the woods yet; I still have a good twenty or thirty minute walk to the airport from this side of the river, needing to re-traverse all the steps I took away from the airport along the riverside. My plane takes off in less than 2 hours.
So, crusted in mud, water, and sweat, with all of my luggage, I start jogging my way towards the airport. It crosses my mind as I near the airport that I must look like a dirty, homeless, crackhead, and as the airport comes into view, I slow my pace to a fast walk, trying to catch my breath.
Luckily no one seems to care. I make it to the terminal with an hour and a half to spare, clean myself up as best as I can in the airport bathroom, and though I get a few odd looks from other sleepy passengers, there’s no security interrogation, and against all odds, I manage to board my flight.
The big day is here. C + I rip up to Ciro Marina from Tronca, early morning Friday, with our private driver. We’re booked for a single night in a B+B, and it could all be a bit rushed, but we aren’t due at the wedding until 5pm, and it’s only an hour drive, so we should be safe enough.
Ciro Marina is, as the name implies, another coastal city, but it’s a bit more populated than Tronca was. The marina itself isn’t gigantic, but it’s a decent size, docking somewhere in the range of 20 to 50 nice looking boats.
After a light lunch, and plenty of time to kill, C and I settle down with the chessboard outside a little gelato shop and start messing around a bit (she’s hooked on the game). I’ve been doing a combination of playing seriously against her, as well as teaching her some opening concepts / traps (Fried Liver Attack!).
I notice the ice cream shop owner (Ice Cream Man) is watching our game fairly intently from the side, and I invite him to play a game against C. He’s super happy to jump in, and I play the role of the nervous coach, pretending not to watch too intently from the side or let my face give away any clues, while secretly hoping C destroys him.
He’s not particularly good, but it’s C’s first live over the board game against anyone who isn’t me, and she’s definitely super shy / nervous. She capitalizes on a few of his mistakes, but she makes a few bigger ones, a bit too big to survive, even at their relatively novice level, and Ice Cream Man takes the W. Tragic.
He asks to play me a follow up game, and I quickly wipe him off the board. Someone had to redeem C’s honor. We chat a bit with Ice Cream Man, while I sip a few beers and C munches on something sweet, and kill the extra hour or two we have before the wedding. We promise to come back for more games soon, and then roll back to the B+B to get dressed up.
I clean up pretty well when I have to, and I daresay K-dawg’s suit looks sharp on me, though the pants are a little tight round my gigantic hockey ass. C’s also fairly easy on the eyes in her summer dress and heels.
The Italian boys from Albania have just gotten in last night from Milan to a different neighboring town, and are a little hungover, but sans the bachelor, are more than happy to scoop us up and gift us a lift to the wedding venue. The kids are absolute beauties. We nip back to their hotel to pick up their plus-ones, and then rip to wedding venue in two cars.
And what a venue it is. The wedding itself is taking place several miles inland on some gorgeous farmland. Ancient Italian stone buildings meet with a beautiful expanse of crops (olive trees and grape vines are prominent) spread out over low lying hills that seem to roll forever into the distance.
Small meet and greet, where I get to catch up with some of the lads, but priority number one is the ceremony, which kicks off almost right away. Some music, some churchy songs, and a long winded speech by the minister (it seemed beautiful, but of course, it was in Italian, so I was mostly guessing what was being said based on the context). It’s possible I tear up a bit. I resist the urge to pelt Danvinci and Wifey with the ceremonial rice as they walk down the aisle, and chuck it at some of the boys instead. Seems like a safer bet.
Just like that, the beautiful couple are officially locked in as life partners. I feel a little out of place, but it’s actually super cool to be invited to be a part of something this momentous, and I’m looking forward to the festivities with the boys + C.
Tons of people have heard about me and are interested in meeting me (degenerate, Asian, Canadian who just got invited last minute), and we start to put down some prosecco as we make our rounds.
The boys and their plus ones have great energy, and we also meet this South American woman around our age, Isabella, who speaks perfect English and is definitely looking to get rowdy.
More prosecco and mingling give way to the first dinner service. I mean, it could have easily been the only dinner service, one of the most ridiculously large buffets I’ve ever been a part of. Steak, burgers, pasta, seafood, cheese, salads, and a bunch of shit I can’t identify. There’s way too much food.
Collectively as a group we stuff our faces, and we don’t even make a dent in the offerings available. I assumed this WAS dinner, but after an hour or so of this (which includes a bunch of red and white wine), we’re ushered off to another section, a stone courtyard, where the official dinner tables are set and waiting for us. Apparently now, we chase down the food and wine, with more food, and more wine.
We’re sat at a table with Isabella and her BF, plus The Sheik from the original crew (sans a plus one) and a few others. Three course meal follows, interrupted between every course by dancing, games, and general festivities. Conga line, groomsman throwdown, giant dance circles, you name it, it’s a hell of a time.
Slight dampener in that C isn’t feeling well around 11 or midnight. She seems pretty intent on walking back to the BnB on her own, which is not something I’m going to allow, for safety reasons… the walk is at least 45 mins and it’s well after sunset. I manage to recruit one of the boys to ferry us back for a quick 10 minute ride, drop off C with a kiss, and then roll back to continue sending with the lads for the one proper night we’ll have together.
Everyone’s fucking trashed and exuberant, it’s glorious. More dancing. Isabella is getting a little bit handsy, trying to pull me onto the dance floor with her… maybe a bit overly so. I end up shutting it down quickly but politely, no hard feelings there at all. Probably not badly intentioned, but was a bit weird considering we both rolled in with plus ones.
Party has moved poolside where dessert is served, and I make sure to stash some to bring back to C who has a crazy sweet tooth. A final ceremony where the newly married couple stands with a bunch of towering sparklers shooting fire into the night sky behind them, followed up by more drinks and dancing late into the night, but before you know it, it’s over, and we’re on on our way back to the BnB.
Part ways with the lads, with a quick discussion about some brunch plans the next day, and I tuck C in (she scarfs down the dessert I’ve brought back for her) before we drift off to sleep.
Beautiful ceremony, and I’m truly honored to have been a part of it all. Way more fun with C in tow, would have been a disaster being stranded by myself out there. Most of the lads are up in Milan for work; I’ll have to make sure that I pop by and visit at some point in the future. They’re also definitely invited to my future wedding; the Italians really know how to do it right, and these lads are awesome.
So here C + I are in the renowned Italian “city” of Tronca. Journey’s been hectic, but we’ve arrived in one piece. AirBnB is nothing special, it’s clean, spacious, and the internet works as advertised. Chalk that one up in the win column.
AirBnB host is quite responsive via What’s App, and recommends us a restaurant a few blocks away. Also mentions that he’ll call in ahead and inform them that we are coming, which is a little strange. But we’re famished from the journey, and I’m ready to try my first Italian pizza after the whole hamburger mishap this morning (which seems like a lifetime ago).
Step out our front door near sunset and take in our surroundings properly. To our right, a hundred feet out, is the highway we came in on, followed by a slow gentle incline of rolling, grassy hills. Long stretches of clouds, illuminated a cotton candy pink by the suns remaining rays, drift lazily across a still bright-blue sky. Plus, a bunch of electrical towers, phone poles, and wires, beautiful stuff really.
In front of us, there’s a chain fence separating us from tall grass and a bunch of stubborn little shrubs / trees that look like they came off the set of Gladiator. Maybe olive trees if I had to hazard a guess, but most likely some sort of random flora that’s been struggling to survive neglected in nature for decades. We also get a decent view of the buildings beyond, which are cookie cutter apartment blocks, each with the exact same color palette applied, white paint with a rustic red roofing.
To our left is the main, double lane roadway that runs through the town, and just a few steps past that, the soft, sandy beach (well, mostly soft and sandy, complemented by patches of small rocks just big enough to hurt your feet if you step on one just the right way) against the deep blue of the Ionian sea.
Don’t worry, no more lengthy environmental descriptions, because that pretty much describes the entire area we’ll be in for the next four days.
We rip over to the restaurant, about a five minute walk, and roll in like we own the place. Turns out, we sort of do own the place; there are zero other customers in the entire restaurant.The four or five staff on hand look a little confused about us popping in, and speak little to no English, but we managed to gesture our way to an outdoor table on the beachside.
The sea looks glorious in the sun’s dying rays, but as the sun goes, the sand flies emerge. For some fuckin’ reason, mosquitoes and flies just love me; I’m pretty sure I get bitten about forty times over dinner, while C escapes completely unscathed.
Pizza and a seaside beerski is on the menu, and maybe my expectations are a bit high, because the pizza is decidedly average. The crust is light and fluffy where it’s cooked properly, but it’s burnt in a half dozen places, and the toppings don’t seem particularly fresh. Maybe that’s why the restaurant is empty. But hey, company is good, and the view is nice.
It’s dark by the time we wrap up, and I’m too lazy to complain about the 2.50 extra we’re charged for “outdoor gazebo” seating. I will bitch about it to you though; the audacity of these motherfuckers. Literally zero customers also looking to sit outside, get the fuck outta here. Sorry your waiter had to walk an extra six steps. Might as well charge me per sandfly bite while you’re at it.
But to be honest, I’m just happy to be here. I’m excited for the wedding, and ecstatic that C finally decided to come last minute even if she may be partiallllllly to blame for our botched travel plans. We enjoy the stroll back to our place and get cozy for the night.
Wake up the next morning and lazily start planning our day. We decide to get errands out of the way first, and hit the beach afterwards. Almost like we’re responsible adults.
We kick off with a short stroll down the town road, looking to pick up some groceries. C loves my cooking, and it’s a lot more fun cooking for two than it is for one. Google maps has a bunch of local markets a block or two away, but each and every single one of them is shuttered up. Windows are dusty, and it looks like they’ve been closed for years.
Tronca is starting to look suspiciously like a ghost town. We haven’t seen a single person so far other than the restaurant staff and the guy who dropped us off; it’s more than a little bit unnerving. Reminiscent of Leo and his wife’s dream world in Inception, where they have an entire world all to themselves.
We hear the crunch of rubber on dirt and gravel, and step off the road out of the way, but the silver truck pulls up to a stop right next to us, and a large man rolls the window down.
His English isn’t great, but we manage to explain to him that we are trying to find a grocery store or a restaurant. He tells us that there’s only one in town right now, and that most of the village is empty until beach season starts and on weekends. Offers to give us a lift to the only open grocery store a kilometer or two down the road. Two hitch hikes in two days seems a little risky, but the man seems friendly enough and we hop in without much reservation.
We’re dropped off without issues, grab our stuff, and make the trek back to our place. After throwing some lunch together (I kick us off with a greek salad and some carbonara), we grab our towels, and hit the beach.
What a beach it is. Maybe it’s not the pearly white soft sand of Tulum, when you find the right spot, the grains are fine enough that you don’t really notice the difference. C’s rocking a turquoise bikini that looks pretty great on her, we have a couple of Corona’s in play, and to top it all off, there’s not a single soul within sight. Beach is entirely ours.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that first day. Just two people smiling and rekindling, stresses of the day before and the past years evaporating as we bask in the sun and each other’s presence. A hot day but not unbearably so, relaxing in the sand together, taking short dips in the cleansing salt water whenever we feel like cooling down a bit. Some conversation, some chess, and a deep sense of peace and calm that I haven’t felt in years. I think I needed this one; might have just been a perfect day.
It’s still not a total vacation. I do end up putting in a few hours of streaming. But all responsibilities are tasks, that, for the most part, I enjoy. I work the hours I feel like working, cooking for someone I care about never been a chore, and it’s just excellent company in a zero stress environment.
This routine carries us through the entire week. Stroll to the grocery store, marvel at all the options available, pick out whatever we feel like eating that night (although for lemons, we were having fun just picking them off the bountiful lemon trees kicking around literally everywhere), whip up some lunch, hit the beach, munch some dinner, hang out, and stream.
I did propose a little hike up the big hill across the highway, but we ended up opting to stick to a lazy, peaceful routine. Not like it would have been an incredible view anyways. I’m sure eventually the routine and lack of other people to interact with could get boring, but for a lad raised in Calgary, beaches and the sea are something I haven’t seen nearly enough of, and with C, it really feels like sometimes happiness isn’t that hard to find; you just have to take a few risks, be open to new friendships, and actively seek it out.
Alrighty, so we’re finally off to Italy! After some hemming and hawing, C has agreed to accompany me to Italy to be my plus one for this joyous matrimony between my dear, longtime, friend Davinci, and his lovely wife, ummm, wifey. Yep, totally know her name at this point. Our rich and storied friendship, which consists of getting fucked up with his boys two nights in Albania, is sure to endear me to all of the bride’s side of the family.
The wedding is on Saturday, near the cozy eastern seaside town where Davinci grew up in, Ciro Marina. CHIRO, Maaaareeeeena. Really fun to say the town name, it just rolls off the tongue in a pleasing way. But we aren’t there yet, it’s only Tuesday. Since I’ve never been to Italy, I decide early on that it would make the most sense to try and spend at least a week there. The whole planning process is a is bit of a mess.
C, who has onboarded herself rather late, has certain accommodation standards, and has taken it on herself to organize the Airbnb and train tickets. In exchange, I am handling wedding gifts for both of us, plus food and drink for the week. However, there are a few hiccups right off the bat.
For starters, we are struggling to find a ton of places that seem reasonably priced in Ciro Marina. Additionally, I 100% need to have a good internet connection so that I can continue streaming / coaching throughout the week so I don’t go broke. As a kicker, there are no direct flights into Ciro Marina; the nearest airports are in Lamezia Terme or Crotone. Have you heard of any of these famous locales? Me neither.
Seaside towns are notorious for having dog shit internet connections, and for some fucking reason, a lot of Airbnb / Booking.com hosts refuse to post explicit details on their download / upload speeds. So there’s a lot of back and forth between myself, C, and various hosts, trying to get these luddites to run an internet speed test. Plus an additional back and forth between C and I as we tried to find a compromise between a guaranteed internet connection and her standards.
In case you were unaware, I absolutely detest planning. I don’t amble around aimlessly, I walk with intent to a destination. I don’t browse around in a store. If I’m in one, it’s because I know exactly what I want, I go in, I buy it, and I get the fuck outta there. It’s not the initial organizing part of planning that bothers me, but the inevitable tedious feedback loop that follows as soon as there’s any additional input involved. Maybe I need to take a meditation class or some hippy bullshit. I have infinite patience in some ways, but in others, I have an incredibly short fuse.
So in the end, it makes a lot more sense to just give my single requirement of fast internet to C, and then let her handle that. Or at least, it should have. She picks a spot on Airbnb, but her card doesn’t work, and instead of checking the booking, I end up just shipping her my credit card info to throw down for the place. Without double checking what she’s booked. Like a god damn fool.
We end up with a nice place in a “neighboring” town on the east coast called Tronca for the first six days, 2 flights into Lamezia Terme on the west coast from Paris and Tirana, 2 flights back to our respective cities from the same airport at the end of the week, one night in LT before our flights out, and train tickets between LT and Tronca. Surely, there won’t be any issues getting to the actual wedding destination. Surely, there will be Ubers, cabs, or car rental and we’ll be able to hop around as we please. Surely.
But hey, we have a really nice romantic getaway planned in Italy. The C saga continues! We’re going to a random Italian wedding with some cool new friends, and we’re going to get to spend a bunch of time beachside, together. Planning has been a shitshow, but excitement is running high.
I take a lift to Tirana airport with Big Will, and we roll up in record time. He’s swerving back and forth like a maniac, we’re both hacking darts inside the cab, and the music is pumping. Dude’s just an absolute beauty.
As an added bonus, K-dawg and Bobo are both at the airport the same time as me. They are flying out to Japan for a couple of weeks, and our flights are only an hour apart. So instead of my traditional solo airport lager, we are able to grab a morning drink together and have a little chitchat over a smoke or two before they have to hop on their plane.
My flight takes off soon after without issues. I’m in an emergency row, so I can stretch my legs out and have a chuckle over the fact my one way flight cost me all of 37 Euros. Man, travelling in Europe is crazy. (As an aside: I didn’t exactly roll to Europe with a suit, but K-dawg is an absolutely beauty and has hooked me up with a couple of pieces from his personal collection. I’ll be looking sharp at this thing!)
Touch down and breeze through security like I’m an Italian national. Canadian passport strikes again! Couple of drug sniffing dogs give me a once over, but I’m clean as a whistle baby. Now I’m chilling in the terminal and have two hours to kill until C lands in from Paris. The town itself isn’t that far from the terminal, and I’m feeling pretty peckish, so I figure it can’t hurt to go grab some pizza in Italy and see what the hype is all about.
It’s nine in the morning and there aren’t a ton of options available on Google Maps, but I do find a restaurant about a 5 minute drive into town. So I flag down a cabby, hop in, show him the restaurant on google maps, and tell him that I’m going to grab some pizza. He doesn’t speak a lick of English, but I figure the Google Map location I show him on my phone leaves no room for error. Turns out, once again, I’m dead wrong.
We have taken a few overpasses to get from the terminal to the restaurant, and all seems good, until all of a sudden, we make a right when the map wants us to go left. I’m telling him in a pretty calm voice that he’s going the wrong way, and that I’m trying to go to the restaurant on the map, to get some pizza. He repeats loudly, “pizza, yes, pizza”, and continues driving the wrong fucking way.
I’m starting to get pretty damn frustrated at this point. I raise my voice, and am frantically gesturing at the phone, repeating, “restaurant. pizza. We’re going the wrong way!”. We’re already on a one way highway that’s headed completely the wrong direction towards the south somewhere. I zoom out on google maps, and finally realize what’s happening… there’s literally a town 30 miles to the south called “Piazza”. Pronounced “Pizza” obviously. For fuck sakes.
The driver can tell at this point that he’s doing something wrong, based on how agitated I am. It finally dawns on him that maybe, I want to eat pizza, at the restaurant, in town, at the location I have marked on my GPS in front of his face, while miming myself eating a pizza. But it’s too late. This is literally a one way highway that goes all the way south to the town of Piazza, with zero turnoffs, and a metal railing separating us from the road back. This is going to be at least an hour long detour. There’s not much that can be done at this point; he’s still running the meter, but I tell him that he’s not getting more than 20 Euros, not that he understands a damn thing. Probably for the best or else he’d probably try to drop me off in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.
The drive south is scenic at least, but I’m a little too steamed up to really enjoy it at first. We both calm down about five mins into the drive, trauma bonded by our shared taxi prison and this hour long waste of both of our times, and he hands me a mint as a peace offering. I apologize for getting heated, and I think he understands, solely based on my conciliatory tone. We settle into the rest of the drive, and he finally gets me to the destination five minutes away from the terminal, an hour later. Here’s your 20 bucks, now fuck off.
Lamezia Terme isn’t particularly pretty. Ghost town with a few scattered old people, rusty orange / red dirt color and buildings that look like they are slowly falling apart. Including the restaurant. I get the impression that it’s an aging community / a flight hub at best, and there’s not a lot of new blood coming through.
I’m still excited to try an Italian pizza though. So I’m more than a little bit miffed when I try to order one and they tell me they won’t fire up the pizza ovens for another 3 hours. I swear to god, Europeans are more allergic to work than I am. Basically nothing on the menu is available, so for the first meal I’ve ever had in Italy, I order… a hamburger.
A fucking hamburger. In Italy. Ridiculous, but one of about three lunch items that were available. Of course, it’s Italy, so they have no idea what a hamburger is. There’s no bun, there’s no lettuce, there’s no ketchup, there’s no cheese. I literally receive a plate with a single beef patty, a slice of tomato, and some fries. No condiments at all in fact. “Ohhhh, but Brando, it’s a deconstructed hamburger, the condiments would just detract from the authentic flavors”. Shut the fuck up and give me my ketchup.
Anyways, C pulls up, we slam a coffee, and make our way to the train station. We get our ID’s checked by some cops on the way, probably haven’t seen an Asian in town since WW2. We are a healthy 4-5 hours ahead of our train, and figure we have more than enough time to pop over to the beach on the west side of town. She’s fairly insistent that we hop on a bus, but I have my doubts about public transportation here, and end the argument by just whipping my phone out and grabbing us an Uber.
The beach is about a twenty minute drive out west. A nice, rocky beach. Small rocks, so not super painful on the feet, but not exactly the pristine white sand of Tulum. But to be fair, the view is pretty beautiful. And hey, we have each other.
Throw down our towels on the rocks, cuddle and embrace a bit. I throw on my swim drunks and hop in for a dip, while C sets up the chessboard and tries to entice me into another game. She really is hooked on chess, it’s great. Altogether, a pretty nice time.
But we don’t have a whole lot of time. We def aren’t missing our train. So we pack up with about 2h to spare, and roll back to the main junction where the road links up with a small forest area adjacent to the beach.
Check my phone, and I’m at 2% battery. Uh oh. It turns out that if my laptop isn’t plugged in, it doesn’t charge my phone. I’ve put out an Uber request, but we’ve seen maybe four people out here the entire hour and a half we chilled on the beach, and the Uber ride search is coming up completely dry.
I’m suggesting to C that she install Uber on her phone, and that we start walking back more towards civilization at the same time as we try to order one so we hedge our bets. But despite being only a twenty minute drive back to the train station, the entire journey is essentially highway; walking back MIGHT get us back in 2h. I just figure that if we start walking closer we’re more likely to get one of the 2 Uber drivers in the whole town to pick us up.
But C “doesn’t have enough data” to install Uber. Which may or may not be true. I’m casting some doubt here, because if you recall, we’re only an hour or two out from a disagreement about taking Uber or bus to get to the beach. We may also both have a bit of a stubborn streak. Hmmmm, interesting coincidence that what she wants to do is roll over to this “bus station” and take a bus back. And that there’s no way she can acquire enough data to install Uber. I’m still trying to charge my phone via laptop on a picnic table, but before I can plead my case any further, she’s off and walking away from the main road down a dirt path. Towards this “bus station”.
Well, fuck me boys. I guess that’s the end of the discussion. We walk twenty minutes down a dirt path with stress levels through the roof, take a left onto a super quiet street, and are now in an abandoned neighborhood with some decrepit houses on the one side, and a field on the other side between the road and yet another highway. We arrive at the “bus station” which is literally a gravel square cut out of the adjacent field with a faded sign that’s illegible.
My phone is now dead, and we have an hour and a half to get back to the train station, or we’re going to be stranded in this town for at least another day. Plan going swimmingly so far. I ask her to at least try to hook onto one of the houses wifi connections, but they are all secured. It’s not like she can admit now that she can add more data so we can try to cover all our options and put out an Uber request. So, we’re fucked basically.
No easy access to the houses either, no visible paths to the front doors, and it’s a long shot anyone is home right now anyways. Don’t really want to be hopping fences in the Italian countryside, I have a feeling all small towns in the world are all sort of the same. They probably don’t take kindly to outsiders, and with a massive language barrier, the last thing I want to do is get attacked by some kind of Italian redneck who thinks an obvious foreigner is attempting a break and enter. We could walk, but we have all our luggage, and there’s no way we’re going to make it to the train station in time.
I’m still trying to charge my stupid phone with my laptop, and then, out of nowhere, a car rolls up onto our abandoned road. Female driver, about 40 years old. C makes the approach, asks if there’s a bus coming. No bus. Maybe there never was a bus. Never saw that one coming. C asks if we can borrow her phone. Nope. Female driver clearly looking to get out of here, basically rolls up her window and fucks right off. Friendly.
Ok, part of it is clearly the language barrier. But still, come on. Take a look at me. I obviously don’t belong here, we’re lost tourists, a little help would be great. I’ve basically come to terms with the fact we’re going to miss the train at this point. I’m more or less ready to just start walking; it’s going to be a miserable walk, but there’s not much else to do but suck it up.
Miracle of miracles, a second car shows up. In the middle of nowhere, a second car. Husband and wife this time. Also in their forties. C flags them down once again (she’s petite and sweet looking, not to mention white and female, definitely the play here). They speak a tiny bit more English than the first driver, realize that we are completely fucked, and offer to lift us back into town. There is a god! Or at least, nice people still exist.
We pile our stuff in with us into the backseat of their car, and hitchhike back into town with the couple. It’s going to be tight, but it looks like we’re going to make it. They drop us off a few blocks from the train station, and I offer them twenty euros, but they just smile and wave it off. “Have a nice trip, get the fuck outta our car”. But for real, those guys were a lifesaver, this could have been a wholeeee different trip if the day 1 fiasco went just a little bit differently.
We rush into the train station, manage to figure out the platform we need to be on, board the train, transfer halfway along the journey to a bus, and make it to a bus station just south of Tronca. We’ve reached out to our AirBnB host, and he’s arranged for his buddy to pick us up and drive us to the apartment. Ride goes smoothly for 10 Euros, and we make it there without any further hiccups.
C and I could have been a little bit more salty with each other, but neither of us holds a grudge long, and the second we made it onto the train, I think the overwhelming feeling on both sides was relief. Crisis averted, time to enjoy Italy!
There’s not tooooo much left to wrap up prior to the Italy send. K-dawg did hook me up with a ticket to an electronic music show right smack in the middle of Skanderberg Square… rolled out in force with him and all his homies, Bobo, Iris, etc…
Actually there is a funny anecdote from that. We’ll have to push Italy to the next one. The show was absolutely bumping, I rolled in after a light pregame streaming, and K-dawg + Bobo managed to fast-track me through the line with their magic VIP wand. Honestly, these two have been killing it for me out here.
We pop in through, meet up with the whole group, including an openly gay friend of theirs (which is really fucking rare out here), who happens to be smoking some pot. Now, I’m not really a pot guy, it tends to make me tired / hungry / sleepy. But K-dawg is the ultimate peer pressure lad when it comes to drug consumption amongst the friend group, he hits it a few times, and tells me to hack a few puffs. I take one decent pull and say I’m good, but he twists my arm into taking a second one, and I go from zero to zonked pretty damn fast. Fuckin’ K-dawg.
Anyways, we are a crew of about 8 or 9. Some of us want to go more central, some people want to go up front. The music is great, the crowd is body to body, there are probably at least 5 or 10k people in the square easily. I end up rolling up front with another one of K-dawg’s friends, so we can get right up next to the speaker, and we jam out a little bit.
We’re dancing doing our thing, and at some point I make eye contact with a super cute lass, who looks like some sort of Eastern European. Petite, insane blue eyes, curves in all the right places, in full festival getup, def a good lookin’ lady. I mean scorching hot really. No real ambitions, C is still on the fence for Italy, and I’m fucking baked at this point barely clinging to consciousness. I’m somehow chatting her up a bit despite the music right in our ears, vibes seem alright. K-dawg’s buddy pulls me back at some point and says something about how she likes me and I should go for it. And in my head, that sort of pushes me to… ask her for her number??? In the middle of the concert??? Drink or a dance make a lot more sense, but I’m fucking zonked.
Ok. It’s a little awkward. Zero game while stoned out of my mind. But what stands out to me is the reaction. Her response is to ask “are you serious?”, and then burst out laughing. What a god damn savage. She starts laughing, grabs her friend, says something to her about it, who also starts laughing. And then K-dawg’s buddy leans in and they are talking in Albanian for a second, and he starts laughing. Fuckkkk haha. “The worst she can say is no”. We’ve now learned this ain’t true boys.
I mean shit, she’s really attractive, but I don’t think its like I’m the fuckin’ Hunchback of Notre Dame. If she’s playing in the Chel, I gotta at least be in major juniors, might be swinging above my league in the pure physical, but you gotta believe we’re at least playing the same sport. Tbh probably more related to my botched delivery / their own mental state / the fact I’m a weed zombie at this point, don’t think there was any malice there, but who knows. Who the fuck brings an Indica to a festival? Indica, in da couchhhhh.
Anyways, I’m probably tweaking a bit on the weed, it’s really not my going out drug of choice / puts me in my head a lot. Fuckin K-dawg. Funnily enough, this would not be the last we’d see of “Laughina”, but for the night, it was enough for me… I politely excuse myself, and slink off with what remains of my dignity.
I ended up making my way back through the crowd. Main crew is deep center in the mob, jamming out, and I consider re-linking with them. But the whole world is spinning and I’m feeling super tired / nauseous. End up leaving the concert venue to sit down on a bench for a few minutes to see if I can rally back. But I end up just feeling more sick, and after a few more minutes, I say fuck it. Funnily enough, I don’t go straight home… my ingenious plan is to hit the poker room, while I’m just absolutely cooked and obviously going to play the worst poker of my life.
I head down into Teddy KGB’s metal basement doorway, sip on a free water in the lounge area, and ask if there are any seats open. There are not. End up waiting thirty minutes, where by the grace of god, seats continue to remain at full capacity, which gives me time to sober up enough to realize what a terrible idea playing in this state would be. It’s Friday night, and only about midnight, but I’m still absolutely cooked… I chalk it all up in the L column, flag a taxi outside, rip home, eat a gigantic bowl of leftover Carbonara I cooked up the night before, and watch an episode of Rick and Morty, before conking the fuck out for the night.
Wake up the next morning and reflect on it all a bit. Sort of realize the whole thing is pretty funny. I’ve taken plenty of runs at women before, which of course, like for most men, involves a fair amount of rejection. But never in my whole life, has a woman just straight up laughed in my face at the idea of me taking her number. Especially with prior groundwork laid. You’d think it would be the stuff of nightmares.
But realistically. What were my intentions anyways? I was fried (Fuck you, K-Dawg!), I’m still figuring out last minute if C is actually coming with me to Italy as my plus 1 and our tentative rekindle arc might continue, my approach was terrible, and… awful rejection, sure, but it’s absolutely meaningless against the backdrop of all the bigger shit that I’m trying to figure out in my life.
Genuine heartbreak, death of a loved one, losing an important job, having a startup going under, letting down people you care about, not being able to feed your kids… holy shit, there’s so many more things that can happen in life that are actually worth getting bent out of shape for. Casual rejection doesn’t register anymore, it’s not even a blip on the radar. I’m not going to come out of this experience an entirely different person or anything dramatic like that, but I think what this whole trip about is that you need to be out there shooting your shot, every chance that you get. Not just with women obviously, but with every dream and opportunity, every goal and ambition, or else you’re going to be lying there on your deathbed in forty years wondering how you were such a pussy that you let the things you wanted in life just pass you by without even trying.
There’s nothing unique or novel about this realization. It’s been realized by billions before me, and it’ll be realized by billions afterwards. No one is bulletproof, and of course the slap of a rejection can sting a little, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s just a reminder to refine your efforts and try again. Fuckin’ get out there and get it boys! We aren’t getting any younger.
Week 2 is fairly uneventful in terms of crazy sends. This is largely in part due to some of the worst canker sores I’ve ever gotten in my whole life appearing along the side of my tongue. We’re not talking normal ones, we’re talking humongous pits of flesh chunked out of the tongue, with mountainous blisters so painful it’s not possible to eat, talk, drink, smoke… basically these fucking things deny all pleasure in life and you just want to die.
It actually blows my mind that modern medicine hasn’t found a cure for this shit yet, you’d make a god damn fortune. Come on bio nerds, get er fuckin’ done! So no ambitions for sends, eating out, socializing, or anything really.
Cash is starting to get a little tight. Not alarmingly tight, but definitely tight to the point that I decide I need to get my shit together a bit and figure out how I’m going to make this trip work. I really only planned two revenue streams while I was abroad; low stakes Pot Limit Omaha poker online, which is a massive grind, and streaming chess on Kick, which to this point, is also a massive grind. Grind is an understatement; realistically, I’m probably making about 10 bucks an hour tops with both up until this point. I do also have a couple of students for chess lessons, but at this point it’s really just a couple, and it’s nowhere close to consistent enough to support myself, even though the hourly is a lot better.
But hey, this is the price you pay to throw off the corporate shackles, and I have a bunch of friends who have found success with both. Kick has a much lower population than Twitch, and I’ve been fucking inchinggggg my way towards 1k followers, which will allow me to apply for the chess.com partner streaming program.
I’ve also been timing my streams strategically. GM Hikaru Nakamura streams once in a while on Kick, and one of his mods has taken a liking to me; I’m the lucky recipient of raids, as long as I’m streaming when he ends. It probably helps there aren’t many other chess streamers on Kick for them to send the raids to.
For context, a raid means sending all of your current viewers over to another channel that is streaming at the same time you want to end. Naka will typically have 2-8k people watching him. The goal is to get into the Kick incentive program, where they start paying you out themselves based on chat engagement (as opposed to relying purely on subscriptions and donations), and getting into this program could really make a difference to my bottom line.
The most difficult requirement to being eligible for the program, is to maintain an average viewer count of 75 or higher. By trying to only stream at popular hours, and limiting the frequency that I stream to primarily when Naka is about halfway done his own streams, I’ve been able to catch enough raids that I’m super close to hitting this average.
Naka generally streams Titled Tuesday, a chess.com event, on Kick, and I’m sitting at a count of around 66 average viewers; if I can get my shit together, and put together entertaining enough content that his viewers don’t mind they’re swapping from a top-5 player in the world to some 2500 chess.com rated bum chugging beers, then I have a very realistic chance of spiking over the required average, and becoming eligible to apply for the program.
Plan’s been in motion for the last month, the table is set, and it’s go time. I make sure I have beers stocked up, ping outside of my Discord channel on all my socials, for the first time ever, to let the gang know I could use a few extra eyeballs on my channel to help push me over the top… and then it’s time to throw on the character. Brando The Bully going live!
Maybe character is the wrong word. Blazing fast chess moves, crazy sacrifices that are doomed to fail a lot of the time, but can sometimes result in brilliant, sexy games. Shit talking opponents and chat alike in an exaggerated hockey accent, putting beers down like I’m back in my university days.
It’s spunky, it’s always fun to chirp and say dumb shit, and there’s a warmth and charisma I share with the friendships and community I’ve built up over the last couple of years. Primarily only one facet of me, and perhaps a bit of a caricature, but still, a lot of the “real” me in there for people to love, hate, or try to get piss drunk by throwing their dollars at me. Dance monkey, dance! It still tickles me to this day that people can make a living doing this.
But at the same time, maybe it’s not that strange. I spent a lot of time over at the Chessbrah house back when they were in Montreal and just getting started on their insanely successful chess streaming journey. But I was much more into the live events than anything online; chilling out, playing speed chess, and drinking with the boys. I didn’t really get into the online side until COVID and the 8pm curfews hit, and there was really fuck all else to do.
Then all of a sudden, I found myself hanging out in their Discord, making friends with people I’d never met online, splintering off into our own subgroups. We’d run crosswords, trivia, Jackbox… fuck, we were even solving online jigsaw puzzles together. Anything to do just to pass the time. We’d also watch the Chessbrah stream a bunch together, actively participate in chat, discuss who we liked, didn’t like, who was crazy, relevant drama…
Got to the point where some of these people became real friends. Couple of romantic relationships even formed. During COVID curfew lifts, I entertained a group of online friends live at a Toronto Airbnb, where one got drunk for the first time in his life and fell into the toilet, smashing both his head and the porcelain bowl. First and only AirBnB I’ve ever been able to rent.
Streamed a bit on Twitch myself, just to try it out, before eventually getting banned for getting blackout drunk one night on stream and forgetting that you can’t call an annoying buddy a “retarded faggot” in front of an online audience without severe consequences (lmao, who would have guessed). Something about playing games online really brings back those Halo 2 Xbox live days where people were just saying the nastiest things to each other, but cancel culture didn’t exist yet. Definitely need to be careful about that type of language… I do think the world has gotten a bit soft, but I don’t have any desire to be ignorant or hurtful to minorities either. That’s not the public face I really want to have, and there are plenty of ways to insult a buddy that are a bit more creative vocabulary-wise.
But the point of all of this, is that the streaming subculture really isn’t about the actual activity being streamed. It’s not even about the “star” of the show either (though it often can be, creeping into some fairly gross parasocial relationships that exist between streamers and viewers). To me, it’s about the community you build, the online family, the cast of characters, that get together and enjoy each others company. The friendships that are built. The socializing. Having drinks together in a discord call, shooting the shit about wives and families. It’s an online bar, social club, a place where people can kick their boots off, let their guard down, meet new people, and hang with the old ones.
Kind of ironic that the dude “indefinitely suspended for violent hate speech” (ok, comeeeee the fuck onnnn, that’s a stretch and a half, peak cancel culture) is talking about building a safe space to chill and be yourself online. But it really is that. Of course members in the community are going to be diverse; some will drop in for a few hours here and there to shoot the shit and see what’s going on amidst their busy lives full of friends and activities. For others, for whatever reason, these little communities might be close to their entire social lives. And that’s ok. Sometimes it’s easier to make friends online, to have some semblance of control over the pieces of yourself you reveal the world, to let your guard down one step at a time, carefully, because you’ve been burned so much by other people in the real world. And use it as a road to building trust and confidence so that you can be successful in forming real life relationships and friendships again one day.
I’ve thought long and hard about if streaming can actually be good for the people involved in it. I think a lot of the problems develop when a streamer gets so big that it becomes a tremendous effort to actively be a part of the community. You can manage a few hundred, or even a few thousand relationships, as long as you put the time and effort in. But when you get to say, fifty or a hundred or two hundred thousand people who can tune in, it must be fucking impossible to actively maintain any semblance of real friendships with the masses.
At that point, the streamer attains an almost demi-god status, and the parasocial / narcissist issues start creeping in. I’d like to think I won’t ever be like that… but it’s also a foreign / crazy concept to me ever becoming a streamer that big. Maybe if I was a 9/10 Russian bombshell with a giant rack, a 2600 FIDE, and about twice the charisma. But that sounds like a future problem not worth worrying about, because if it ever rolls around, then I guess I’ll have made it. See you all on my fuckin’ yacht!
Anyways, ramble on streaming in general aside. We catch the Naka raid. A ton of real life friends see the Facebook link and pop in for a few hours. The stream goes super well, and I manage to retain about 600 people from the Naka raid for several hours. And boom, just like that, we’ve done it! Average viewers for the month is sitting at 82, exceeding the requirement for the Kick Partner Program. Let’s fucking gooooooooo!
I celebrate a bit with chat, thank everyone on Facebook for popping in, crack a couple of brews with The Greek, and submit my application for partnership to Kick. I also manage to pick up another 40 or so followers, which pops me over 1k,so I submit a request to Chess.com for their partnership program.
I expect both to take about a week to get back to me, but within a couple of days, I’m accepted into both programs, and just absolutely ecstatic about it. The road ahead is going to be long and grindy, but at a bare minimum, I now have a couple of extra tools at my disposal to generate views and revenue. This extended Europe trip may actually end in some way other than me having to give handjobs in an Albanian alley to book my plane ticket back home to mom’s place in Calgary.
At the tail end of week 3 on Saturday, The Greek and I head out for drinks with Bobo and Iris. C’s visit has been short but sweet, and she’s already departed. K-dawg is out of town yet again for another business trip, so it’ll just be the 4 of us.
We peel out to a nice terrace in Blloku. Pretty standard fancy pants stuff, there’s no DJ playing yet, but we roll out some drinks and tapas. Couple beers, couple cocktails, nothing crazy. Bobo and Iris look great as per usual, there’s just some sort of aura of class that emanates from some of these European women. A certain care taken into their appearance… probably I should take some style notes from them. For sure explains why K-dawg always looks so sharp these days. But I’ve never had time for that shit… one day.
As per usual, the ladies have to go home relatively early. Being a mom is a full time job after all. The terrace has filled up, and The Greek and I debate taking a shot at some of the tables of women, but I’ve never had a ton of love for the fancier folk. Sit there looking bored and sip your drink, if you can’t entertain yourselves I’m not gonna do it for you.
We decide to send it to Juliette, the Karaoke bar we went on one of the first nights. Have talked to the bartender a few times prior and he’s claimed that on Saturday the place gets rowdy. It’s only a few blocks away so we mosey our way over there.
The bar is indeed hopping. Ground floor karaoke bar in the heart of Blloku, but instead of karaoke, tonight they have a live band strumming up a storm and rocking out to some good ole American tunes. “Dance floor” / “Mosh pit” is body to body, sweaty, with cigs inside, so you can imagine how it all smells, and I fucking guarantee more than a people got burned.
We manage to snake our way next to the bar, and snag a couple of brews, but we’re only half cut at best, the crowd is young, and it’s pretty much impossible to even make out the features of people jumping around in the crowd, let alone get the wheels rolling and slide in some convo.
So we strategically prop up at a table closer to the entrance, where sweat in the air is a bit less thick. Lot less talent out this way, but it was going to be a nightmare to hit on anyone in that most pit, and we’d probably need to be at least another six beers deep to send it.
Casually sipping and looking to socialize, I look over at the other table, and notice four lads around our age give or take a few years who look like they are down to get rowdy. Couple African-American types, a whitey, and a dude who just looks like he could be an Arab Sheikh.
Strike up a convo with the boys, and it turns out they are all visiting from Italy for the weekend, here on a bachelors, and are looking to tear it up a bit. I buy a round of shots to congratulate ’em, and we end up merging tables with the lads and swap war stories.
It turns out they are planning to go to Durres beach the next day and are hoping not to get tooo mangled tonight. I haven’t been to the beach yet since I’ve been here, so after a few brews, I ask if I can tag along. Pick up a couple of What’s-App numbers, and we lock in tentative plans to link up the next day. Bar itself ends up being a bit of a bust… it’s pretty hard to get any reliable service, and so when the boys (The Sheik, Davinci (white, future husband), Sanny, and Firo) bounce, The Greek and I decide it’s time to retire ourselves.
Wake up the next day, and for whatever reason, The Greek isn’t down to hit the beach. Crazy stuff, but I guess he’s used to the Med at this point and unimpressed. Fire out a few texts to the Italians, and they are still down, so I end up scarfing some pizza and meeting up with them at their brunch spot downtown.
There’s a cab line right outside the brunch spot, and after a little bit of haggling, we manage to secure 2 cabs for 20 Euros each. First hiccup pops up; the Italians don’t have any physical cash on ’em. I do happen to have a few bills on me after some good luck at the poker tables, and I end up making a deal where I’ll cover the cabs out as long as they cover cabs back. Fuckin’ most generous unemployed lad who ever existed right here (it does make sense though, because otherwise they’d just be rolling the 4 of them out in one cab).
We split 3-2, with me hopping into a cab with Firo and The Sheik, and just like that, we’re off. A slightly hungover bunch, but not bad considering we made it outta the bar at a reasonable time. The drive out to Durres is fairly beautiful, and we’re having a good time exchanging small talk, but at a certain point, we decide to get into beach mood, and ask the cab driver to pump some tunes for us.
Cabby (Big Will) is more than happy to oblige. He’s a fucking maniac. Cranks the tunes as loud as the speakers will play ’em, he’s swerving back and forth as he drives in tune with the music, while somehow we still feel perfectly safe in the car. Hacking a dart out the window, not a care in the world. We do get stuck in a rut where we listen to 3 versions of the same Shakira song, but it becomes an inside joke really fast and we make great time (1h) to the beach. I make sure to grab Big Will’s number; this is my cabby from now until forever.
We roll out as a 5-stack of lads onto the beach and survey our surroundings. View across the Adriatic sea is nice, no chance of making out Italy at this distance though. We hit the boardwalk and hike around the small patch of Golem Beach that has public access. Unfortunately, it’s a Sunday, and a few weeks ahead of major tourist season; the beach is a bit of a ghost town.
Boardwalk has the beach and some small bars on the seaside, with a few sparsely populated hotels, pools, and hotel bars on the other side. Plenty of big, empty hotels for peak season. Tourist attractions include a worn-down volleyball net, a bumper-cars setup that hasn’t been used in at least ten years, and a couple of ice cream stands. Really not the paradise we were hoping for, but hey, fuck it, at least we have each other, and we pretty much have the beach to ourselves.
We roll back to the first bar near the roundabout where our cabs dropped us off, slam a round of drinks, hack a few darts, and take our second round onto some beach chairs. This is the first proper beach I’ve seen in years, and despite the fact I’m a bit of a pussy when it comes to the ocean due to my mom showing me Jaws at about age 8, I’m happy to be one of the first ones in there.
Water is a little bit murky, but it’s a very gradual drop-off, and feels good to be splashing around in the sun. We kill a few hours and more than a few drinks, and decide it’s nearly time to wrap things up.
Swing by this fancy hotel / restaurant in Durres for dinner. Actually insane what a ghost town it is today; there are maybe 20 staff, and zero other customers, so all of them are waiting on the five of us. The boys are celebrating and not afraid to go all-out; we end up ordering a nice Italian bottle of white, few appetizers and mains to split, and one of every dessert on the menu. I’m not even a dessert guy, but this is the definition of eating well; every dish looks beautiful, tasted great, and we’re having a nice time getting to know each other. We also receive some fancy shots post-dinner on the house, as a little digestif.
What’s less expected is Davinci telling me I need to come to the wedding in Ciro Marina. Wedding is happening in exactly 2 weeks. I’m a little flattered, and laugh it off a bit; but at the same time, I tell him that if he’s actually serious, as long as he clears it with the future wifey, you better believe I’ll be there. He says he’s dead serious, and I tell him he has ’til the end of their trip here to change his mind.
We all rip back to Tirana with the same cab drivers, with plans to send it out for one last big night on their bachelors. And send it we do. We link up at a fancy bar/club in Blloku, speakers blasting electronic music, with standing tables only, and just start hammering drinks down.
The setup here is good; it’s fancy, and I’m equipped with my one dress shirt, and there are handfuls of people at each table, with more than a few pretty girls.
I end up meeting one British dude (Lil-Bro) shooting the shit in the bathroom, breaking the classic piss-talk code; his group is also only here for the weekend, and they are looking to send hard.
So we merge tables with his gang, which consists of his tall, lanky older brother (Lank), Lank’s gf, and a couple of other British ladies. We’re all having a good time putting some drinks down, dancing, and taking shots.
Shots are fucking dangerous though, they catch up to me reallll quick, especially after a long day of drinking. At some point, we’re all eyeballing these Russian ladies the next table over, and Lank gives me some ludicrous line to drop on them. I’m fairly buckled, and don’t mind being silly… I head over to them, fumble the line, and we all sort of laugh it off.
I head back to the table ready to joke around about it, but Lank rolls in next, and it turns out I’ve been the sacrificial lamb all along; he uses the fact I dropped a terrible line as the conversation starter, and apologizes for me. When I cut back to joke around about it with him, he’s fairly rude and dismissive… I mean fuck, maybe it was the booze, but I was a little bit heated. No one’s gonna be putting me on their hook as bait.
So while he’s occupied with the Russians, I put my arm around his girlfriend and start chatting her up. Tell her that since he’s hitting on girls in front of her, he clearly doesn’t deserve her and she could use a real man. Haha I wish I was making this up, I’m definitely 100% in troublemaking mode at this point, and we’re all more than a little smashed. But for real, fuck that guy haha. His little brother was mad chill though, we also shoot the shit a bit and are getting along just fine.
Anyways, Lank doesn’t really notice at first, it’s already fairly late and there are some ideas of shutting er down. At some point I’m hacking a dart outside with a couple of the Italians, figuring out if it’s time to bounce, and Lank comes out the door all pissed off. Starts yelling at me and saying his gf told him what I said. I could have apologized, but at this point I’m fucking sauced and not really feeling like it. We obviously have to double down here.
I tell him he’s a skinny lil bitch who’s obv trash if he’s hitting on girls in front of his girlfriend, and that I’m more than happy to settle it hockey style right there. Buddy better have a knife London style if he wants to come out on top of this one. For the record, fighting is stupid, you should really only break it out if you have to, and this is definitely not the case here, but I do fuckin’ love running my mouth, especially when I know the kid is soft and not going to do shit.
He steps in and gives me a halfhearted shove, and I tell him his girlfriend could probably put up a better showing. The boys are all in the middle breaking us up before anything starts anyways, no one is looking to get arrested in Albania. I flip him off, tell his girlfriend to call me, say goodnight to the boys, hop in a cab, and manage to get myself home in one piece. Wouldn’t have really wanted to scrap him anyways, his little brother would have obviously had to get involved, and the kid was chill / sweet the whole night.
Wake up the next day hungover as fuck, and am a little sad the Italian boys are rolling out of town. I’m also hoping the little spectacle hasn’t resulted in my wedding invite being retracted. Shoot a few texts out to the lads, and I guess they enjoyed the show, because my wedding invite is more locked in than ever. The boys fuckin’ love me, and I love them. Best part of travelling.
Over the next couple of weeks, I start to find my footing a bit in terms of establishing a routine. This was always the long-term plan in ejector-seating out of Montreal; get away from some of the bad habits, throw myself into a challenging situation, and dial in on making a living streaming, a creative outlet in my writing, a viable future in my start-up plans, and splash in a little adventure and romance along the way.
The Greek and I are on decent terms, but still taking a little time to cool off. I think Drizzy and The Prof are a little upset that they might be in hot water at their favorite strip joint, and it makes sense to both of us that we don’t have to spend every second together; that’s sorta how you end up driving each other crazy.
I’ll try to split up the following stories a bit here; if a topic doesn’t interest you, you can just skip past it:
FISHOP (restaurant):
K-dawg is pretty busy wrapping up buyouts for his late fathers company, and travelling all over the place. We’ve talked a lot about some big sends together, but in the short term, we’re content to link up for some short drinks / some dinners. One such dinner deserves a shoutout; the god tier restaurant, Fishop.
It’s kinda a stupid name, in English at least, for a restaurant, but holy fuck is it my favorite restaurant here of all time. We go together and go absolutely ham. Towering platter of Mediterranean seafood, shrimp, a couple of raw fish dishes, fish soup, salad, bottle of white wine, and for some reason frog legs. Frog legs are a little creepy, they look like miniature little human skeleton legs, with remarkably defined feet and individual toe bones, but taste pretty much like chicken wings. The whole thing runs us a grand total of 70 Euros. Absolute insanity. The seafood is market fresh and mind-blowing, but of all the dishes, what gets me the most, is the simple green salad.
It’s literally just some kind of lettuce, a couple of olives sprinkled in there, and a couple of lemon wedges. Very lightly dressed, some combination of olive oil and lemon juice, but they must marinate it or something, because the flavor just pops in your mouth. It’s so light, so refreshing, almost like a glass of water, tiniest hint of tanginess, and it’s just hands down one of the best salads I’ve ever had in my entire life. I swear to god I’m going to ask them the next time how to make it, I don’t think I can live without that recipe. It makes no sense how fucking amazing it is.
Yeah, will definitely be going back to this restaurant a lot; service is impeccable, waiter has a regal, deep voice with an almost British accent, hitting you with a “so what will we be doing today, Gentleman?”, and it’s just an awesome experience through and through. Market fresh, palette cleansing, fine dining, where you end up full, and you don’t walk out of the restaurant feeling like you got pegged and had your wallet stolen. Fishop! ———————————————
The Poker Files:
I’ve made the controversial decision to take another stab at reinvigorating my non-existent poker career. The problem is that at least 2/3 of the major casinos don’t have a poker room. I did in fact make my way back to the first one with a passport at some point, and picked up a couple hundred Euros at the blackjack tables (was card-counting for fun, but realistically, in such a short session, the win is almost entirely luck based). This emboldens me to try and find a good spot to play some cards.
After drinks with K-dawg ends early on my first Friday in Albania out in Blloku, I pull up google maps and search for a poker room. A particular poker club pops right up, and it’s also in Blloku, only a few streets away. Walk around where the entrance is supposed to be, and can’t find it for a minute or two. Finally I notice this grey steel door leading down into a basement, and realize that if I want to play cards, this is where I have to go.
I haven’t fully educated myself on how poker operates in Albania; I think it’s a bit of a legal grey zone. Probably the casinos need a special license to operate it, but it’s a bit weird that both the ones I’ve been to just don’t have proper poker tables. This spot is a bit of a vibe, almost like Teddy KGB’s set up in Rounders.
I enter through the street-level steel gate and descend some stairs until I arrive at a second, closed, locked door. There’s a camera outside the door where they note my arrival, and I wait no more than a couple of seconds before it swings open and a big, burly, Albanian bouncer opens the door and beckons me to come inside.
Now, I have about 300 Euros on me. It might seem like absolute madness to some of you that I feel almost zero danger here, but the fact is, the danger is baked into the experience a bit. It’s thrill-seeking, but not done in complete ignorance. I’ve played in plenty of underground games of poker before, and for the most part, as long as you’re respectful and play by the rules, nothing bad is going to happen to you. At worst, they cheat and you lose what you came with, or maybe, you win too much, and you risk getting robbed.
But at the end of the day, the organizers of these games have a lot at stake to run a clean, safe game. They’re on the map, they’ve invested into the setup, and they can rake it for tremendous profit without doing anything nefarious. This revenue stream relies on them providing an environment where players can gamble fairly and safely, an environment of trust.
Of course there will be exceptions to the rule, or cases where some people decide to act completely irrationally, but as long as there’s a much higher incentive for the parties involved to engage in fair behavior than there is to fuck you over, there’s much less danger than there would appear to be to a common observer. At least, that’s my rationale for ripping in through the doors ready to play some cards. The eight or nine beers I’ve had also provide some liquid courage, and you know I fuckin’ love the rush.
It’s a pretty cool setup. Once you walk through the second door, there’s a lounge area with some tables and flat screens, where people can watch sports. There’s a bar, a section in the back with what appear to be computers (potentially allowing customers to place sports bets play online slots), and then the main floor, where they have 4 casino-quality poker tables fully felted up in red and full of players.
The host of the room is a relatively young dude, full of swag and energy, and The Host just strikes me as a chill beauty who enjoys being here. He’s friendly, speaks a decent amount of English, and we chat a bit. Have joked with him several times about hitting the town together for drinks to drop some wheels, but he hasn’t bitten yet. To be fair I still don’t remember his fuckin’ name.
Pretty decent setup in general. Apparently, they have a tournament freeroll every day around 6pm, the only games they spread are 1-2 No-Limit Holdem, and you can buy in for 50 Euros+. Didn’t ask what the max is, because I won’t ever be carrying in more than 300, or loading more than 200, but they are operating on a super chill 5% rake (house takes 5% from every pot. Compared to say, Montreal taking 10%, this is a fucking steal). The rake itself is most likely uncapped, but that really only comes into play when stacks start to get deep, and like I mentioned earlier, I never intend to stick around here for long with a deep stack.
The rules are to my liking. House also spots every player one free drink per visit. So I grab my free beer, rack up 200 in chips, and take a seat at one of the tables. Some of the players look a little bit intimidating, burly dudes right off the set of Taken, but there are plenty of nerdier poker types as well. If these boys can survive a game here, so can I.
I kick off the game pretty chill and play tight. One of the things I notice is that a TON of players are short-stacking. 200 is a standard 100 Big Blind buy-in for a 1-2 Blind No limit game (the 2 forced bets that the first 2 players have to put in); a lot of people are chilling here on the min-buy, which is 50. This is often super unprofitable, but in a 5% rake game, with enough bad players, it’s possible to find the right spots to be plus EV.
I adopt the rather boring strategy I’ll be using for this and most of my future sessions while short stacks are in play; limping in for blinds with speculative hands in late position, limping my monsters in early position hoping for a raise so I can 3-bet jam after some awful calls and punish the limpers, raising my monsters in late position, and forcing myself to fold everything else… which is surprisingly hard to do given how many drinks I’ve had.
But, the strategy is working pretty well. I’m trading some pots here and there, but slowly climbing up. Force some folds, pick up a dudes 50 with a limp – raise – ship with pocket Jacks, and life is pretty good. Unfortunately my luck doesn’t hold forever. I drop 80 in a pot where I’m outkicked with trip 10’s, and I drop another 70 with my limp-raise-ship with my Ace King against an Ace Jack preflop… sad days.
On the bright side, I’ve had another six beers and paid with chips. We’re also all chain-smoking cigarettes like this is the world’s greatest home game. Sitting at around 140, I end up flopping the nut straight with my 4-6s on a 3-5-7 board. Put in a small flop bet and pick up one call (small-ball is printing for me, lots of these guys will commit to 15 bucks with bottom pair, it’s pure value town). Turn is a King, with 2 diamonds on the board, and I get about half of my starting stack in on the turn, picking up a remaining call. River’s a black 9. I throw a small 35 river bet out there, and buddy instantly jams on me for my remaining 35. Fuck.
Don’t have to be a prophet to know what he’s holding. But for a nearly 300 pot I can’t really fold for 35 with what is now the second nuts. Call, exasperated, and he turns over 6-8 for the nut straight. Ouchie. RIP 200. Fuckin bad beat making it all feel just like Poker Stars.
At this point, I’ve been playing for several hours without any real issues. One dude has been pretty salty with me, complaining to me, “you’re so lucky, we aren’t all rich like you”, which was a little concerning, but very funny, as I assured him that I was probably the most broke person in the room. The term “Chino” was being thrown around a fair bit as well, but I don’t think it had anything to do with me being Chinese. There was also a general lack of English at the table, although I was occasionally swapping small talk in English with a few of the lads.
I was more or less ready to pick up and go, but, they were breaking 2 of the tables and needed a few brave souls to head to the main game with a 100 min-buy. As a currently losing player, and now about 12 beers deep, plus an obvious Asian tourist in the room amidst a group of mostly regs, the host offered to spot me 50 if I’d buy in another 50 for 100 total at the main game. Fuck, who am I to turn down free money? The beats in the side game were a little bit sus, but I had my eye on the dealer pretty closely, and had little reason so far to figure anything shady was going on.
Head over to the main game and I’m properly trashed. Make a few more friends at the table, I’m playing a bit looser and more aggressive now, kind of just content to mix it up a bit with the beers flowing freely and the house money that I’m expected to be a bit of a donkey with. A few of the players enjoy my banter, and we get along well, but I’m reprimanded a few times by the dealer not “to talk too much”; poker is a game they prefer to play mostly in silence here, apparently, or maybe this many beers deep I’m running my mouth too much and fuckin’ annoying.
I run up to about 250, fade back to 80 or 90, and then eventually get bored and try to rip pocket 4-s in as a 3-bet into an early small open and try to punish multiple limpers who’ve called with trash for 10. Initial raiser tanks, and then calls me with 7-7 (probably assuming he’s often flipping against 2 over cards most of the time, and dead some of the time vs an overpair), while the rest of the table folds. Unfortunately he’s the one with the overpair here and has my 4’s crushed, and my first session ends down 250. Ouchie, that’s a lot of streaming hours.
With that said, I did put away about 12 beers there, had a great time for a few hours, and got the lay of the land. I didn’t get stabbed, robbed, or lynched either; gotta chalk that part up in the win column. I would go back several times over the next couple of weeks, and am currently sitting on a nice little profit of 3 or 4 hundred euros. For the most part, I’ve just been rolling in, min buying for 50, waiting for good spots to jam, playing a bit more normally if I win the flip, and then making sure to get out before my stack reaches 500 Euros.
One other funny aside. In my second session, I was chilling at the main game, and our table hit the bad beat! Now, before you get too excited, bad beat here consists of 2 cards playing for both players, with one player losing with Queens Full or better (In comparison, in Montreal, you need to lose with Aces full of Jacks, or better). Since there are far less tables and it’s much easier to hit the Bad Beat Jackpot, the jackpot was only up to about 1200 (in Montreal or Vegas some bad beats can often exceed 1M).
But that would still be a really decent score here considering the general short stack buy-ins. Never hit a bad beat in all my years of playing poker. Unfortunately, the rules are different here. On most poker sites / in casinos, the loser of the hand takes 50%, the winner takes 25%, and the rest of the table splits 25%. Probably would have been 70 or 80 Euros for me, which is at least a min buy-in and a half. Plus I’d get to say I won a bad beat live for the rest of my life.
Unfortunately, because the pots are so much smaller here, and because the rules to hit one are much easier, there’s literally no split. Loser takes 100%. I was really excited to have finally hit a bad beat live, but I guess I’m going to have to wait a while longer.
If there’s a lot of interest in poker stories, feel free to let me know in the comments; I can go into some more details after. For now though, just know this is a really cool spot to have in the rotation. There are some strong players, some weak players, and far less danger than I thought there could be. Just a bunch of dudes hacking darts and playing cards, probably hiding from their wives.
There WAS one night with a bunch of super loud Israeli’s, just absolutely shitfaced and donking their chips off, which I thought was a bit crazy considering current geopolitical climate, and the large population of Muslims that inhabit Albania, but tbh there was zero drama. Probably a combination of the people here being super chill, and then the fact the Israeli’s were just giving their money away; hard to get mad at drunk idiots at the table when they are handing freebies out to everyone. Poker culture trumps geopolitics, confirmed! ———————————————————————-
Romantic Forays:
C and I have been officially friends through the first week. Her decision, not mine. Issues with my drinking, issues with long distance, etc, etc. We have no idea if she’s going to visit or not, though there are obviously some hopes that there are. She was waffling on a potential visit in week 1 or 2, but had warned me not to bank on it, and I had full permission to take a gander at some of the local talent. Queue me firing up the ole dating apps one last time.
Spike a bunch of matches actually, maybe it’s that I’m exotic here as just about the only Asian in town, and the inexorable creep of Japanese and Korean subculture into Europe is giving the yellow boys a boost, or maybe it’s the draw of a Canadian passport (holy fuck, what a passport it is though).
Either way, the apps are actually fun again. I’m chatting to a few matches pretty casually. My intentions are a mixed bag, I’m still thinking about C a lot and hoping she’ll make it out, and I’m not in a huge rush to complicate things, but I’m on my adventure arc, and it can’t hurt to at the very least, have an excuse to check out some of the cheap restaurants with a fun dinner date or two.
By the end of the first week, with no plans with C forthcoming, I pull the trigger and set up a casual Sunday dinner date. I would never commit to a first app dinner-date back in Montreal, simply because it feels a bit fucking stupid to drop 100 bucks on a crappy dinner or 150 bucks on a nice one for someone you might never see again. I’m much more of a drinks and activities guy; I know that if I’m running some mini golf or bowling, then no matter what happens on the date, I’m going to have fun. And really that’s how it should be; fun should be the priority. Love will happen when it happens, let’s make dating fuckin fun again.
But here, I actually want to go to some of these restaurants. I’m super interested in sampling the local cuisine, and even though I don’t mind sending to a resto solo, and I do have a few friends to hit up as needed, I find the idea of spending a night over some wine and food with an attractive local and some conversation pretty appealing. I’ve always been interested in people with different backgrounds, perspectives, and stories to tell, and this just feels like a fun way to do it with a huge potential upside.
So, I steer clear of some of the obvious Russian gold-diggers. “I don’t believe in 50-50”. I mean fuck, neither do I for a first date, but when you combo that with “generosity” as their first preferred trait in a man… shit, at least they’re clear about what they want. To be honest some of them are probably hot enough to warrant it, and maybe even hot enough for me to consider it… but let’s be real, it’s not a super attractive trait, and realistically, I don’t have a lot of gold to dig right now. Maybe one of these days I’ll have to set up a honey-pot, rent a really nice place for one night, and ask K-dawg to lend me the Range Rover. Scam the scammers baby!
I’ve been having a really nice chat on Bumble with this one Albanian lady, Techie. She’s 30, works as a dev tester at a tech company, dark brown hair, dark eyes, great smile, and just seems like one of the most calm, stable people in the world. She’s also easy to talk to, chats flowing easily, and it’s a pretty obvious decision to start with her.
After a bit of waffling over the venue, we settle on a seafood restaurant I haven’t been to before. I’m notoriously ten minutes late for these kinds of things, which is something I definitely need to work on, but she ends up being ten later to my ten. Works for me, haven’t committed any social faux pas’, and gives me a chance to warm up with a beerski and peruse the menu a bit. She pulls up, looks great, warm smile, and we settle into a very relaxed dinner.
Conversation is all over the place, but flowing super well. I’m a bit too honest, and do mentioned the whole C situation, but she doesn’t seem overly perturbed; she’s looking for something long term, and wants to take things reallllly slow; it’s more of an icebreaker / meet n greet than the breakneck speed of Montreal dating, and the change of pace is refreshing.
Wrap dinner with a conversation about religion, the origin of life and the universe, and some other high brow stuff; her English is great, the food is decent (and cheap! I’m always down to pay first date, and entire meal + glasses of wine only runs me 30 Euros), and it’s just been a massively pleasant experience.
We exchange a friendly hug at the end, with some intentions of perhaps linking up again if the whole C situation falls through. I do feel a little bit of guilt, but at the same time, C + I have both been above board with each other and I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. I think my playboy days are well behind me; I’m definitely looking to date with intention, and will almost certainly be a “one woman at a time” kinda guy for the rest of my life. I mean fuck, one can be exhausting enough; not sure how some of the Arab / Indian lads manage multiple wives, pretty much guaranteed to have a couple of them pissed off at you at any one time… sounds like a real fucking headache.
C does actually manage to find some time Wednesday of week 3 to come visit. I had informed her about the date prior to the visit, and she took it super maturely, definitely impressive. Was a blast to have her out here and introduce her to some of my friends (The Greek, K-Dawg, N-Kelly, etc.).
Couple of decent anecdotes from that visit. I was originally going to pick her up from the airport, but her flight somehow arrives early, and she ends up just hopping in a cab to my apartment. Feel a little bad about that since I want to make her feel special like she did for me in Paris, but it’s an early-morning flight, and all things considered, I count myself lucky to be up at all by the time she lands.
It takes her all of five minutes to decide that The Greek + I’s apartment is uninhabitable by her standards. By my standards the place is quite clean, but the smell is a little unpleasant (Greek’s athlete’s foot plus the fact some of our toilet paper is ending up in a bin in the bathroom as opposed to being flushed), and she is reallly not a fan of the toilet + shower wombo combo.
She ends up booking a place nearby for 3 nights at 30 Euros a night, and I help her carry her suitcase up the stairs to get her settled in. She has gotten in on a Wednesday and will be bouncing Saturday to make a friend’s bday party back in Paris. Crazy how much jet-setting you can do in Europe with flights being cheap as hell.
I end up staying over at her place the next 3 nights, which is fairly cozy and romantic, and we do a combination of some cooking (well, I do the cooking, and she eats; way more fun cooking for more than 1, and she loves what I throw together, so it works out great) and eating out at a few resto’s.
Couple of small excursions. She does a walking tour that I skip, because I’m obviously an expert on the city already after being here a week and a half, and we end up visiting an underground nuclear bunker (Bunkart) which has been converted into an exhibit detailing the early military history, communist era, and subsequent dictatorship. I enjoy it a lot more than I thought I would (fuck, I really am getting old and cultured) and am grateful to have a lady around to drag me out to some of the stuff I might not actually go do by myself.
All in all we have a blast, with only a few hiccups. We meet up for some early drinks one night with K-dawg, Bo-bo, and N-Kelly (burly buddy of K-dawg, pure Albanian legend who apparently works for the UN or something). Night is going great, but at some point, C’s mood completely shifts; she goes from being full of energy to super tired and a little down. It’s not entirely unexpected though, or the first time it’s happened so far, and we have gotten pretty decent at handling it. She offers to head back to the apt solo and let me spend some time with my friends, but she’s only here for 3 days and she’s obviously my main priority for the night. So I walk her back and we end up having a lovely evening.
C is also expressing a lot of interest in picking up chess, which I absolutely fucking love. We spend a nice afternoon in the sun at a cafe, chess board out, and play a few slow games. She’s insistent that I don’t take it easy on her, so I oblige her and kick her ass a few times, but we go over each game and she shows a noticeable improvement. Love to see where this is heading. Queen’s Gambit arc? Definitely a smartie-pants, though I can foresee some issues due to her lack of pattern / spacial awareness (not unlike my mom, who cannot for the life of her figure out how to make a tile in Blokus fit onto the board, despite being quite intelligent herself), some occasional memory issues, and a fierce stubbornness in refusing to take my advice as infallible. Look forward to reporting more on the C chess arc.
For our last night, I make a bit of a blunder. Take her out to a seafood restaurant, but she’s stated she isn’t that hungry, and when she says that, she fuckin’ means it. On top of that, I order a bottle of white wine right at the restaurant counter, forgetting that she doesn’t really drink wine at all (a French woman, that doesn’t drink wine, what a fuckin’ world we live in!).
I’ve already paid up front and everything (it’s a combo market / restaurant, so I made my selections in advance), and even though I let them know she doesn’t eat a lot of seafood (I order a small seafood platter with mostly fish dishes, which she does eat), I don’t think she enjoys any of the food that comes out at all (other than the bread or salad).
I also have to scramble to downgrade the bottle of wine I paid for to a 500ml carafe and a bottle of water for C. C is pretty insistent that I only have a single glass, but I let her know that I’m grabbing dinner for both of us and I’ll be having 2/4 glasses of wine that I’ve already paid for, with my seafood, thank ya very much. I’m pretty matter of fact about it, and not overly blunt, but she has this idea in her head that I’m an alcoholic and is worried about me… I notice a couple of tears trickling out of her eyes, and end up popping around to her side of the table to console her. I agree not to drink the whole thing, and we take the remaining wine in a to-go bottle. Fackin eh boys.
Restaurant fiasco aside, it’s our last night, and it doesn’t take long for her mood to bounce back. We amble back to the apartment pretty amicably, have a fantastic last night together… and then we’re up in the morning bright and early Saturday. I What’s App my favorite cab driver, William, and I drop her off at the airport. Hack a dart with William on the drive back (he appears in another story shortly) and take the moment to reflect on the trip.
It was super nice, and we have some plans to potentially link up in Italy the following week for a wedding… but as always, we’ll have to see how it pans out.
Side Note: I’m going to lean a bit more on random nicknames. Particularly the women, and then some of the professional dudes I suspect I may get up to some shenanigans with. Pretty easy to figure out if ya know ’em, but figure adding a touch of privacy can’t hurt.
Side Note 2: I’ll take some time in this post to lay down the scenery and characters for adventures. Next few posts will be a bit more sped up pace-wise, for the impatient readers out there.
Plane touches down in Tirana, Albania, and all of a sudden I can just feel the excitement bubbling up inside me. Paris was nice enough, and it was fantastic catching up with old friends (+C!), but it didn’t feel particularly foreign. Baguette croissant steak frites, merci beaucoup, one Frenchieland to another. Really enjoyed the chess scene, but it was not much of an adventure, really.
In contrast, even disembarking the plane in Tirana is an adventure. Should be thankful the plane even made it, fuckin’ Wiz Air. Never again. Staircase wheeled in next to the plane, feet touching the tarmac, I’m instantly met with a magnificent view of some of the mountains opposite the terminal. They aren’t the Rocky Mountains, but they’re impressive enough, especially when you’re coming from Montreal and “Mont” Tremblant (note to the Frenchies: it’s a fucking hill). Mist shrouds the lush green mountaintops, and it imparts an instant feeling of awe. It’s nature, it’s rugged, it’s foreign, and most importantly, it’s something new.
From the tarmac we form two groups to take busses across the tarmac to the terminal. Canadian passport is clutch yet again; at this point I’m pretty sure I could just hop around Europe indefinitely, with a smile on my face, and no country would really care. They don’t seem particularly tight on border security in Europe so far.
Collect my baggage (which I had to check due to Wiz’s obnoxious size requirements), stroll out of the terminal and arrive in a beat up looking parking lot. Taxis are rolling in and out attempting to fish in passengers, and I’m sure I would make for a good tourist target, but yet again, old friendships are coming in huge; K-dawg is at work, but his wife Bobo swings by the airport and picks me up.
It’s been 10 or 12 years since I’ve seen either of the Albanian couple. K-dawg is a good Albanian buddy of mine from back in the McGill days, and was a big part of the friend group I had with S and Vidy. Vidy, K-dawg and I shared a few comp sci classes, and the three of us would often procrastinate and then work on assignments on the last day “together”. Together in quotations, cause more often than not, I’d end up figuring shit out and the boys would copy me, feeding me beers and poutine to keep me going, but it was a lot more fun than suffering solo in the Trottier lab, and we’d often break up the work to fire up a game of FIFA or two.
Bobo pulls up in their humble van (I’m pretty sure it was a Range Rover), accompanied by her friend Iris. Both just have big beaming smiles on their faces, and it’s actually crazy to me how happy Bobo is to see me. It’s literally been 14 years, and once again it feels like it was just yesterday we were playing beer pong and cramming for finals together.
Funnily enough, it was only a few days ago that the thought occurred to me that Bobo might not actually have gone to McGill with the rest of us. She was a fairly permanent fixture at K-dawg’s place, K-dawg’s mysterious model-esque / fashionista gf from Albania, and I never even thought to question it… but it turns out she was just visiting so often she was part of the crew.
Bobo’s English certainly hasn’t improved that much since we’ve last seen each other, but it hasn’t gotten much worse either, and we have a pleasant conversation catching up while stuck in some awful traffic. K-dawg’s father has sadly passed away recently, which I can empathize a lot with, and he’s been busy as hell putting in the work required to shore things up at the company that’s been passed down to him, and preserve his father’s legacy. Not a lot of time to grieve properly after such a tremendous loss, but not only has he stepped up to take care of business, he’s also managed to find the time and resources to welcome me properly, even though it was completely unnecessary. Lot of respect due for that, the man’s an absolute stud.
Bobo hasn’t really aged a day since I’ve last seen her, and she’s pretty easy on the eyes. Iris isn’t exactly tough to look at either, dark hair, big, expressive eyes, and 100% happily married with a kid… but there are smiles all around as the MILF Mobile (couldn’t resist, sorry K!) slowly crawls down roads that were clearly built a century or two ago for carts and horses, and haven’t been adapted properly since. My understanding is that cars in Tirana are a bit of a status symbol; they sure as fuck aren’t useful in the downtown core, where you can get around just as fast by walking and twice as fast via bike.
Bobo’s working some sort of government job, while Iris is putting in hours at her mom’s dental clinic. We swap some info for me to get a cheap teeth clean at a later date, and we finally roll up to the apartment building where I’ll be staying with yet another uni buddy, The Greek.
The Greek’s a smarty-pants ML developer, and a long time poker buddy from back in the McGill days. Always has something interesting to say, always has a smug grin on his face, possibly slightly touched by the ’tism, but in a fun, energetic, borderline sociopathic way; definitely a character, and happens to be the main catalyst of this whole trip. He’d originally jokingly invited me to help him weed an olive garden out at his place in Greece, and amidst the Behaviour layoffs / L breakup and in full life tilt, I told him I’d 100% come as a full yolo. Greece was the original plan, but he decided last minute it’d be too boring, and that we should pivot to Albania. Was all for it since I’d get to catch up with K + B as well, and the rest is history.
Anyways, MILF-Mobile pulls up to the apartment where The Greek + his buddy Drizzy are waiting for us. I drop my bags off quickly, and they pile into the van with us to go grab a bite for lunch. More traffic ensures, so we get a scenic tour through city center, towards Blokku.
I don’t know fuck all about Tirana yet, but we pass by the residence of the last dictator, across the bridge to the south, and land in fancy-pants land. Blokku is the happening district where the more affluent locals and tourists go to wine, dine, and 69. Clubs, bars, and the pricier restaurants. Not sure how much time I’ll be spending here as a starving streamer, but it’s nice enough.
Sit down at one resto while Bobo parks the car. Iris bails, she has a few things to wrap up at work, but I get a chance to catch up with The Greek + D a bit while we wait for Bobo to get back. We order a couple beers on the terrace and shoot the shit; Drizzy is an Albania software dev who’s been here quite some time now, and The Greek is in the middle of winding down his role in an ML startup he got into a few years past the seed funding stage. Both are looking forward to tearing up Albania with me, even though it’s going to be a working trip for both The Greek and I.
Bobo returns, her + Drizzy order several dishes (as the Albanian hosts) tapas style for the group, and we get our munch on. Couple of surprise visitors in K’s (B’s?) mom with K+B’s son, M, stroller bound but full of energy, and K-dawg himself manages to peel away from the office long enough to drop by for a quick bite + a hello.
Man it’s good to see the guy. Fourteen years, almost half a lifetime ago, it’s been way too fuckin’ long. Vidy and I haven’t aged quite as much visibly, but perhaps it’s cause we’ve just refused to grow up. K has taken a lot more responsibility onto himself, and it shows. He’s dressed sharp and professionally; I suspect Bobo may have played a role in his current attire. All functional degenerates need a good woman in their lives, myself included. His hair’s starting to gray just the slightest at the edges; will definitely tease him about this in the future.
But for now it’s a warm embrace, some chit-chat. I fill him in on the Paris saga, we bounce some ideas for plans back and forth, and he sends me a list of 40 locations to visit in Tirana that I will probably not consult (it’s just a debilitating number of dots, on a map in a city, that inexplicably doesn’t have door numbers. Seriously. No fucking door numbers in Albania, no real addresses, finding anything is impossible in this city. That’s one way to shut Uber out of a city, chalk one up for the cabbies!). The chat is short, but solid, interrupted only by the inexplicably large amount of extremely attractive women passing by our table on the terrace.
I need to drive this point home; pretty much 50% of the women walking past us are legitimate head turners. I thought we were spoiled for choice in Montreal, but Tirana is looking like a step above so far. I’d say there must be something in the water, but most people don’t drink the tap-water here, so who knows what it is. My thoughts are still a little bit on C, but given that she’s currently opting for a friendship of sorts, I figure I’m not hurting anyone by taking a gander or two at the local talent.
K has to bounce back to work, and B strolls M home, while Drizzy also parts ways with us. The Greek + I opt to stretch our legs and walk back to our apartment (on the north side of the main city square) from Blokku. By SHEEER COINCIDENCE, our path takes us past the Grand Casino, one of 3 large casinos in the Tirana downtown core. The Greek and I have an extensive poker history, and that goes hand in hand with an affinity for gambling. There’s a zero percent chance we pass this opportunity by, so we decide to make a little pitstop.
Exterior of the casino isn’t as flashy as some of the five-stars you can find on the Vegas strip, but it’s glitzy enough. Someone in marketing somewhere a long time ago decided that all casino’s should look the same. Bright neon lights on the outside to attract all the moths to the flame, clean and yet greasy interior, amplified by the character flaws of all the patrons. Excitement, greed, desperation, and sweat, despite the perfectly functioning air conditioning.
We walk through the metal detector at the bottom of the stairs without issue, but there’s a hiccup. Despite the fact I’m old as fuck, they still require ID for every player, and they aren’t willing to accept any of my foreign IDs; my passport is about a fifteen minute walk away back in the apartment. I’m willing to make the trip back, but The Greek is thirsty for some action, and we end up getting me a guest pass, which means I can accompany him, but am not actually allowed to gamble myself. Pretty fuckin’ gay.
I negotiate a deal with The Greek to chop up his win/loss, and we make our way to the roulette table, his game of choice. It’s daytime and most of the seats are occupied by patrons similar to what you’d find in NA… bunch of crusty old bastards chilling and gambling the day away. Only noticeable difference is you can hack darts at the table, gotta love Europe for that.
The Greek is only punting around 10 Euro’s a spin but he hits a decent win-streak, both on the inside, and on the outside. It’s here that I learn my first Albanian words; action is closed with the ball spinning as the dealer declares, “Scama Basta!”. The English equivalent is “No More Bets”, which I’ve heard plenty of times over my casino forays in the past. Figures I’d learn my first Albanian words in a fuckin’ casino.
I’m chilling sipping a drink content that my money’s in good hands. After about twenty mins with no further progress on the ole bankroll, I ask The Greek when we should pull out / if we should play some blackjack, and a kind of blank look comes over his face; “us”? Ah ok, greasy bastard. Apparently we’re only chopping if we’re losing.
It’s been a long journey so far with an early wakeup, and I’m a little bit cranky at this point; it’s not a significant sum of money, buddy is up maybe 100 Euros… but I’m not going to hang out in a casino if I’m not in on the action. Make this point / say that I’m going to head back to the apartment, and The Greek decides that we can play a little blackjack. He’ll play 2 hands, and play 1 hand for me based on my decisions.
We pop over to the blackjack table, and I’m in for a very chill 50 Euros. Min Bet is 10. As usual, my luck’s fucking terrible. I literally lose all five hands in a row (something like a 1/30 chance) and with the Greek up another 10 or 20, that’s fuckin it for me. Classic. We head to the cage, cash him out, and pop back to the apartment. SCAMA BASTA! What a fuckin’ scam indeed. Fuck the casino, and fuck The Greek.
The apartment itself is a pretty decent setup. We ended up paying about 700 CAD each for the month, which isn’t really a discount compared to my Montreal crib. Shopping around in the month afterwards, I realize we probably could have done better, but I have no real complaints.
We have 2 bedrooms, each with their own private balcony, a full kitchen, washing machine, and most importantly, fast wifi. The one thing I notice is a fairly unpleasant odor; ok, a fucking rank odor. Turns out The Greek is currently treating Athlete’s foot, and it stinks to holy hell. Window’s are going to be open for the majority of this month. Probably doesn’t help that The Greek also informs me that protocol here is to bin, rather than flush toilet paper. Kinda fucking disgusting; I’d find out later that this is not simply not the case unless explicitly stated.
The only other quirk of the place, is that a lot of the apartments in Tirana combine the shower with the rest of the bathroom. The shower is literally just a shower-head in the bathroom, and there’s a drain on the floor right in the middle of it. A little bit weird, but until this point in my life I’ve never been able to take a shit and a shower at the same time… you better believe that at some point, I gave it a shot. Aqua-dump for the boys! Ok, but it was really a bucket list thing that had to be crossed off.
Next day or so is fairly uneventful. I’m grinding away at the stream dream, catch a dinner and drinks with Kristi, while The Greek hits up board games with Drizzy’s expat friend group, and things are fairly amicable around the apartment. The Greek + I do enjoy small chirps and taking pot shots at each other, and he has a bit of a habit similar to my latest Montreal roomie, of buying absolutely nothing for the house, and then asking to “borrow” beers, which is a bit annoying considering one of us is making 200k a year and one of us doesn’t have a fuckin’ job, but we set up plans together for a proper Wednesday night.
There’s an expat bar, Juliette, in the Blloku neighborhood, where the they are hosting a weekly Karaoke night. Bunch of Drizzy’s group will be there, including another character, The Professor. Will have to fill on more details about him as I learn them, the night quickly turns into a blur.
A lot of American songs being cranked out on the Karaoke stage. Drizzy and The Greek sing out Thank You America (no idea if that’s actually the name), trolling the bar a bit; song is a thank you to American’s from Albania for helping to end communism. I get up there and sing a random country banger with an American expat. Make friends with a larger German girl, who’s down to fire up some chess in the park one of these days, and I shoot my shot at a couple of Russian looking blondes and airball completely. Fuck, 0/1 boys.
Minor kerfuffle over drinks; I’ve ordered and paid for a round of mix drinks, which are ridiculously overpriced compared to everything I’ve ever seen, and The Greek is hemming and hawing about reciprocating. I guess one way to accumulate wealth is by being a cheap fuck. Haha I’ll reiterate that he really is a good buddy of mine, just comes with some personality quirks at times, and we can get under each other’s skin with our little jabs.
Night goes on, with some shots (DANGER! DANGER! I really don’t handle them well, and generally abstain, but it was our first big night out) and more drinks added to the mix. We’re properly buckled now, and other than the Russian’s I whiffed on, there really isn’t any Blloku talent for us to flirt with kicking around.
The Greek is really fiending a jaunt to the local strip club, and since C hasn’t really found any sort of commitment to a visit in Tirana yet, I’m not that difficult to convince. We’re joined by Professor + Drizzy, and make our way over to Maria Bonita, right on the main Tirana strip.
Conversation between the 4 of us is flowing pretty well as we walk in, and continue to put away more drinks. Nothing particularly special about the strip club itself, classic stage setup with chairs right up front for the real perverts, and plush booths ringed around the stage in the back for the more normal degens. Seedy customers scattered throughout, and a halfhearted dance going on on the main stage; place seems a bit dead, but it is a Wednesday after all.
The Greek is the first to fall to the talent, accepting a couple of table dances from one of the local entrepreneurs, a ridiculously good looking blonde with a body that just pops and eyes that almost make you forget what she does for a living. Table dances aren’t so much dances, but the girl basically just sitting in your lap and engaging in conversation with you. Ten minutes runs you fifteen Euros, which is a pretty damn good deal and comes with a drink for her.
The rest of us have a bit of a chuckle and keep chatting and drinking while The Greek wraps up his dance refusing to pay for a second. Blondie has absolutely no loyalty, and the second the meter is no longer running she’s off to another table.
A few more drinks and shots later, I get accosted by a dangerously good looking brunette. I decide there’s not much of a point in being at a strip club if you’re not going to engage in a dance or two, and start chatting the Russian up a bit over more drinks. In the back of my head I joke that maybe this can be the start of my Andrew Tate arc; I already have a stream going, all that’s missing are the Eastern European performers.
At some point there’s an interesting duo performance happening on the main stage, and as a group we decide to investigate it a little closer. Russian girl is still on my lap, and it seems like there’s some potential for a Kick Stream collab. I pull her what’s app number, and after another drink, I finally shut off the meter; probably ended up being about 4 dances altogether.
But before she can saunter off to another table, The Greek decides to troll me, and pulls her in for a dance himself. Strippers and Greeks, no loyalty! He does so with a few more chirps and a smirk, and we’re all absolutely tittered at this point. I figure I’m pretty much done for the night, and get up to bounce, but with his parting chirp and something about how all the girls are whores, as I’m walking past him to the door I throw a half assed slap his way, in full sight of the bouncers.
We’re talking a very light cuff, fueled by tiredness, annoyance, and more than a few shots, but pandemonium immediately ensues. There are two bouncers, a short one and a big burly one, and they immediately run over towards me as I’m still continuing to walk to the door. Fuck.
Unbeknownst to me (and completely unintentionally), it turns out I not only got a piece of The Greek, but also the Russian girl on his lap with my parting shot. The burly bouncer is fairly chill, but the short one is screaming at me in Albanian and shoving me from behind towards the door I was walking to anyways. He also gives me a light cuff from behind on the cheek, which I barely feel in my inebriated state, and I say that he hits like a girl, which he luckily does not hear.
The four of us end up on the street in front of the strip club, and while I count myself lucky I didn’t get my ass kicked by the bouncers, The Greek + I are still pretty heated with each other. He’s uttering threats about kicking me out of the apartment and I’m calling him a cheap piece of shit. We say a few more things to each other we don’t mean, and I walk off back to the apartment while he sticks around for a bit with the rest of the guys to decompress a bit.
The stripper texts me a few minutes later to see if I’m ok, and is the first one to mention to me that I actually got a piece of her too. I figure I couldn’t have gotten much of her if she was checking up on me (and to reiterate; it was a really light, open handed cuff, while walking away, at the back/side of The Greek’s head. With her sitting frontside in his lap, I’m really not sure how I could have gotten any of her).
Not a ton of fallout from the whole shitshow, in the end, The Greek came home and crashed. We’d talk things out the next day, I’ve never been one to hold a grudge. Biggest loss of the event was that there’s no way in hell I’d be able to go back to Maria Bonita. Pretty much the only Asian guy in Tirana that I’d seen so far, so it wasn’t exactly going to be hard to recognize me… I had some hopes with the stripper checking up on me that my reputation might escape unscathed, but when I tried to follow up for drinks to discuss the stream, she declined and said she “didn’t want to get hit again”.
Fuck. Great start, 3 days in and the only Asian dude in town is going to be known as a deranged wife beater. You fucking KNOW she’s going to be going around telling the story, and that it’ll get worse with every retelling. Even in the expat group, I heard that a few days later, The Professor was saying I got lifted up, carried out, and thrown on the ground by the bouncers, like a cartoon character. These types of urban legends have a habit of growing out of proportion, and this is quite possibly the worst type of tale to be a part of. Definitely going to have to lay low for a while.
But to be completely honest. As awful as I feel that the Russian woman was collateral damage (I want to reiterate I 0% condone any violence towards the fairer sex), sometimes you have to set the tone a bit. The drinks were flowing, which are not an excuse, but The Greek was getting way out of line, the whole fuckin’ night (and doing so gleefully, in full belief there would be no repercussions). Put me in that same spot, and I’d do it again… shit, if I could do it again, I’d probably try to slap him harder, just make sure to aim better.
Haha shit, the kid really has a talent for getting under my skin. There’s a certain point when you’re shithoused and someone is running their mouth at you where the time for words is over. I think fighting is stupid, but maybe it’s a hockey culture thing, sometimes feels like simplest way to handle things is to take it outside, chuck a few bombs at each other, and then go out for some beers afterwards as friends again. Just maybe not the wisest to do so in a foreign country.
Side note: I’ve just been crushing allergy pills since I’ve arrived. Never had allergies my whole life until I turned 30, and then all of a sudden tree jizz just fucks me in the early summer. Fucking things Super annoying, especially with contact lenses,
Oh. Something really funny I missed from the previous night. We had a moment where C lost her keys back to her parent’s. Both parents outta town. We were both pretty tired, both wearing backpacks, and searched the hell out of HERS. Couldn’t find them, it was getting pretty late, and I was searching up nearby hotels trying to find anywhere to take us in. Happy to drop 100-200 euros just to sort it out and keep us off the streets, but everywhere reasonable was booked. Seems to be a recurring theme in my trip so far. Fucking get home, Brando!
C isn’t having it. There’s a 5 star nearby with vacancies, and she’s done with the bullshit. We walk over there, and she’s in the process of swiping her card to drop… an obscene amount of money, at 3 or 4am at this point, to basically just have a bed for the night. Not like we are going to be enjoying a spa, massage, room service, etc… we’re going to be checking out in about 6h. Made zero sense to me. I think no matter how well I do in this world, when it comes to the fancy shit, I’m always going to be fairly grounded when it comes to extravagence.
No one needs to drink 10k bottles of champagne; I’m pretty sure the 200’s taste just as good. I’m definitely not cheap, love splashing cash on friends or buying randoms shots at the bar, but there’s just this… point of excess where it all starts seeming like Monopoly money and crazy to me. I’d realistically rather sleep in a fucking tent, or on the street, than drop that kind of coin for a bed for the night… but only if it was just me. Never let a lady crash under those conditions.
Anyways, realistically, she was just trying to be responsible and not make her perceived mistake of losing the keys something we’d both suffer for. Or maybe she was just really tired and cranky, but I’m gonna choose to believe that she was being noble and offering for me.
I suggested a few additional options but she was ready to pull the trigger, card in hand at the front desk, and then all of a sudden she remembers that the backpack on me was actually one she had lent me, on this very day. We unzip the back pocket, and sure enough, key’s fucking there, crisis averted. Lot of money saved that day.
The Paris trip has been decidedly wholesome so far. And maybe that’s why it’s going so well. Imagine if somehow there was a correlation between not getting absolutely shitfaced, and your plans loosely coming together. But nah, that sounds like some nonsense pseudoscience. Cheers boys, drink up!
Paris Day 4:
I wake up at C’s place feeling like a million bucks. No hangover, smile on my face… Paris may feel like Montreal, but it’s still sinking in a bit that I’ve just started what should be the adventure of a lifetime, and I’m lucky enough to be kicking it off with plenty of good company.
The last member of the crew, Shaon, is piling into Paris later tonight, to visit the whole gang, and help his sister, S, who’s just moved into town a week or so ago, get settled in. Seems like an excuse to try and spring some debauchery with Vidy and I, but maybe I’m not giving him enough credit for supporting his family. People change over the years no? I’m sure he’s visited S plenty of times! Vidy, Shaon, and I have some plans in our obscene group chat to all link up later this evening, so I’m covered on that front.
C also has a few daytime plans / some errands to run. Which is fine by me; I get a chance to settle into my Paris flow. My first mission of the day is to make up for that fake Filet Mignon, and finally sit down to a proper bistro experience. No more fucking around; I only have a few days left to make it happen.
I take a lazy stroll out her front door in the early afternoon, and start heading towards an area a few hundred meters away that, at least according to Google Maps, is chock full of bistro’s. Walk through a busy marketplace, use my newly discovered knowledge that some bistro’s double as cigarette vendors to acquire a new pack of smokes, and eventually reach the target.
Can’t remember the name of the fuckin’ place for the life of me, but it’s everything I wanted. Cute brunette waitress that doesn’t take forever to take my order, carafe of red wine and smokes on the terrace, steak frites and a light house salad ordered up just like that.
Man, you feel like a king being waited on in the Paris sunlight, on a terrace, half a liter of red wine on deck, with the smoke from your dart just curling up and blowing away in the breeze. Feels like summer, and I can’t wait for the food to show up.
Only complaint is that I order my steak medium rare, and it basically rolls out well done. Have a suspicion it’s a Paris tourist thing and take a mental note, but it’s tasty enough, and while the salad is refreshing, it’s the fries that really steal the show.
Crispy on the outside, delightfully fluffy on the inside, and accompanied by a tangy blue cheese dip, I could eat these things right up ’til my heart exploded. I take my sweet time munching everything down, completely relaxed and living on Euro time. The magnitude of my decision to say fuck it to everything sacred and start a ludicrous journey on a shoestring budget fades away in a solitary moment of satisfaction and bliss.
Am enjoying myself so much that I decide to order dessert. I take a white wine with some vanilla ice cream (which comes with some sort of crumbly sugar roll thing) and am just in heaven being lazy for a day and enjoying simple pleasures. Finally I’m letting go a bit, and after I pay and walk out, I just have the biggest fucking smile on my face. Life is fun again, and things are looking up.
Axel is hungover as fuck / down for the count, but Sahil and Mikhail are ready to tango one last time over the board. I also have about 50 euros left on the fucking gift card, and I’m not one to leave anything on the table.
So I pound back over to Blitz Society and decide we gotta make it count. Blow the rest of the card out on a bottle of red and a couple of snacks. Look at me now Ukranian hostess, I’m a high roller baby!
Sahil + Mikhail join me soon enough and I spot them a glass of wine each. Not sure why the unemployed lad is splashing the cash, but it was just a gift card and you gotta spread the wealth when you have it. We fire up a blitz rotation with an additional warrior from the club, who puts up a decent game, but inevitably crumbles to my attacking style. Don’t recall dropping a single game to any of them; Blitz Society is really my new home turf. Definitely going to have to go back.
Exchange some goodbyes with the lads. Some tentative talk to potentially collab with Sahil on an AI contract job or 2, but somewhat doubtful it will pan out. Both really great gents, will def try to catch em again next time I’m in Paris.
Check-in with C briefly at her place. She’s going to be busy most of the night / is tired, so I can rally with my friends, and I’m welcome to crash back at hers… but it comes with a curfew. I mean fair enough, it’s her place and she’s gonna sleep when she damn well wants to. I manage to negotiate 1am, and we’re both pretty ok with it; obviously want to spend some more time with her, but I don’t wanna let the boys down either. They’re counting on me to bring some energy and I’m going to do my best.
Hop on a Velib bike, and just power my way through downtown to get to an area southwest of the Eiffel tower. Boys are all around the Eiffel tower, they could have picked a spot in my direction, but fuck it, I’m excited to see big SHAOOOON. We spent an entire year and a half playing Smash Bros Melee and getting gooned at Montreal dive bars, and though he did have a brief run through Montreal recently, I’m looking forward to catching him in a bigger group context.
Initial hangout spot is a terrible fucking bar choice. Asian bartender running a small resto bar in a pretty dead neighborhood. Order a charcuterie / fromage board for the table, which is trash, and we smash a few pints catching up. V+V+S+S+B (we got girlfriend and sister in tow), good times but relatively uneventful.
I’m starting to realize the 1am curfew sucks. The drinks are just starting to hit, that beautiful buzzed glow is coming over me, and after talking to the bartender, we discover there are more lively spots that could go til 5am. I was really close to sending it, Shaon’s sis and Vidy’s gf were both out, and it could have just been the boys doing dumb shit… but then I have a real think.
We already had tentative plans to link up in Albania in less than a month. Music festival, insanity, the whole shebang. And I have exactly one more night after this one, to see where the whole C thing goes, and leave the impression that I want to leave. Is not making curfew to get shithoused with the boys really going to send the right message?
Ah fuck, what a fucking dilemma though. I can see the excitement in Vid and Shaon’s eyes, they know that I can bring that degen energy, they both have gfs and are slowly winding their lives down, and this could be one of them BIG NIGHTS where we do crazy shit.
But it’s not. I put my foot down, and suggest that in the interest of keeping the whole group together, we send er to another bar that has a bit more energy. We do so, it’s an Irish pub with live rock, we grab some pints, and I negotiate an additional hour on the ole curfew extension via phone. It’s not a bad spot, but it’s not a full send, and I can tell Shaon is disappointed. Same time, he spends twenty mins on a phone call with his GF back in the UK, so it’s not justttt me that’s trying to be a little mindful of the womenfolk.
We keep our shirts on and our brains intact. Wholesome catchup. Love all around. And then, like a responsible adult human, I hop in the cab and head back to C’s. Choice I never would have make any amount of relationships ago… but it’s not one I feel bad about right now. Of course sending it with the boys would be a killer night, and who knows when we will get this chance again? But we do have Albania potentially on the table, and sometimes you have to prioritize the things that could bring you longer term happiness. Some things are worth fighting for just a little bit, so you don’t have to spend the rest of your life wondering how things could have gone.
Went back to C’s. Didn’t regret it at all. SOFTTTTTTTTT. We getting old boys.
Paris Day 5:
Last day in Paris before I rip out to Albania. I’ll keep this one brief. We assemble the whole squad for lunch and drinks.
C and I, V+V, S+S, Imge, her partner M, and their baby.
Marketplace is great, and I show off some dad skills in the park kicking a soccer ball around with a kid who has no friends. Wish I could say it was a tactical dad-skill flex to demonstrate my potential parenting ability to C, but tbh it just comes naturally, kids are fun when they get to that age where they can play sports. Eventually say goodbye to our little buddy and hit a terrace to grab some drinks.
C, Imge + M stick around for a few hours but bail to take care of a few things prior to dinner. Shaon complains that he got a single when he ordered a double (I swear buddy is always getting into it with barmaids haha, but this was pretty light.
Great story from his last Montreal visit, where a really funny bartender I know asked him if he could handle a racist joke. He said ok, and she proceeded to make a joke about his parents working at 7-11(who are Indian or Paki or something), and he was just RAGING for about an hour, while I found it hilarious. Clearly he could not handle the racist joke (to be fair, we were smasheddd).
Anyways, the rest of us hit another random resto. Shaon and Vidy order steaks medium rare and give me some strange looks and comment when I order mine blue. I could probably have told them what I’d learned in terms of how French cook steaks at the bistro yesterday, but I’m not 100% sure about my theory yet; I figure I can always ask them to cook it more if it comes out raw though.
Fifteen minutes later, their steaks come out as barely recognizable charred ash, while mine is a perfect medium rare. Theory confirmed! I laugh my ass off and gloat openly about my worldly understanding of Paris culture and cuisine.
We put away a few carafes of red which are on special, excitedly discuss plans to send Albania, and close down the night fairly responsibly, hugging out some goodbyes. Just a bunch of fucking gems, if there’s one argument for sticking it out in Europe, it’s that I already have a family here. These guys are awesome.
C + I have a nice last night back at her place. Going to miss her tremendously, but there are high hopes that she visits me out in Tirana in a week or two. Travel around Europe is cheap, and we’ll have to see where it goes. Have a few reasons to be optimistic, but ball’s sorta in her court in terms of defining R+R. If she wants to operate as friends, friends we shall be. There’s something tremendously real here, but I’m not blind to the compatibility issues that she’s flagged either, and I think we’ll just have to feel it out with strong communication along the way.
Paris Day 6:
Not really a Paris post. But just to catch things up. Wake up at some godforsaken hour early in the morning (4am?), barely slept at all. Taxi out to the Beaudry airport. I’ve decided to book a flight through Wiz Air, which operates way out north. Flight is cheap as hell (the cab actually cost me more, around 100 Euros), but I soon find out why.
I paid for a check-in bag to avoid them claiming my carry-on is oversize, shelled out cash for a few other random small extras and selected my seat, but I didn’t pay 4 Euros for the auto check-in option. No idea why that would be needed, when I can just… check-in myself at an airport kiosk?
I’m at the airport 3 hours ahead of my flight time, and the Wiz bag drop isn’t even open yet. There are also no kiosks that I can see, but I figure I’m 3 hours ahead and fine. Kill an hour and bag drop opens up. Get all the way to the front of the line, and the lady working it takes my bag, but when I inspect the ticket she prints me, it reads “standby” with no seat number on it. Apparently it’s because I didn’t check in.
The fuck do you mean I’m on standby? I have my seat picked and everything. Exactly how was I supposed to check in without a ticket kiosk at this trashcan airport?. Some serious horse shit.
I end up going through security freaking out, and bring up my issue with the people working my gate, who inform me that I will have to wait until last minute to see if I get on the plane. Beauvais is about an hour and a half north drive from Paris, and I’m absolutely steaming at this point. But I’m slightly mollified after another 12 people join me and are forced to wait in the standby line behind me. I might be a retard but at least I have company, and theoretically since I’m at the front, I should get first priority to any seat that opens up… right?
Line turns out to be meaningless. They let every senior citizen and wheelchair bound passenger who apparently understands the instructions better than us fly through the gate, and then, they start calling random passengers out from standby to pass through and board, instead of just grabbing me from the front of the line.
Name after name gets called, and I’m really starting to freak out. No idea what I’ll do if I get fucked here. Literally end up being the last number called… and placed in the exact seat that I booked. I thought I would be more pissed off, but at that point, all I’m feeling is relief.
Fucking ridiculous, probably would have had a meltdown if I was denied boarding. God may hate me, my luck has always been shit… last out of 14 people is really something else though. I guess all’s well that ends well, but damn was that close to me ending up leaving the airport still in France, detained in cuffs.
Takeoff goes off without a hitch, I lean back in my seat for a much-needed snooze, and just like that, the Albanian leg begins!
^ Really a professional photographer. But hey fuck it, at least I’m snapping some pics.
Brando's Rambles 