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.
Brando's Rambles 