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!
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.
Brando's Rambles 