I opened the blinds to look over the balcony and saw an endless jumble of buildings… nice buildings, ugly buildings, old buildings, new buildings… you get a little bit of everything here. The view reminded me of a scene from “Slumdog Millionaire.”

Monique and I got a good night’s rest… who wouldn’t, with all the gentle serenading we got from the dogs howling and the motorcycles revving up? Plus, when we woke up we got an extra special treat when the nearby mosque sang its call to prayer.

Yes, there are many mosques in Albania, but I haven’t seen any bearded Osama bin Laden types…

In fact, unlike most of Europe, Albanians seem to love Americans… Just tell an Albanian you are an American and watch their face light up! They tell you how much they love George Bush, Jr. and Bill Clinton, too… but they like “Bushi” more because he visited here a few years ago.

They even have a statue dedicated to “W” that I haven’t paid a visit to yet.

My brother, Danny, decided to come join Monique and I on our Albanian journey so we decided to get right to the house hunting…

We were so excited because we had found a vacation rental in Durres, which is 15 miles or so away from Tirana and right near the Adriatic Sea. The rental was described to us like this… a two story house with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, big landscaped yard, kitchen, etc. They were even going to give us a deal for renting it long-term, as opposed to by the day!

When we get to the rental, the house is freezing cold inside, we find out that the landlords live on the second floor, they ask us to pick which room we want to stay in, and they further inform us that we could only stay until June.

Dreams shattered, we walk into the night with the one suitcase we brought…

It’s cold and raining, so we stop into a clothing store to call a taxi. There are a father and son in the store… “What do you need a taxi for?” they ask. We tell them we need a hotel room.

“Oh, we have rooms above this store!” they say.

“Wonderful! Take us to them!”

The rooms are cold and have the same type of “heating system” the other one had. “Monique, ask them if they have electric blankets?”

Monique just laughs at me… apparently electric blankets are not common. (The more I live here, the more I am impressed with how hardy the Albanians are… we’re a bunch of sissies in America in comparison).

But here’s the thing I really love about Albanians…

We tell them no, we do not want to spend money with you… and they proceed to offer us some candy, espressos, etc. while we wait for the taxi.

“What kind of hotel would you like?” they ask… Good? Very good? Or the best?”

“The best!” we shout in unison.

Next thing you know, the taxi pulls up in front of the best hotel in Durres, Albania…

The flight attendant told us to remain in our seats with our seat belts fastened. So naturally the Albanians all got up and proceeded to get their luggage… Albanians don’t really follow rules. The Italian flight attendant came out yelling and tried to restore order. I think I’m going to like this country ;-)

When we get off the plane, half the passengers get in the line for Albanian citizens, and the other half get in the foreigner line… apparently, there were a lot of Albanians now living in other countries.

There are two customs officials taking care of our line, which has now split up into two. Monique and I choose unwisely… for every one person our customs lady is letting through, 4 are passing us by in the other guy’s line.

The lady looks at our passports for a loooooong time…

She then clicks a button on the computer… now back to staring at the passports. Finally, when she’s finished clicking and staring, she hands us back the passports without stamping them. We get her to stamp them.

Two friends of a friend pick us up at the airport (John and Esther, who are not Albanian, but Korean). Soon I get a little taste of Albanian driving… I enjoy it, now Monique on the other hand, prefers to hide her eyes behind her hands for some reason.

The streets are narrow and maze-like in Tirana…

Apparently, John and Esther live by “the prison.” I didn’t know this at the time, but I did notice that there was a lot of graffiti and trash in the streets. “Is it safe to walk around this neighborhood?” I ask Monique.

“Oh, don’t worry, that’s how they do it here,” she says. (And it turns out, she’s right – graffiti and trash are common no matter where you go).

Things look “rustic” here… that is to say that it doesn’t matter if the buildings are new or old… everything looks old.

John and Esther were great to us…

They let us stay in some guest quarters they keep for friends and family, fed us lunch, and we were soon off to sleep… in an electric blanket, because the inside is just as cold as the outside in most Albanian homes.

When we wake up, I get a real good view of where we’re at…

“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter – a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”
- Henri Matisse

It was disappointing to see that the airport was far off from the city itself… much like Denver’s airport, all I could see was farmland and countryside. We had to go through security again and it was quite a contrast to see how much common sense the Italian airport security officers use after dealing with the dumb-ass American airport security for so many years since 9/11.

No need to take off your shoes or walk through a full-body scanner…

“What’s in the box, sir?”

“A computer.” She halfheartedly looks at the box. “OK, carry on…”

We walk through some nice-looking parts of the airport… And we keep on walking until we reach what must have been the Rome Airport basement. The terminals list off some forgotten corners of the world… in fact, I’ve already forgotten the other countries that were listed, except Albania and, oddly enough, Ireland.

We sit down and wait. People watching, I observe two old men dressed rather nicely and talking very animatedly. “Those are Albanians,” Monique tells me. I also see some older women dressed kind of like Mother Theresa… more Albanians, I am informed. Soon, we are boarding the plane and we hand the Italian our boarding passes.

“Rejected! Monique Al-var-ez, rejected!”

I was also rejected. Not understanding a word they are saying, we are motioned to stand aside. The airline officer is clicking and typing on the the computer keyboard very rapidly. “What could this be?” Monique and I ask each other. Apparently, they forgot to add our luggage on the boarding passes… or something like that. Finally, we are allowed to get on the shuttle.

Despite being so early that we waited in the terminal for over an hour, it’s a mad dash to get us to the plane on time…

I begin to wonder if they are going to drive us to Albania, when we finally pull up to our little plane at a screeching halt. Monique and I run up the stairs and confirm with the flight attendant that the plane is going to Tirana. He looks at us strangely.

Why? Well, it’s only a guess, but it might be because we were the only non-Albanians on the flight.

Ocean, beaches, beautiful snow-capped mountains…

This was the view out my window. Next thing you know, we landed on the moon…

3 hours early, to be exact. Monique’s Dad and my Mom dropped us off at the San Diego Airport and we quickly learned that our flight had been rerouted from Atlanta to New York. Luckily, we were early enough to get some seats.

After paying exorbitant fees on our bags and getting an extra special pat-down from TSA for refusing their cancer-causing x-ray contraptions, we were well on our way to The Big Apple.

3 episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and a bag of peanuts later…

We land at JFK, hike 5 miles from one end of the airport to the other and get our first taste of a foreign culture when an Alitalia desk clerk takes our passports to a back room and comes back 15 minutes later with hand-written boarding passes. Grazie!

The Italians were anxious to get back to Italy… there was already a huge line to get on the plane before they were even boarding. People watching, I observe that Italians dress much nicer than Americans.

“How can I help you, you filthy animal?”

That’s what American flight attendants ask you when you take American-owned airlines. Not so on Alitalia! The men and women flight attendants were handsome, friendly, and all-too eager to help. Instead of giving me a dirty look for bringing a big box as a carry-on, the stewardess asks me what it is (a computer) and finds an extra special compartment to place it in.

You eat like a king on an Alitalia flight… wine, coffee, dinner, dessert, breakfast, more wine, more coffee… Bellisima!

The Jewish Rabbi sitting behind me smelled like he’d been peeing on himself for a while…

It was overpowering at times, but I got used to the smell by living near so many homeless people in downtown San Diego.

He made a mess in the restroom and was blessing it when we walked onto the plane. He blessed it several times on our trip. It felt good to be sitting near such a blessed toilet.

There were a lot of Jewish people on the plane…

They were heading to Israel. When they turned the lights out on the plane, I could hear the Rabbis behind us speaking Yiddish. Being the impressionable young man I am, I imagined I was taking a pilgrimage to the promised land.

At one point, I think one of the Rabbis was even blessing me… at least I hope that’s what he was doing when he reached from his seat behind me and started rubbing my biceps. “Thank you, Rabbi, now I can sleep peacefully”… when we wake up, Rome!