We had breakfast on the hotel terrace overlooking the mountains. #beautiful
We found out we had been approved for the apartment so we had to go to the notary office to sign an official contract. There was a lot of arguing in Albanian between the notary, the landlord and our real estate agent. I'd like to say that we knew what was going on, but we've only been here a few days so our Albanian isn't THAT good yet. We'll get there though 😆 Mark finally interrupted to ask what was going on. Little did we know this would be the first of many issues. Hint, hint: foreshadowing. They had been arguing about the taxes and who would be paying them. The argument was incredibly strange though because one minute there would be raised voices and the next there would be smiles and laughter and then the raised voices would rear their ugly heads once more. Mark and I didn't know who to be rooting for, nor did we know when we were asked to sign on the dotted line if the argument had actually been resolved or not. Either way, we had our keys (after signing EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. of a 4 page contract times four copies. My broken wrist was screaming!) But my heart was singing! We were moving in to our very own place in Albania. The notary was located in a neighborhood known as 'the blok' so after signing we hit up an exchange to trade euros to lek. Albania uses both currencies but lek is much more widely used for everyday purchases. Euros can be used for big purchases and to pay rent and my employer pays my salary in euros. After getting some money we went to digicom, the internet company Mark had researched to connect us to the inter webs. Because we were foreigners, we had to pay for an entire year of internet up front. However, because of some "special deal" we were able to pay for one package but actually receive the speeds of the next package up at "no cost to us". Haha. As we continued walking around 'the blok' we noticed that there was a cafe on every corner and that they were almost all full of people sipping on cafes and espressos. We decided to follow suit and sat down at a table outside. There were no menus though because as we would soon come to learn, everyone in Albania already knows what type of drink they want. No menu? Ok. I'll be adventurous. Do you have tea? Great. Can you make it iced? Perfect. I was pretty proud of myself. My proudness lasted exactly 3 minutes because next thing I knew a can of lipton tea was being set down in front of me. Fail. I definitely didn't look like the europeans sipping out of their tiny cups. We headed back to the mall to buy Mark some more essentials because the airline's response when we called was still "not here" in regard to his big, red suitcase. That evening we sat on our hotel porch and sipped on some brews, toasting to the fact that we had made it to Albania and that we had found a place to live.
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