Today was the big day. No, it wasn't the day I had surgery on my broken wrist, or the day Mark got a new job, or the day I found a teaching position, or even the day we got married, it was the day we were leaving for Tirana, Albania. It started with breakfast at my parents' (who am I kidding?!-- it really started the night before while my parents helped us pack until 12:30 in the morning!) Thanks mom and dad.
Mark and I made our way to the airport and damn was it crowded. We waited over an hour in the bag check line (and considering we were moving I was pretty proud of us for having only 2 suitcases, a backpack and our carryons). After waiting obnoxiously long and being reminded of why, up until this point we had never checked any bags, we were greeted with an even longer security line that WAS. NOT. MOVING. TSA told us they were waiting for security dogs and that we would be moving shortly. Prospective passengers' demeanors shifted from mildly annoyed to filled with black friday shopping rage quite quickly. When one dog finally arrived, people were pushing, shoving and cutting to make their way forward. Meanwhile, I was wondering what type of hold up I'd cause due to the newly implanted metal jewelry in my wrist. Drugs and bombs must trump metal because I made it through no problem and then we were off in a mad rush to our gate. We made it with 10 minutes to spare, after having been at the airport 3 hours before our flight. We boarded our 9 hour flight to Rome and watched some movies, ate a few meals, did a lot of sleeping and even treated ourselves to a few cocktails-- when in Rome, right? We had some time before our flight in Rome (thank goodness!) So much so that our itinerary wasn't even on the flight boards yet, which caused a slight panic and resulted in us entering a long line to inquire about our flight's status. After being assured that we hadn't missed our flight and instead were just incredibly early, we decided to find some breakfast. We settled on peach juice and fruit. We then boarded a one hour flight bound for Tirana.
Arriving in Albania was quite odd because going through customs is somewhat anti climactic. The agents view your passport and send you on through. No questions, no forms, no visas, no stamps. It's basically like we aren't even here. Except we are here, trust me. Well if customs was that much of a breeze, then baggage claim must be a walk in the park, right? Wrong. Around came my suitcase. Around came Mark's blue backpack. Around and around and around some more came the empty conveyor belt. Where was Mark's big red suitcase? He checked in with the airline and they verified, "not here". Thanks guys. We really appreciate your help on that one. Any more info you can give us about the bag that's "not here"? Nope. Nada. Zilch. Okedoke then. Now I was really impressed by how few bags we had, but I don't think Mark saw it that way. We were met by Alanna and Erindt (two people from my school who I didn't know would be picking us up). Rewind to a our layover in Rome: I checked my school email to find out that I was expected to be at school today. Oh no! Was the school coming to the airport to get me just so they could bring me straight to school? Ah. Yikes. I casually found out that they didn't expect me to come to school until Thursday (it was Monday) Phew. I can breathe. Instead of taking us to school they were dropping us off at a hotel. The arrangement was that we would be staying here until we found a more permanent place to live. The hotel is lovely and our room has a large balcony that overlooks the pool.
Beyond that is a skyline filled with mountains. It's breathtaking. After attempting to curb our jet lag with a nap we walked to TEG, the biggest mall in Tirana.
Mark had to get a few things, one of which was swim trunks. We ate at the food court in the mall. There's a KFC but we decided to be adventurous and have the albanian equivalent of subway. The sandwiches were tasty and had a really yummy white sauce (I've come to learn that all dressings/condiments are called "salce" (pronounced sal-sa) here). We took a taxi to meet Anri, the real estate agent who was appointed to help us find an apartment. We put in an offer for the first of three apartments we saw. We're waiting to see if we are approved. After our viewings we decided to give the public bus a try. We got on and immediately tried to pay the driver but he waved us off. Hmm.. guess we'll just watch and learn. Sure enough, a small man in an orange shirt with a manpurse is employed to walk up and down the aisle of the bus and collect 40 lek from each passenger. In exchange he gifts them with a small paper ticket that nine times out of ten falls to collect dust on the bus floor.
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