Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Kledia | Week 6 | Tirana, Albania

The work week was pretty similar to other weeks. We had a few small translations to do about different activities and events that are happening around the country. One cool thing about doing the translations is learning about the different events that are happening and it gives us a chance to check them out as well. We also had meetings with different directors about working on some new stuff for the official tourism website and trying to come up with ways to promote Albanian tourism on social media, but to the Albanian diaspora.

We explored Tirana a little bit more and because it's World Cup season we decided to go to this huge park were there are big screens that show the game. Hundreds of people come out and see these things. We decided to go to the USA vs. Germany game and we brought our American flags with us. We were the only American fans that we could see in the whole area, it was crazy! People took our pictures because they thought we were tourists from the US and people spoke to us in English. It was a really funny moment for us to explain that we're Albanians, we just live in the US. Our photo even got featured on the website of the park!


Then over the weekend we visited Kruja. It's the city were one of Albania's greatest national heroes, Skanderbeg, made his stand against the Ottomans in the 1400s. His castle has fallen apart and only the base walls stand but now it has been rebuilt into a museum. It was a very cool place and very well taken care of. There were a lot of foreign tourist groups visiting the museum which was really nice to see since we are working in tourism. We got to talk to one of the museum guides and he was really excited to learn that we lived in the US and he was telling us that it's up to our generation to keep Albanian history alive -- especially to the kids, like us, who've been raised outside of Albania. 




 

1 comment:

  1. Kledia,

    Your work continues to fascinate me. I never thought about your learning about events through the documents you are translating. That's a great idea. Its such a unique situation because you're not really "tourists" but you can think in that perspective.

    Watching the soccer game sounds fun. It's cute that you brought your little U.S. flags! I was thinking back to when I was in Mexico during the World Cup. I was told to keep it on the down low that I was from the U.S. so I wouldn't start any "trouble". I'm glad that you were received well!

    Looking forward to your next post! Make sure to take some pictures with UM swag or the blog "M"!

    Best,
    Tammy

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