Kledia | Tirana | Week 11

After taking a 6 hour bus ride from down south back to the capital I started feeling a little under the weather. I think the combination of the sun, the sea and the long ride really did a number on my system and I ended up with a fever and so I didn't end up working for two days. When I went back to work, my other roommate and I were given another translation job. This one was a little different than the others because it was going to be given directly to people who were interested in investing in Albania. This translation was a summary of many of the tourist destinations in Albania. It was a bit difficult to translate because the language was pretty and flowery and language like that is much harder to translate than government documents that tend to use straightforward language. However, I learned a lot about the tourist sites and about the history  and architecture of different castles. This translation took us bit longer than usual because of the language and I think by this point we were burned out from translating.


For the weekend we decided to go up north because we spent a lot of time down south and hadn't explored the north much. We asked around at the ministry and they recommended that we go to Velipoj -- a beach right next to the border with Montenegro. When we got there it was very crowded! Which we should have known because it was the first week of August and literally the peak of tourist season in Albania. It was a different experience because most of the people that were vacationing there were Albanians from the Northern region or Albanians from Kosovo and they have different dialects than I'm used to so it was a bit difficult to understand when they would talk to me. Of course from my experience at the Ministry I couldn't help but notice everything that was going well and what needed to be improved on. It was good experience for me to see exactly how the situation was on the ground because it gave me a better idea of what the Ministry was trying to do. This weekend with all the tourists made realize that one day Albania will be full of tourists and that it will be very crowded. It was a bittersweet realization because it won't be "undiscovered" anymore.

[Very big cow in Velipoj -- it was a nice combo of farm & beach] 

[Pretty good calamari in Velipoj -- cheap and yummy ]