This week we didn’t end up staying in Tirana for work.
Instead we spent the majority of our week in Vlore—a coastal city where it is
said the first Albanian flag was raised and one of the oldest municipalities in
Albania. In comparison to Tirana, Vlora is calm and as a coastal city it is
vibrant with people who don’t take themselves as seriously, but instead focus
on enjoying the day ahead of them and diligently completing the tasks ahead of
them, without the added stress level that Tirana brings.
Captain Enxhi ;)
I felt that I could slow down immensely in Vlora because it
didn’t require me to be full-faced-masked with makeup and uphold my posture at
all times like a young business professional should. First of all, this was an
atypical work trip considering we’re usually in Tirana running promotional
activities from a laptop and cellphone in hand in an office space at the
Ministry. That being said, I cannot say one is better than the other—clearly
each capitol city serves the function of being the head administrative site of
any country on Earth—so Tirana is stuck with that duty. In addition, the Tirana
daily living also requires a lot more energy out of a person because the
activities are plentiful—even at night, the city doesn’t shut down completely
(but it’s still not comparable to an NYC urban place that never sleeps).
We started off the week with more promotion materials for
the National Coastal Agency then transitioned to working on coordinating with
the French expedition ship Tara Mediterranean and their convention/visit to the
Vlore port and University of Vlore “Ismail Qemali.” It turns out Tara is
affiliated with the University of Michigan and our biology department and we’re
one of the only Universities that funds them on their expeditions, which was a
huge surprise to us, but also to be expected given the reputation of our
science department.
With Ejona!
Look how beautiful the port is, add the mountains and it's magnificent!
Along with Tara Mediterranean’s crew we ended up
coordinating 3 orphanage trips from Durres, Tirana and Saranda (called Jetimore
in Albanian). We coordinated activities for the children to do and we figured
that the thee of us would each host a group onboard Tara and translate to them
from English to Albanian as the crew and scientists explained their expeditions
to us. Many of the acitivies, besides for the visit onboard, didn’t come to
fruition, but all is to be expected since weather delays and time constraints
prove to be problematic in organizing functions. Regardless, the kids
thoroughly enjoyed the visit onboard as well as being able to try out some of
the sails and expedition gear. Tara is an artic ship that is made for extreme
polar conditions, and its current Mediterranean sails are atypical of what its
cabin makeup was designed to withhold—so it gets quite hot in the cabin!
After we had coordinated with the Tara expedition ship, we
were able to enjoy our weekend that we had off and we fancied the beautiful
Adriatic/Ionian Seas and the Sandy/Rocky combo of the two that the Vlora
beaches offer!
Tara Mediterranean on the Left side!
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