The trip actually did not start out being a real treat, with the Don (2nd from left) breaking and entering my hotel room at 7.30 (early if you consider the last picture from the party before was thankfully labelled by my camera as having been taken at 5.30), shaking me from sleep and telling me that the "taxi to Albania is waiting downstairs." "...Taxi to Albania??? ah right..."
I had no idea when we had had such a seriously whacked idea.
So I emptied my pockets of all things I wouldn't need to be buried with, realized with a sigh that my breath still contained enough alcohol to be considered a fire hazard, found the way out of my room down a flight of stairs I had previously not known existed, and so the bogus journey began....
Before you could say "kalashnikov" Leo The Don, J-B & me were already being whisked away to our uncertain fate. My brain was franctically pumping out theories and new topics regarding inhumanity while we sped through somewhere... yes, such was my condition, that I took about 20 pictures like the one above... Somehow, the landscape flying by seemed to confirm my apocalyptic mood...
I recalled Mad Max, being reminded of the inequality, coldness, and hostility inherent in mankind, plus that cool part where Mel Gibson battles it out with postapocalyptic warriors on top of a rusty land-train...
Yes, Albania was quite special. For me, the hot & cold, extravagance and poverty was an incredibly moving experience, especially because I was still far from sober.
Seriously tho, the pictures confirm what I still remember about the trip: that one part of the country was in ruins, and right next to there ruins, brand new houses were being built, and inbetween the houses, the craziest, most excessive BMWs were cruising; everywhere you could buy Cartier pearl-tipped duty-free; The Don didn't want to miss out on such a deal. Of course, like all of Cartier's discerning clientele , he preferred to pay in American Dollars.
Compliments on Albania, it was the only place that I was miraculously able to withdraw Euros from the teller machine, as opposed to Skopje, where this had proven impossible. (The lack of bancomats in Skopje is probably at least in part responsible for my skeptical description...) To make a long story short, we had a brief sojour in Pogradec, a type of turbo-capitalist city, with Mercedes S Classes cruising dirt roads in a martian feudalism that reminded me of nobility cruising desolate landscapes in the classiest carriages in Dicken's Tale of Two Cities...
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