Category: From Catherine

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Lajos from Hungary

Dear  Catherine & Alfred Thanks for your hospitality, we have arrived home by now. Albania has become the home of priceless natural treasures, of which we have seen only a little, while we arrived from Pogradec – Sarande to Koplik in 3-4 days. My full track: 1. Szeged(H) – Makó(H) – Timisoara(Ro) – Kovin(Srb) – […]

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The Kitchen Ketri

This Albanian Squirrel seems to have taken up residence in our kitchen at Rilindja.  Klod and I think he lives between the two cabinets that make the island in the middle of the kitchen.  He’s remarkably unobtrusive, and apparently impervious to insult.  In an ill-thought-out attempt to make friends, I accidentally chased him up up […]

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More Wordy Ramblings from Yours Truly

I am sitting in the restaurant, which means the main room, at Rilindja. I am in the Valbona Valley of Northern Albania. I am, somehow, home. After a lot of noise (arriving bands of local teenagers, out for a school-sponsored day’s exploration) it’s quiet, I’m alone, and all I can hear is the sound of […]

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Spring and Baby Bunnies Come to Valbona

Oops – sorry it’s taken me so long to add anything new here – I’m still getting the hang of using modern technology here in the land where we still cut hay with a scythe . . . but lest you think it’s all grim winter (I realized the other day that most of what […]

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Snowfall

The Malësori or “Highlanders” are famous for (and pride themselves on living with) the harshness of the mountains, and the winter in particular. In summer, one of the first things Alfred told me as I was oohing and ahhing about the beauty of Valbona, was “Yes, but the winter is very harsh – Three Meters […]

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Civilization is not Looking so Civilized

Something that’s been puzzling me slipped into place this morning. The question is something that people keep asking me, one way or another, and I haven’t been able to answer to any of our satisfaction yet. Put simply, it amounts to: Why do you prefer Albania to New York? By every system of modern reckoning, […]

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In Which The Cow Comes Home

On October 11th, Alfred and I traveled back to Valbona from Tirana. A strange feeling of weight lifting, the closer we get to the mountains – to home! It’s strange to travel with Alfred, because of course he must have done this journey a thousand times, seriously and probably, and for me, COME to think […]

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Back in the Balkans

Pershendetje! I’m writing this from an internet cafe in Qyteti Studenti — “Student City” in Tirana. I made it! Albania is real again, New York a weird Bladerunner-esque dream . . .

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Going Back

Thursday night – next Monday I’ll be getting on a plane to fly back to Albania . . . . Why is it that anything one is passionate about so quickly becomes an esoteric exercise? I’ve been back in New York for two months now. For the first month, it was easy enough to live […]

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Full Disclosure: About your Author

My name is Catherine Bohne, and at least initially, I will be your author for this website.  I am an American woman who owns a bookstore and lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York (the world).   Last January, emerging from eight exhausting years of running a struggling independent bookstore full-tilt and non-stop, I suddenly woke up, shook […]

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