http://www.journeytovalbona.com/snowfall/ Albania's New Travel Frontier Sun, 06 Nov 2016 17:50:23 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.1 http://www.journeytovalbona.com/snowfall/#comment-363 Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:52:30 +0000 http://www.journeytovalbona.com/2010/01/snowfall/#comment-363 Whoa! I’d forgotten all about that. Well! As it turns out — I DID! Not, of course, without the bizarre backwards functionality of Albania kicked into gear. Yes, some poor man drove hours and hours into the snowbound wilderness of Tropoja and then wandered around Bajram Curri ringing Alfred’s number, which of course Alfred never heard (the phone being propped up in the upstairs – open – window, with a growing dusting of snow on it because this is the only place in the house that got reception, but of course was much too cold and wet to stay anywhere near). Only when the man was giving up and leaving did he manage to get through. Then, somehow, Alfred connected him with his (Alfred’s) brother Lirim, who happened to be in Bajram Curri, and who sent the bags out to us on the farm with the minibus so that, to my perception, they simply appeared in the hallway. This is not unlike how mail gets delivered here. There is no delivery here in Albania, not even stamps — only a post office in Bajram Curri, which you drop into periodically to see if you’ve gotten anything. But! if too many parcels accumulate for me at the post office (my mother likes to send me things), the people there just give them to someone to give to someone to give to the minibus driver to give to someone to give to me — and they show up mysteriously on a table at the restaurant. Then the next time I drop by the post office they ask if I got my packages and tell me (without ever looking anything up) that I have to pay 100 lek each for the two packages they just sent me . . . . incidentally, this is down from 500 lek a few months ago, which means I must be becoming accepted?

]]> http://www.journeytovalbona.com/snowfall/#comment-307 Mon, 09 Aug 2010 01:56:13 +0000 http://www.journeytovalbona.com/2010/01/snowfall/#comment-307 So did you get your bags delivered?

]]> http://www.journeytovalbona.com/snowfall/#comment-21 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:36:05 +0000 http://www.journeytovalbona.com/2010/01/snowfall/#comment-21 Great story Catherine, wish I could have had that smoke with you and hear the hoo hoo hoooooo there in the snow. Chickens or not it much have been great. Drink a raki on my health please.
love
jaap

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