Blog

Well, there goes another summer!  Mostly, this has been the year that wasn’t.  Somehow, Alfred and I were never able to get more than a few meters away from our own front door, which is of course frustrating for US – although the reason we couldn’t get away was because of having more-than-ever-before guests, more of […]

For those of you asking if there is still snow, here is a picture I took out the window yesterday morning.  Spring!!!  There is still snow hovering up around 1800m on South-facing slopes, and it’s still difficult to find the path to the pass to get to Theth, but it’s beautiful down here, and there […]

Hello again!  We were recently contacted by Shije (“Taste”) magazine, a very nice and elegant Albanian culinary magazine and asked to write a contribution for an upcoming article on restaurants in Valbona.  It’s on the stands now and really beautiful!  However, since the very kindly didn’t print the (funny) part of the article, I thought […]

on the topic of “Blissful Uncertainty”  Tirana, 3 May, 2014 I would like to talk to you about children. I do not have children. I’m not a teacher. I don’t work with children. I am not myself a child, although I sometimes play one in my everyday life. When I was an actual physical child, […]

Okay – over the years I’ve spent a lot of time grousing about things I think are done badly (what a crank!).  Now I finally get to Whole-Heartedly support something!  Last summer, in some sultry, stormy, silent days, a trio of travellers showed up (to beat alliteration half to death!).  They were Tim Clancy, Kenan […]

My Dear Friend and Fairy Godson – if there can be fairy godmothers, why not fairy godsons?  Or maybe more like Elven God-nephew?  At any rate, my Dear Friend Joey Perr from good ol’ Brooklyn NYC came to visit for a week over Christmas (re-named by us “Merrimas”), taking a break from his current job, […]

Well, it’s that time of the year again.  The season of indoors does make one tempted to tackle crazy projects . . . . So I’ve painted half the inside of Rilindja white.  Of course, there’s no white (aka: snow) outside which makes me wonder what it will look like when there is . . . Just […]

Hello! Kind of a long story (which I’ll try to fill in later), but the Students of Valbona School are trying to to organize a study trip – 3 days, 2 nights – to visit Berat.  They want to see functioning tourism, to get ideas and experience.  I told them I’d help, but they’d have […]

Despite pouring rain which started when we did and passed as soon as we were finished, we did successfully hold the Third Annual Pastrimi Pranverore (Spring Cleaning)!  As ever (can you say ‘ever’ after 3 years?  I hope so!), the credit for having this happen is almost entirely due to the 40 students of Mushak […]