“No matter how long I spend on the road, I don’t have a balanced enough temperament to avoid burnout.” – Old Sean
Inert Adventures
After leaving Montenegro and entering Albania, I had an unfortunate self-imposed reality to confront.
I’m grounded.
I’m not going outside, frolicking wheezily up mountain slopes or accepting invitations from friendly strangers.
For the time being, I’m hiding out in Albania, specifically visiting Tirana, for the next week to finalize the heap of paperwork that’s acclimated. The majority of this extended work-trip was meticulously planned, with careful calibrations set in to allow for margins of error. I worked with a team in China carefully calculating the time needed for travel between locations, budget discrepancies, life’s predictably unpredictable randomness, foot travel, estimates for “high-summer living expenses” and my own flimsy willpower.
But after four solid months of travel with another week added onto that, I’ve dismantled my plans so completely, I need to sit down and repeat the workshop process I started half a year ago.
Work Responsibilities
Aside from organizing the next leg of my trip, which will encompass Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania and potentially some other places, I need to whittle away at the workload I’ve stubbornly ignored.
In terms of raw data collecting, reports, writing articles and designs, I’m caught up. But many smaller necessities have outpaced me. Copy editing, grammar checks, streamlined writing, accessible designs, meticulous equations for measurements, legal confirmations, layout management and half a hundred other things must to be squeezed together for this project to work.
Additionally, my gear could use a breather. Every electronic component I’m carrying needs to be cleaned up, recharged, defragmented and, in one odd case, skipped across a large body of water in frustration.
Daily Schedules
So, Tirana it is until further notice. My first day was a designated coma day, where I finally recovered from the previous weeks of hard traveling. I cranked up the AC, passed out, slept for twelve hours, woke up, ate an apple and went down for five more hours.
Despite knowing humans only have up to a century on the planet, I’m surprisingly delighted to spend a large part of that unconscious.
Afterwards, I started splitting my days between a lot of paperwork and occasional forays around town. Though I declared myself grounded, I don’t have kitchen in my hotel room, so daily jaunts are a necessity.
If I finish everything early, I might head out to some forests in the countryside. For my own amuseument, I tried to guess which patch of woods Voldemort was hiding in during his half-life exile.
My money is on Shebenik-Jabllanice National Park.
I haven’t been there yet, but a guy who randomly rearranged the letters of his name to “Voldemort” and thought “Yeah, that’s something folks will be too terrified to speak out loud” would appreciate the odd pronunciation.
Off Hours
When my work was finally whittled down, I started finding odd hours to explore the city.
Visiting Tirana is nice. At least the bit of it I managed to see when I wasn’t sleeping.
I started by visiting Skanderbeg Square, which is a huge curved plaza with trickle fountains freely flowing away from the center in wide rivers on concrete that scarcely wet the bottom of a passing foot.
I also saw the controversial Pyramid of Tirana. It’s not that steep, so the structure looks more like a condemned concrete ramp than anything else. The structure is currently boarded up by plywood, decorated with a few cuts of graffiti and topped with a snarl of barbed wire. Overall, it looks like a walk-by advertisement letting you know where you should be dumping your murder victims today.
I’m glad it was so sunny. I wouldn’t have been as amused by that first impression otherwise.
Snacks and Sights Around Town
Other than those two major sites, Tirana has a really nice food scene, accented by a loose consolidation of art scattered around the city.
I found displays of wicker birds the size of ostriches, plenty of abstract sculptures, the required number of fountains needed in any European city and a strange series of paintings on electronic boxes showing cartoon characters.
The imposing features of Mount Diati loom to the west, slightly bluish under the shadows of slow, white clouds. The climate gave the impression that a ferocious storm is almost always due.
Overall, it was fine. Tirana was a good choice of places to hang my hat, and the expenses were so cheap I could’ve eaten out every night and not felt a dent in my wallet.
So I did. Take that, useless willpower.
I still have a another day or so before I finish submitted all my paperwork. After that, I’ll be done visiting Tirana. But once I’m done, I’m heading to Greece.
So until I make it to Athens,
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written September 4th, 2018
Want to read more about visiting Tirana? Check out the Leftfade Trails Destination Info Page
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