Wow. 6 years ago tonight, I landed in Albania for the first time. I had no idea that my visit to the hospital the next morning would result in discovering I needed an emergency hysterectomy and would be under the knife 72 hours later.
That night, I went out for dinner but forgot my wallet at home, not realizing until I had eaten.
The owner of the cafe just told me to go. I was so touched and sheepish about it.
He was surprised when I came back 2 days later with money.
But…
If you need to be 10,000km from home and alone and getting major surgery, Albania is a good country to be in. They have a code called “besa” that is ancient and basically comes down to, if you are a guest in their home, they will defend you with their life, is what I was told.
My Airbnb’s hosts’ mom was a surgical recovery nurse for 25 years — holy coincidence! She looked in on me twice daily for a week for $50.
I’ll always love Albania. What a country.
@snarkysteff Last time I studied good places to emigrate to, Albania topped the list. The biggest negative is that my multilingual skills that enable me to pick up related languages is useless. Albanian is not related to any language I speak or any other language for that matter.
@snarkysteff Yeah, I'm sure that's true with English as the lingua franca of the world these days. But it's a personal thing with me to learn the local language because all kinds of ethnic and cultural stuff can only be unlocked if you speak the language fluently with idioms.
I'm sure I'd manage at first with English and Italian but I'd be very focused on learning Albanian ASAP. It would be a new challenge.
@shuttersparks it would be very easy to find someone to talk with and learn from. They’re very proud of their culture but big fans of American/North American culture too. It’s more instinctive than it seems at first. I picked up a few phrases. The food is insane, oh, my.
@shuttersparks There’s a lot of English speakers there these days. Lots who don’t, but the younger crowd does. It has great dentistry and good private hospitals. There are many problems but it’s a country I felt was headed in a good direction. And if you speak Italian, I suspect you would be able to communicate with some more people.