The Wild East

"...in short she’d managed to ruin one of the most simple meals possible"

We told Dogsbody we were going into town to change some money, but she seemed happy to be paid whenever. Speaking of which there was absolutely no security whatsoever at the hotel, though it didn’t seem very necessary since there were never any suspicious or threatening characters around and everything seemed to be done on trust. Street crime seemed pretty much none-existent.
However, the banks in Durres were guarded by sub-machine gun wielding security men in bulletproof vests. I don’t know how often raids occur but judging by the number of security men, it’s probably relatively often. Another Albanian anomaly - everywhere seemed very safe, yet there was always an undercurrent of potential violence. We had a delicious donner kebab lunch (60p) before settling down at a café and engaged in a spot of people watching.

Later we went back to Daytona beach and strolled along the beach. The Albanians seemed a very sporting nation – there were dozens of games of football and volleyball taking place.
That evening we ate at the hotel restaurant where we got to know the characters who worled there a bit better. The old man (who was actually middle aged) worked behind the bar and was very protective of his bar scurrying back to it if he had to leave it for more than a few seconds.
The young waiter had a vague resemblance to James Davy (a former classmate at BHS) and usually wore a scowl. He was always being reprimanded by Dogsbody and seemed to really hate her. Dogsbody generally did very little apart from chat to her friends, drink lots of coffee and order James Davy around.
That evening however I got the impression that she wanted to show off her culinary expertise to the two foreigners and she disappeared into the kitchen to prepare our meal. Our pasta arrived a little later – in short she’d managed to ruin one of the most simple meals possible.

She had shredded it into tiny pieces and added an incredible amount of salt with it – our lips were almost bleeding (MT maintains that JD sabotaged it somewhere along the line). A short while later Dogsbody reappeared and noticed that we were slow at eating. “Maybe it is too morsalated?” she asked. Me and Taylor looked totally baffled at this new word. She explained “I haven’t added enough salt?” she asked.

We had a little more entertainment later when standing outside in the darkness we watched how James Davy would take his tip – would it be with a scowl or a smile? We were we rewarded with JD being silluetted against the window, kissing his money and then thrusting his arms in the air in triumph.
The evening followed a similar format to the previous one, wandering onto the abandoned ship to watch the gocarts, spending a good 15mins at the fairground, though this time we’d found a place that did excellent draught beer for 50lek (27p)

Back to Main Page