Vacation in Albania? Pay attention to schedules, streets, and unfinished houses (but offered by Airbnb). Otherwise… – MOW

Withwe go by car because the girl who sold us the magnet claims it’s a long way or a five or ten minute walk, at least not boasting about the accuracy, which apparently is not characteristic of this land. It’s actually about half a kilometer from the bazaar, but we immediately find a parking lot, and on the other hand, the guy I pay fifty cents per lek per hour, although I know we’ll be there a lot less, asks me where I’m from and when I answer “Milan” he replies: “Oh, Milan, beautiful! I was not there, but I was in Binasco.breaking my heart. The church is perhaps the most beautiful Orthodox church I have seen in my life and by far the most beautiful one I have seen here in Albania. There is gold and icons everywhere, with an abundance of detail that almost belies the slovenliness that can often be seen around, even if, frankly, not here in Korçë. As soon as we leave, we also make the first coffee ribbon of this holiday, very good, “because it’s Italian,” the bartender tells us, after which we leave. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us. From the carts again, a lot of driving school cars, one of which made a student turn around on a bend, which helped me understand a lot about driving in the area, a lot of car washes marked Lavage and, above all, jets of water through rubber pipes that are used for irrigation ( I think they are called reeds, although in my hometown we call them scioni), donkeys and cows everywhere, and the river, the one that was incredibly brown at the exit

, incredibly clear today, apparently the brown was the result of recent rains. Alternating on the CD player Eagles, Enzo Avitabile, Lady Gaga, Ron and Halsey, we almost arrive in Valona, ​​it’s time to call Tony. Who is Tony? So, you should know that a couple of weeks before we left, I saw my social contact, singer/songwriter Naftis, participating in my Female Anatomy Festival, posting stories and videos from Ksamil, our next stop. So I asked her for advice, which she sent me with a generosity that took me by surprise, given that we had actually only met once, many years ago. Among other things, he sent me a video of this Tony, recorded on his mobile phone as Tony Rent, which organizes boat trips in Vlora. First of all, he organizes a tour near Karaburun, which is one of the places we want to visit, so we decided to contact him to make reservations. Please note that the landlady in Vlore only gave us information about the house yesterday, telling us the hotel where to go to get the keys, on the waterfront of Vlora, where the house should then be located, so I would wait to come before booking the Marina. insisted instead and Tony told her that if she wanted to book we should come tonight to pay because she doesn’t trust tourists, perhaps the first case of an Albanian being afraid of the sun from Italians. So our journey becomes longer, with a stop near the port of Vlora. I will note, in this way, in passing, that around and up to Vlora there are many mountainsbut just so many. However, we enter the city and Vlora looks like a big city, as messy as you can imagine. We arrive at the place that Tony pointed out to us, and find a family from Molise, who is also waiting. As is often the case, she is full of enthusiasm, while he has Hamletic doubts. He tells me things like “Valona is a destructive city” with the air of someone who would like to be in the Tremiti Islands. Vlora, however, in Albania is called Vlora, just like the ship that landed in Bari on August 8, 1991, thirty-one years ago today loaded with 20,000 desperately seeking happiness, the very happiness that so many images torn from television allow us to rashly predict. Just today, on the anniversary of the landings, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama decided to commemorate this historic moment by creating a social media meme in which he combines a photo of Vlora with photos of the many Italian tourists who flock to Albanian beaches today, pictured here aboard a ship , which symbolically resembles Vlora, but which in reality is definitely more like Tony’s boat, whose tourists, it must be said, have seen very few traces, with the possible exception of the Molise family who are here with us now, all accompanied by the inscription “and wait, you came and didn’t see anything”, which infuriated ex-premier Berisha. Weird sense of humor here.