One of our first trips out of Durres was to Tirane, the capital of Albania and home of Peace Corps Albania headquarters.  Our goal was to explore the city and to make sure we can find the office when we needed to go there.  Even though we have maps, few of the streets display names.  The best way to find something is to ask, but be sure to ask several people as the Albanians hate to not try to help you, but that means they will give you directions even when they have no idea of where you want to go.  I think they just guess about where you want to go and tell you how to get there.  All that means you just need to have several landmarks to assist you in getting around.

So our trip was focused on finding a medium priced hotel, the PC office and then to visit the museums of Tirane.  Good thing we had 2 days.  The first night, we spent about 2 hours looking for a restaurant which was about 8 blocks from the hotel.  But between the map being wrong and the construction removing some of the references, we felt that 2 hours was a reasonable time for finding the place.  It was a bit expensive ($7-8 for entrees) but good.

The next day, it took us about 3 hours to find the office.  We got close, but then circled for a long time taking the longest possible route at every opportunity.  At least we now have many landmarks and found a couple of good restaurants along the way (good being affordable).  At the office we browsed the technical library and the volunteer library.  The technical library has reference material for work and the volunteer library has books donated by volunteers.  After resting at the office and enjoying the a/c, we decided to look for alternate hotels.

The search of hotels took us through the heart of Tirane, then out to the ‘ring road’ which loops around the downtown section and is where you catch the buses to other cities.  All this walking resulted in very tired feet and a list of expensive hotels as we could only get the tourist price at the hotels, so we must find another approach.  Returning to the hotel, Carol sent Criss out for dinner to eat in the room while she set up her computer so we could listen to the news over the internet.  That was great.

Sunday was a trip to the Art Museum and because we had really over-extended ourselves on Saturday we opted for a movie instead of sightseeing.  The benefits of getting lost and exploring the city have paid big dividends.  We can now make it to the Peace Corps office in about 20 minutes and once when the bus dropped Criss off at a different location, he was familiar enough with the location to get close to the computer store.  In fact, he was within 2 blocks when someone directed him in the opposite direction.  It only took an hour to recover and get back to the starting spot, which was less than ten minutes from the store.  He now has a few more landmarks and knows to ask more than one person.