Only Meat

I haven’t written much about what I’ve been eating since I’ve been here, and it will have to wait until a later entry. I plan on posting some recipes so you can get a good idea. With the summer heating up, there is an almost overwhelming supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. And most of them are incredibly cheap.

Anyhow, going to restaurants here is sometimes a challenge. For one, Albanians move their head from side to side, which can mean a variety of things. Sometimes, you will ask for something and they will shake your head, prompting you to verbally confirm the item’s availability. Secondly, there is often no menu at all or a menu from which half the items are unavailable. There are also restaurants marked as such that serve no food at all. Needless to say, we’ve looked like morons here quite frequently.

In Durres on Saturday, we had another one of those moments. Our group of eight volunteers wanted to sit down to dinner. We found a restaurant and Phoebe went in to inquire about prices and items. She returned to tell us that the restaurant had meat. In our brains, we thought that meat would automatically mean some form of potato or rice in addition.

We went to the restaurant’s outside patio, organized the tables and chairs for our group, and sat down to order. It went a little something like this:

“Good evening, do you have any rice?”
“No, just meat. We don’t have fish today because it still hasn’t arrived yet.” the waitress said.
“What about potatoes?”
“No, just meat.”

We started speculating amongst ourselves. “Do you think they just bring out a plate of meat with nothing else then?” I asked. We all made semi-frowns around the table because it clearly wasn’t what we wanted. The waitress walked away.

A few minutes later, the waitress returned. Up until this point, the conversation with her had been entirely in Albanian. Until she came back with a slip of paper in her hand and asked in English: “Who’s in charge here?!” We really didn’t see that coming. In dealing with the shock of a person knowing such a random English phrase (no doubt straight out of a movie), I raised my hand. In it, she placed a note that said: “These are my American friends, please take good care of them,” and sent us to a restaurant that had food more our style. These are the kinds of adventures that we have here.

Non-sequitur: On my way to the internet café today, I saw a turned over bicycle and a group of three kids sitting on the sidewalk. I thought there had been a crash. As I got closer, I saw that they were playing with POGS. Need I reference the wise words of Ervini? He really wasn’t kidding when he told me, “Here you will find many treasures.” I’m going to cross my fingers for a Tamogotchi.