The refrigerator apartment has a mini-split for heat (power on) and apparently I’m the sort of person who has to unpack everything and get organized before I can even think about going to sleep no matter how exhausted I am? Who knew? But two hours after I walked into the place it was warm and my bags were empty, I’d connected phone and laptop to Wi-Fi, connected the key to a fob given to me by my Wheaton cousins, discovered a small river outside my bathroom window and realized that I’m also the sort of person who wants a cup of herbal tea in this sort of situation – yet another thing to add to the packing list. 2am and I’m horizontal. So grateful to finally be here and no more traveling for a month!

I wake up and it’s almost noon. I look out the windows, I’m right on the town square and the mountains are beautiful. I realize that I’m perilously low on snacks with no idea how food works here, make myself a morning mug of Joe’y with powdered cream, open every cupboard and drawer and realize i’m also perilously low on cooking supplies? The outlet is EU but the appliances are UK. I do have a universal adaptor along, but was counting on that for my laptop and phone. The largest (and only) thing to drink out of is half a dozen 6-oz juice glasses, there are a few bowls and small plates, two small serrated knives, 3 soup spoons, 3 forks, one small skillet and one very large pot. One burner, one kettle, one toaster, one microwave – all sharing one outlet. There’s a fridge with a freezer. I’ve brought along my 16-oz Sierra cup, a wooden bowl, a small spoon and my Opinel pocket knife. I push wrong buttons on the mini-split and now it’s blowing cold air with an error code no matter what I do. I spend two hours trouble shooting on Google – finally unplug the whole thing and start from scratch – success!

The place outside my bathroom window looks like a restaurant? More googling, looks like Ermi’s – good reviews, there are things I can eat on the menu, the owner’s husband Ervin is a tour guide, maybe he’ll speak English? Wanting to blend in, I look out the window to see what the local women are wearing. There are no local women? This is slightly concerning. Plenty of men, strolling and chatting and smoking, as the afternoon goes on they are sitting in the outdoor cafes around the square, eating and drinking coffee. A loudspeaker crackles into life across the square, a hesitant voice starts to sing from the minaret of the little mosque. The muezzin sounds young and nervous, he’s having a hard time staying on pitch. Çorovodë is a small, remote mountain town. I get the impression that this is nobody’s plum assignment – and like many rural churches, they take what they can get? I honestly love the idea of the call to prayer, 5 times a day you just stop whatever you’re doing and reconnect. Except nobody in town seems to be stopping what they’re doing. My heart goes out to the muezzin. What a brave thing to send his unvarnished voice out across the indifferent town like that.

I am not feeling brave, but hunger spurs courage, I put on my jeans and a black hoodie, tuck the lucky Moroccan camel Karen sent along into a pocket, lek in another pocket, phone and kindle, key and my page of emergency contact in the rest of my pockets and head across the bridge to Ermi’s, find a table on the patio next to a red flower and sit down. Ermi speaks enough English to explain that it’s off-season and I should just order the daily special. With no understanding of what that might be, I agree and manage to add a cup of herbal tea, Çaj mali, the local mountain tea. Çaj is pronounced Chai.

Dinner is underwhelming, not gonna lie – baked spaghetti casserole, a bland cheese sauce holding it together, I’m not at all sure how my digestive tract is going to respond, but the patio is lovely, it’s close and convenient and off the main square, nobody is smoking, the dinner special is 300 lek (about $3.70) and I decide Ermi’s is going to be my local eatery as I get my bearings here. On the way home I make friends with the policeman who is stationed at the bottom of my stairs – I show him my google translate and he laughs and gives me a hug. Having my belly full of real food for the first time in most of a week helps a lot and I’ve survived my first day in Çorovodë. Several days go by with no real need to extend myself any further. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got here and rest felt like the most important thing I could be doing. One night at Ermi’s it’s grill only, so dinner is grilled chicken skewers with grilled zucchini and bread – and I discover that I can eat bread here! Huzzah. Then comes the night when Ermi’s is closed for renovations. The shade cloth over the patio is getting replaced with bamboo and plastic in anticipation of the rainy season. I ask about a grocery market and get a vague arm wave towards the square. They send me across the street to another restaurant. Bigger, worse service, men smoking, same food, twice the price. Past time to find the market. The next day I head in the direction of the vague arm wave.

After several false starts and closed stores I find a local “micromart” – I have a list translated into Albanian which I hand the friendly woman behind the counter. Now I have Kos (yogurt) and eggs and olive oil and potatoes and an onion, honey and Çaj mali, scallions and a loaf of bread, butter and bananas and peaches and salami and garlic. More importantly I have hope that I can feed myself here. On the way home I see a sign for Byrek – a local speciality – filo dough stuffed and baked. I get one each of spinach and cheese and carry them home with my groceries, 100 lek each and very yum!

The shops here seem to blink in and out of existence, by day of week? time of day? whims and reasons beyond my ken? I go looking for a store I’ve been to before, enter what I think is the same store and inside it’s totally different. This is not a big town and I’m really only talking about a two-block stretch here. Something is always open somewhere, different shops have different things on the shelves, the girl behind the counter at Arsido’s speaks English, the micromart has eggs by the each; milk is rare and comes in a shelf-stable box and every shop has cheese and yogurt and candy. None of the markets has green veggies, like spinach or broccoli or even zucchini. Apparently Byrek is a gateway drug and since I can eat bread here (flour isn’t enriched or fortified) I realize that I can have PIZZA!!! While I’m waiting for my first pizza in years, I mention that I haven’t been able to find greens (mention, by typing it into google translate and handing my phone to the pizza lady) and just then her teen-aged niece stops by. Pizza lady has her niece take me up the street and around the corner to the veggie stand. The niece speaks fluent English with an American accent and slang? I ask if she learned in school and she laughs – this is all from watching videos! I’m beyond impressed. The veggie stand has leeks and a giant melon, but no greens. Dang. How do these people survive?

The second time I go back for a pizza it’s an hour to wait for the dough to finish rising so I decide to go find the suspension bridge. I follow google maps, find sheep and chickens, a small vineyard and some olive trees, the gardens where the locals are growing their own veggies. I’m not sure if I’ve ever crossed a suspension bridge before and it’s quite an experience, honestly. No usable handrails and the further I go the wobblier it gets and the slower and more carefully I tread until the last few feet when I rush to safety and realize that maybe I’d been holding my breath most of that time. The town dogs are friendly and at least one in every small pack wants his ears rubbed. The scenery is gorgeous. I know I’m at the end of the season of beautiful weather, but there are flowers blooming in the park, it’s sunny and in the mid-70s with a little breeze, and I can eat the pizza in Albania – I could have made worse choices!

The soundscape out the front windows is occasionally a bit raucous – music, men yelling and bantering, cars and trucks going by, kids on bicycles laughing and shrieking, lots of clanging and honking – nothing like Southall and it ebbs and flows. When it’s particularly loud I stay tucked in, not out of any sense of danger, but more like a cat. I’ve seen lots of dogs here but not a single cat. The soundscape out my bathroom window is the pure white noise of rushing river. And sometimes pigeons, who hang out under the bridge. The river changes color with the amount of rain and runoff – milk chocolate, cement gray, on rare occasions, clear. Speaking of chocolate, by the end of the second week I’m absolutely out of chocolate and starting to fill the gap by drinking two mugs of Joe’y a day. Joe’y is expensive and I have no idea how I’m going to resupply since they are a small company and don’t ship overseas yet. I’m also out of box milk. Time for a provision run. I head down the north side of the park, and every store I’ve gotten food from is closed. Dang. I’ve recently gotten a hint from google maps that there’s a farmer’s market at the end of town on Saturday morning, so I decide to scope out the location since I’m down here anyway. Lots of suspicious, barking dogs hanging out under the roofs, not like the uptown dogs at all, but this does seem to be the spot. On the way back, suddenly I spy a new store. The woman behind the counter is as suspicious as the dogs at this end of town, but she has box milk, cocoa powder, oats and pasta – as my purchases pile up on the counter she warms up a bit and is brusquely helpful with the few things I haven’t been able to locate on my own.

I walk home past the mysterious spike bomb tree (anybody know what it is?) and the Xylophone park benches. The blue skies of morning are rapidly filling with clouds and I hear the sound of thunder in the distance. An hour later the skies open, the thunder is rolling and booming through the mountains. The rainy season has arrived! The power goes out, the Wi-Fi goes with it. Turns out that the Albanian eSIM I bought to have phone connection when I don’t have Wi-Fi doesn’t work in the flat. It barely works in town. This seems like it ought to be concerning, but I’ve spent enough time living remotely that I just pull out my Kindle and settle in for a cozy afternoon, and sure enough, within an hour everything is restored.

Saturday morning I load my pockets, grab my empty bags and set out for the farmer’s market. Town is busy. All the stores are open, all the cafes are full, 3/4 of the people are wearing black so my hoodie fits right in. Cars are in places they usually aren’t, the dogs are making themselves scarce, people are cheerful, bustling, stopping to chat, old women on street corners selling peppers and apples, I imagine summer here is like this all the time. I find the market and start to navigate the language barrier in a busy place. I find a woman with a big bin of beautiful little potatoes – hand her 400 lek (thinking – $5 of potatoes should get me through the rest of my time here.) She loads a grocery bag FULL, I gesture thank you, that’s plenty, and she hands me 200 lek back! I buy a round of dried figs, two persimmons, but where are the Greens!? Finally somebody waves an arm and I notice the much bigger farmer’s market across the river. Dodging cars and kids on bicycles and old men chatting in the middle of the sidewalk, I finally find the motherlode! Huzzah! I temporarily forget that I’m going to have to carry all this home. One thing I’m slowly figuring out here is that a nodding head is No and a shaking head is Yes. This is so backwards it just about freezes my head when I try to do it. I accidentally emphatically refuse a beautiful bunch of scallions – oops – try again with the correct head motion. I buy a big bag of leaves that may or may not be spinach (it is) and I find broccoli! My favorite vegetable, I buy two big heads. I walk home with aching arms and a soaring heart – maybe I can survive here after all!