I’m writing to you now from the rooftop terrace of my riad in the medina of Fes, Morocco. We’ll get to that, but there’s some catching up to do. The last time I wrote I was halfway through my stay in Çorovodë and I’d just discovered the weekly farmers market and come home with two pomegranates and more potatoes than I knew what to do with. There’s a myth about Persephone getting kidnapped by Hades and taken away to the underworld. In the myth, Persephone eats some pomegranate seeds and that binds her to stay with Hades, or at least to return regularly, so there’s some heavy symbolism with pomegranates, but also, eating the food of a place makes that place a part of you, literally – there’s a connection there. I wrote about this in my book, because while riding through the Central Valley of California I picked a pomegranate and ate a few seeds that were truly awful. Tasted like poison, I spat and spat and for hours couldn’t rid myself of the taste. Remembering the myth, it was not a good moment. That was the last time I ate a pomegranate – it’s not something I do lightly. I tucked the Çorovodë pomegranates into the fridge, pending further consideration.

Several people have asked me why I went there in the first place. The pragma is pretty simple, honestly. I’d been researching inexpensive places where a US citizen can stay longer than 90 days. Because transits between stops are the most expensive part of this “lifestyle” and I wanted to know what my options were. Albania kept coming up as a place I could stay for a whole year. So, because I was half out of my mind with stress and crop dusting toxicity while I was planning this adventure and because I had fallen in long distance love with a house in Kelibia, Tunisia and booked the Only three-month block it was available, and because I wasn’t mathing very well when I booked my time in Morocco, I wound up with a random month at the front end of my journey and decided to try Albania on for size early on so if I did decide to go back I’d know what I was getting into. That simple. Not sorry.

The second time I went to the farmers market a man with one hand took the time to teach me how to say “thank you” – in Albanian it’s “Faleminderit” but the way he said it sounded like Folly-ma-Ken. I practiced it all the way home but when I said it into the translator it came out “talk to the dog” – oy! It’s really hard to learn a new language, but this is one word I wanted to get right, because I really do feel so grateful to Çorovodë and the people who live there – people who have been welcoming and generous and kind to me all month.

The second time I decided to attempt the loop walk with the suspension bridge I went in the reverse direction. It took me several tries to find the correct path – but once I was getting close I saw horse manure on the stones ahead – the path led nowhere but the suspension bridge – a horse had crossed it! I didn’t figure a horse would do anything silly like crossing an unsafe bridge so that time I managed to stroll across, breathing normally, rolling with the movement of the bridge, zero stress – progress! I finally saw my first cat on that walk, which was reassuring, and picked some sprigs of rosemary from a giant shrubbery.

There’s a fairly inconvenient reality that you can’t enter a country without proof of when and how you’re planning to leave again. I had a gap in my itinerary between Morocco and Tunisia that I needed to make a decision about before I entered Morocco. I spent most of my last week in Çorovodë wrestling with Airbnb listings, Schengen rules, Tunisia’s 90-day limit, transit costs, transit routes, pragma and particulars. I also wanted to be somewhere that I actually wanted to be, not spend 10 weeks in some dismal fallback position. I was looking for walkable beauty, affordability, food I can eat, nothing environmental that will make me sick, and peace and quiet for writing. Three times in a row I found a perfect place on Airbnb, tried to book, and suddenly the price more than doubled – and utilities were going to be extra, with no clue by how much, not even a range. The Schengen agreement includes 29 countries (and growing) and basically you can only be in the whole area for 90 days before needing to be elsewhere for 90 days before you can return. I have Sweden (a Schengen country) already booked starting on 29.June. I was looking at places in Turkey and Egypt. I couldn’t afford anywhere in the UK or Ireland (which are not part of Schengen). I was looking at Greece and Italy and nothing was falling into place. Between Schengen and Tunisia I had about a week of time where I simply needed to stop existing. I was considering flying to Istanbul for a few days. Everything felt expensive and exhausting, the deadline to fill the gap with Something was looming closer and closer. I didn’t want to buy a “dummy ticket” that I knew I wasn’t going to use – I wanted to solve the problem and be done with it!!! I feel like I “wasted” a whole week of my time in Çorovodë sitting on my laptop for hours and hours and hours every day looking at maps and listings and doing math.

In the middle of this, my sister sent me a video on Instagram. Apparently there were some serious riots going on in Tirana, the capital of Albania. There was no indication of any unrest in Çorovodë so this was a bit of a shock. Bit of background, best as I can piece it together: back in 2024, Prime Minister Edi Rama’s government handed Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump an island and some shoreline that were a beloved nature reserve, giving Kushner’s firm “strategic investor” status, co-ownership, and a law change so a luxury resort could be built in a protected area. There were some serious questions about corruption, about whether or who had the right to sell that land, forged land deeds, etc. Then in May of 2026 some Albanians got (reasonably in my view) upset about tall barbed wire fences blocking access to their beaches. The “Flamingo Revolution” started (there were flamingos who called the nature reserve home) and by June and July protests had spread to the capital. Now, in October, the students had joined in, upset about rising prices, the quality of education, limited opportunities, and most especially, corruption at the highest levels of government. The protests continued to grow, things were getting violent, suddenly I was checking the news daily because I had a ticket to fly out of Rinas, NW of Tirana, and as government buildings were being set on fire and Molotov cocktails were thrown at the Central Bank, I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to leave. All in all a tense last week.

By the time I finally booked a place in a little town in Spain for 10 weeks and booked the ferry out of Morocco and took a deep breath, I only had two nights left in Çorovodë. I’d promised myself pizza on my last night in town. There was one specific restaurant I’d been meaning to try and I was almost out of time. I hiked up the hill behind my apartment to Turhani’s restaurant. The internet said I could get tavë kosi there – the Albanian national dish – lamb and rice baked under yogurt and eggs in a clay pot. The welcome was warm, the veranda had a comfy couch, the view was awesome – the tavë kosi was a myth. I settled on meatballs and potatoes with no idea what would actually show up. The meatballs came floating in a creamy broth soup, they were sublime, with french fries and bread, mountain tea and a platter of fresh fruit that I didn’t even order completed the meal. It was legit the best meal I ate in Çorovodë, it was less than $10, and one of my only regrets was not trying Turhani’s sooner. I was still working on saying “thank you” so I tried, and was corrected, and was corrected again, again, and every time the woman repeated the word I got worse! She was a bit of a mumbler, the syllables all running together, and I walked down the hill pleasantly full but humbled by my lack of language ability.

I was in a strange situation of having too many lek left. Albania is a closed currency, which means the only place to use them, or exchange them, is in Albania. I was going to be at the airport very early in the morning, before the currency exchange place was open. I’d withdrawn 40,000 lek at the start of my month there, the equivalent of $500. That’s my monthly “living on” budget. I’d eaten very, very well for a month and I’d only managed to spend about $350. So I walked back down to Arsido’s (the only little store with dark chocolate!) to get a few bars for the road, and to break a 5,000 lek note. The girl who spoke English wasn’t there, but an older woman was and I decided to try to thank her in Albanian, and huzzah! She was patient and clear and broke it down for me one syllable at a time. This time it sounded like Folly-mon-Dairy – the first part sounded much like the Jamaican “jolly man” (but with an f) and then dairy, like where milk comes from. She said it almost like singing and I practiced all the way home. (Speaking of dairy – one of the things I wasn’t expecting in Albania – there’s kos (yogurt) and cheese and butter in abundance – but apparently none of the white cow liquid is left as milk or cream (at least in Çorovodë?) The only milk I found was shelf stable boxes imported from Italy, thickened with vegetable something and called “Barista” – so that’s what I used for my morning Joe’y – I’m assuming it has something to do with a history of no refrigeration and food preservation – but wow!)

My last night in Çorovodë I returned to my beloved pizza place and ordered two – one for packing and one for the night in the hotel before I was going to fly out (at 5:55am – ugh) and mentioned my idea of wanting to return for a longer stay. The pizza lady and her husband said that they could help me find a rental apartment (with a kitchen) for 200 euros a month. We sorted all that out on my phone, typing back and forth using Google Translate. I paid her double for the pizza and managed to say Faleminderit comprehensibly enough that she understood and we repeated it back and forth several times, then she pulled a beautiful cluster of grapes from behind the counter and put them in a bag as a going away present and my heart was singing as I walked up the square to my flat for the last time, saying goodbye to my favorite puppy on the way.

I’m going to miss the sound of the river out the bathroom window, the incredible and ubiquitous cheese, the sound of the muezzin gaining confidence by the day as he calls the town to prayer, living among the mountaintops, the thunderstorms rolling through, “my” puppy who finds me every time I walk through town, the little shops blinking in and out of existence, a space of my own where I could listen to music and dance while cooking with zero self-consciousness.

The next morning the taxi driver who was bringing me back to Tirana showed up 2 hours early and suddenly I was rushing, last minute packing, checking and double checking, taking out the trash and sweeping the floor, and realizing that there were two pomegranates still waiting in the fridge. Decision time. I held one in my hand, weighing the consequences – and yes, I do want to return to this place. I broke one open, seeds glistening inside, Faleminderit, I ate a bunch of them and threw the rest of the pomegranate out the bathroom window as a thank you offering to the pigeons who had kept me company with their songs. I left the other one in the fridge with a block of cheese for the person who would come to clean the flat. I took several of the pizza lady’s grapes, rinsed them off and ate them, they were delicious so I brought the rest along with the second pizza. The cab driver helped me carry my luggage down the stairs and away we went, down the mountain toward Berat and then Tirana. The leaves were starting to turn colors with the change of season. About 40 minutes down the curvy, windy road I was suddenly carsick like I haven’t been since I was a kid. Luckily the driver pulled over as soon as I asked and I jumped out and headed for the bushes. Up came the grapes, up came the pomegranate seeds, out went any desire to ever brave the road to Çorovodë again.

If you missed it – go back and look at the brand name on that cheese! Delicious, but if it ever got imported it would need better branding – haha.