Sunday
May 8
page 36

2005 BALKANS TOUR

Ben Oostdam
After my return from the Citadel, I took a short rest, then walked around and took some photographs of the colorful evening sky (below).
I also tried to locate Cafe Grand, but when I did not succeed, I returned to the restaurant garden across from my hotel and ordered Shishkebab, Amstel, Skanderbeg, coffee and icecream for about 1,000 Leks. I watched in fascination how Albanian girls hung from the lips of their escorts with complete concentration and adulation. so different from their American counterparts.
Next, I chatted with Firdus in the hotel lobby. He told me how he had joined some 10,000 young men who commandeered vessels in 1990 to carry them to Italy. After that, he spent two years in Malaysia being trained in hotel management, then went back to Albany to study Law. He was adamant that property expropriated by the communists in 1941 would eventually be returned to the offspring of the original owners.
Then, suddenly, I heard a sweet voice calling: "Ben!" - and there was Valdete again with her husband to take me out to her brother for the evening!
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