Things Icelandic People Like

Saying "No, Thanks!" to European Union Membership.  Within an hour of arriving in Iceland, we spotted a billboard that said "ESB - NEI TAKK!"  Our quick airplane study session had taught us that "nei takk" means "no, thank you" and the European Union flag keyed us into the meaning of "ESB."  We saw hay bails wrapped in branded plastic with the same message throughout the countryside.  Even though membership talks successfully began between Iceland and the EU in 2010, 56% of Icelanders polled this February were against them moving forward.  The main causes for concern have to do with agriculture and fisheries.  Basically, the enormous subsidies currently provided to sheep farmers would be cut drastically, the import tax currently on imported meat and produce would be lifted and the local farmers would get competition that they simply couldn't win. As for the fisheries, once EU member states get access to Icelandic waters, there's no telling what would happen.  Both of these things would, undoubtedly, affect the island's environment (on top of its ability to be self-sufficient, a vital skill for an island nation).

Coca-Cola Products.  Icelanders consume more Coca-Cola product per capita than any country in the world.  It's true.  The upside to such a depressing statistic is that they are the only European country to sell my very favorite soda, Fresca, a product of the Coca-Cola Company.  Aside from Iceland, it is distributed only to North and South America.  So, thank you, Iceland.  (Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Light, Sprite and Sprite Zero were the other products regularly on hand).
When buying a soda like a true Icelander, one needn't have any available cash.  Because, another thing that Icelandic people like is...

Using a Credit Card for Everything.  Absolutely everything.  Even the vending machines have card swipers.

Cairns.  Some marked trails, some stood lonely and tall in the middle of fields - ancient leftovers from a trail long since disappeared.  At Skálabrekka, on the drive toward Þingvellir National Park, we saw dozens of tourists buildings cairns in a field just chock full of them.  A different sort of marking, just saying that they were there.  This cairn was spotted on the way up the Strandir Coast of the Westfjords.

Saga Museums.  The Sagas of Icelanders are the best known and most loved pieces in Icelandic literature.  Written in the 13th and 14th century by unknown authors, they tell the stories of the 10th and 11th, when the descendents of the original settlers began to navigate their way through life in this new world.  This involved lots of murder, as far as I can tell, as almost every saga details one killing after another.  Of course, this makes for great entertainment.  So, museums telling the stories have popped up around Iceland.  Most are in the location of the actual saga.  Let's just say, we saw a lot of violence reenacted by wooden statues and grotesque dummies.  Above, at the Saga Museum in Borgarnes, a tavern full of men listen to the very first poem recited by young Egil of Egil's Saga.  Spoiler alert: Egil grew up to become quite the murderer.

Self-Service Soup Stations.  In tourist information centers, gas stations, bakeries, museum gift shops and restaurants, there was always a big cauldron of soup sitting in the corner.  The soup of the day was always self-serve, inexpensive and offered up with slices of complimentary bread.  Cauliflower soup popped up twice, but usually mushroom soup and kjötsúpa, Icelandic lamb soup, were the ones on hand. 
Usually, a self-serve water station was also stationed somewhere in any room.  Icelandic tap water is excellent and having big pitchers on counters and bars across the country was excellent.  No waiting to ask your waiter for a refill, here!

Sod Roofs.  This architectural feature dates all the way back to the Vikings.  Covering log cabins with birch bark was the roofing method of choices throughout Icelandic history - and since birch bark so easily curls or blows away, the pieces were weighed down with think pieces of sod.  The process was labor intensive, but basically free, so it continued on in rural areas for centuries.  Recently, people have begun using sod roofs again.  The birch is waterproof, the sod is a great insulator and the weight of it all compresses the logs beneath to make the walls more draught-proof.  The sod roof above seems to be mostly chosen for look.

Old Barrels and Concrete Cellars

Podrumi i Vjetër roughly means "Old Cellar."  While it's not that old - the cement and brick shed was erected in 1953 - it is historic.  Built during communism, bombed during the 1999 conflict, partially rebuilt, privatized and now being spruced up, Old Cellar is something of a symbol for Kosovar wine.  In a country where many don't drink and few people vacation, viticulture remains a low-key affair here in Rahovec, the center of what might be called a "wine region."
Rahovec (pronounced "Rah-o-wits") is in a dry valley without a real river.  The landscape is full of new grapes, beehives, cows and rusting cars.  We spent two days in town and lots of hours being shown around the vineyards.  Everywhere we went, we were met with surprise and warm welcomes.

Farms and vineyards sometimes seem thematically separate.  In Kosovo, where wine tourism is still in the nascent stages, the country's largest vineyards feel different - any similarity to Tuscany or Sonoma begins and ends with rows of grapes.  The slick operations found in other places are noticeably absent here.  In Rahovec, wine vats rise like silos and tractors putter along the main street.  This is a farming town, not a resort.
Leki Killaz is one of the head "technologues" at Podrumi i Vjetër.  When we met him he was returning from lunch with a bag of onions, still dirty from the field.  He changed from shorts and a t-shirt into his overalls and led us on an informal tour of the cellar.

What stood out to us immediately was how relaxed the visit was.  Leki showed us the new, stainless steel vats, the pumps, the mashers - the typical trappings of any big vineyard.  But he also brought us into little-used, old corners of the basement, where musty oak casks sat unused and bats flitted in the rafters.  We tasted a very good chardonnay (Rahovec's best variety) and talked about our favorite wines - Leki liked California whites, South African and Australian varieties, South America in general.  Italy, he thought, was going downhill fast.  It was an easy, fun conversation, with none of the normal talking points.
The cellars survived, mostly, when the building was bombed, but couldn't resist the ravages of disuse and age.  Old Cellar is beginning a big reclamation project, re-isolating the concrete storage tanks and making plans for a prettified tasting room.  Still, the vineyards "shop" is really just the warehouse.  When we arrived, accompanied by the Rahovec Tourism director, we needed to wait while the guard phoned the owner - he wanted to make sure it was okay that we were there for a tour.  We got the sense that Kosovo's vineyards aren't used to visitors.

Saranda Shala, the director and driving force of Rahovec Tourism, expressed a lot of frustration about how slowly things progressed here.  She had spent seven years living in Canada and understood better than most what wine tourism can do for a town - and for Kosovo in general.
"It's really hard," she told us, when we had to wait at Old Cellar.  "Things like this aren't supposed to happen.  I try to tell them that they should be happy about tourists, but it takes a long time." She's been trying to set up home stays in town, and runs tours of the region.  It was exciting for her to have us there - even with all her work, visitors are rare.  And, really, that's the problem.  It's not that Rahovec vintners weren't happy to show us around, it's just that they get caught by surprise when someone arrives.  They still can't quite believe that anyone would want to come see their farm.

At Stone Castle winery, the biggest of Rahovec's producers, two men sat outside in the shade. They had glasses of coffee and a plate of apricot pits before them.
Stone Castle is Kosovo's heavyweight; when you order a local wine in Pristina, chances are it will be from here.  Unlike Old Cellar, they have a shop and a young woman who can give tours.  Still, when we arrived unannounced, the gatekeeper and guide were a little flustered.  It took some frantic calls and hand-wringing to get us in.  It didn't seem promising until we told them we were from America.  "Oh!" the guard said.  "America! No problem!"  And we were off.
Zenel Durguti was charged with showing us the cellars.  A softspoken, wonderfully polite man, he told our guide that he wished he'd known we were coming so that he could have worn something nicer.  He had worked at the vineyard for thirty years and knew everything about the process, about winemaking and Stone Castle - he knew the story of the oak barrels (Croatian oak, crafted in Slovenia) and the history of the region.  When he expressed sadness that he'd only had a chance to finish secondary school, we told him that he could be a professor of wine.

On a terribly hot day, it was wonderful to spend some time in the cool of the cellar.  The one constant in wine cellars is the smell - mustiness, dampness, sweet-rot.  It's the same everywhere, and it immediately brings to mind age and years of waiting.
Here in Stone Castle's cellar, some wine glasses had been set out hopefully on paper napkins. Zenel drew us two pitchers of wine - white and red - from big barrels, choosing our tastes carefully.  We stood and drank and tried to communicate.  Once we'd had our fill, Zenel brought out a decanter of brandy - a piece of masking tape was stuck onto the crystal, with "1986" written in marker.  They called it Raki, but it bore no resemblance to the supermarket firewater we're used to.  This was delicious, smooth, honeyed and strong - one of the best brandy's we've ever tasted. And, yes, it was from 1986.  Zenel remembered putting it in the barrel.

"They shouldn't sell beer in the cafes," Blerim Shulina told us. "In Italy, in France, they only have wine at the cafes, no beer.  We should drink what we make."
We met Blerim one evening by chance, outside his shop.  Within a few minutes, he'd gotten us into his car and on our way to his cellar, which was much smaller and more basic than the others we'd toured.  Blerim is one of a few dozen small winemakers in the Rahovec area, and one of the better informed about what it takes to develop the industry.  Over a bottle of chardonnay on his patio, he told us about how hard it was to market and sell in Kosovo.
Because his operation is so small, he has a hard time getting awareness for his brand.  At the same time, it costs him more to produce each bottle, so it's difficult to compete with the larger companies.  Wine is a volume industry here.  Blerim sells his bottles for €3.60 each; Stone Castle prices theirs at €3.10.  In Kosovo, that's considered a big difference.

When we arrived at Sefa Wine Cellar, Blerim's business, we found his father at work applying labels to their new red wine.  A few years ago, a German organization gifted Rahovec a bottling machine so that the smaller vineyards could have an easier time meeting European standards.  The bottler was a huge boon for cellars like Sefa but, as Blerim explained, "it doesn't do labels."

Blerim, his father and a few cousins produce about 50,000 bottles a year, and have entered competitions and expositions in Pristina.  Still, this is a tiny operation and it's focused on craft, taste and the family legacy.
In the end, the people of Rahovec are farmers and they approach winemaking as someone should. Not as a showcase for the brand, but as a process of seasons and time, harvesting and aging.  We got the sense that everyone - from Blerim to Saranda, Leki to Zenel - really cared that we liked the wine.  Unlike at other tastings in other countries, these people watched us sip and think and were genuinely happy when we told them it was good.  We're far from experts, but it didn't matter.  We were all having a good time.

Beerfest in Kosovo

It sounds like the beginning of a fight or a bad joke.  What happens when you ply a thousand young Kosovars - mostly between 16 and 25 years old - with lots of cheap beer?  When you do this outside on a weekend night, in front of a huge screen showing an important soccer match?  When there are no police around, almost no security?
The answer: all those young Kosovars get mildly tipsy, have a pleasantly calm evening and eventually begin dancing.  This is the Kosovo Beerfest, but really this is Kosovo - safe, quiet, friendly and ready to have a good time.

With the blocky Pristina skyline behind us, we marveled at what we were experiencing.  The beer was so cheap (three bottles for one euro!) and so plentiful (twenty different kinds!) that it bordered on dangerous.  In America or Germany, people would have gotten drunk without thinking about it.  There would certainly be fights or vomiting.  Here, young men and women talked and laughed in groups, cheered on the soccer players and smiled at the foreigners in their midst.  It felt less combustable than convivial.

Kosovars are ninety-five percent muslim, which partly explains the restraint these youngsters were showing.  Even though it's a very secular society, drinking isn't a big part of public life.  Pristina is a cafe city, with hundreds of outdoor tables and a leisurely pace.  And while those tables are usually full of people, the drinks of choice are coffee and fruit juice.  While drinking's not frowned upon, being drunk is.  At last year's Beer Fest, there were over 18,000 tickets sold, but only 14,000 liters of beer consumed.  In some places, a liter of beer is the prelude to an evening, not its entirety.

It's not as though the beer companies weren't trying - they basically begged us to buy more.  No one was ID'ed (this is still Kosovo, only a few steps away from lawlessness).  There were lots of beer-pong tables set up, leggy waitresses tried to lure in more drinkers to the makeshift bar stands.  A hulking Peja sign loomed over the whole evening, advertising the Kosovo beer powerhouse.

The event was put on by "Kosovo - the Young Europeans," which is an offshoot of the "Kosovo Nation Branding Campaign."  The venue was the IRC Youth center, an UNESCO and UNICEF funded counseling, recreation and teaching center in downtown Pristina.   Beerfest was held on the low roof, up a long flight of stairs, with heating ducts and air conditioning units poking up into the space.  Flags hung above us on dozens of poles - France, Turkey, Switzerland, pride of place going to Albania and the United states, the Kosovar flag waving in proud blue.  The giant television lit up the night with images of Ukraine and Poland, the Euro Championship hosts.

When we walked among the groups of people, from one pool of light to another, there were lots of quizzical smiles and stares, but we never felt threatened or excluded.  Often, people wanted to pose for pictures.  Near the end of the match, a DJ began playing music and people stood up to stretch their legs and dance chastely.

This is only the second Kosovo Beer Fest, and the second in eight months.  Perhaps, because the country is so young, Kosovo is trying to catch up.  The young people here were happy for the most part.  They wanted no part of rowdiness or debauchery - being outside on a beautiful night was enough.  Freedom, to some extent, is a novelty.  Getting drunk wasn't the point.  Getting to hang out as a community was exactly what they needed.

Everything's Coming Up Roses

 If you've ever sniffed rose perfume, chances are you've smelled Bulgaria.  This is the land of Rosa damascene, the damask rose, which French scent houses and essential oil companies call "Bulgarian gold."  Over seventy percent of the world's rose oil is distilled here in Bulgaria.  Though a lot of the industry is centered around the town of Rosa damascene, the whole countryside is redolent of the flowers.

Rose oil is called "otto" here, and it's special for a couple of reasons.  First, the climate of Bulgaria is supposed to be better suited for growing roses than anywhere else - the flowers have a more ambrosial quality, some say, and the otto smells more like roses than oil produced in other countries.  Also, the Bulgarians grow older, heritage varieties which have much more scent, and they have a longstanding tradition of distillation and cultivation.
Most importantly, Bulgaria isn't a wealthy country and it's very, very expensive to produce rose otto.  A single ounce of high quality oil requires about one hundred and seventy pounds of rose petals - thousands and thousands of flowers.  The process is labor intensive, highly agricultural, thorny and nobody else wants to do it.  Not exactly romantic work, but the people here are proud of it.
At one of dozens of "Rose of Bulgaria" stores, tourists can buy all kinds of pink skin creams, shampoos and perfumed soaps.

It's no surprise that people eat roses - they belong to the same family (Rosaceae) as apples, plums, cherries and myriad other fruit trees.  Rose water - a byproduct of otto production - is common here, and finds its way into some foods.  There are cakes and Turkish delight (appropriated and dubbed "Bulgarian delight") made with the stuff, as well as marzipan, syrup and even a few cocktails.  There are also more than a few varieties of tea made from the petals, and a whole host of products made from the rose hips.
When we were staying in the little town of Bachevo, we made these rose-jam butter cookies using two different Bulgarian preserves - a "jam" made with candied petals and a rose hip "marmalade."

The marmalade (on the left) obviously tasted much fruitier, and it was hard to detect any rose essence at all.  The jam was much sweeter and the taste was surprising - it was difficult to distinguish between flavor and fragrance.  The scent of a rose is so distinct; it's a shock to have it meet one's tongue.  In fact, the first impression it gave was of eating soap, though it doesn't actually taste soapy at all.  

On toast, the hip marmalade was better.  On cookies, the floral jam stood out in a great way.  

 

At the Queen's Winery House in Balchik, which hawks its wares right inside Queen Marie's seaside gardens, there's a rather syrupy-sounding rose wine.  We assumed it would be a cloying, saccharine sip, but it was actually not bad.  Or, rather, it was bad - but not as bad as cough-syrup-pink rose wine with honey could be.

Rosa damascene was brought to Bulgaria by the Ottomans in the 16th century, and the Turks still cultivate the flowers heavily - Turkish oil is now the main competition for Bulgarian otto.  China has begun distilling recently, and Morocco and Pakistan have rose industries.  Persia claims to be the birthplace of the genus, but Syria disagrees.  France is the largest importer of otto, and has a long history with the plant.
But it is Bulgaria, certainly, where the rose smells sweetest - it has come to be a symbol for the nation.  There are blossom festivals in the springtime and harvest traditions, roses planted in roundabouts and postcard pictures of baskets of flowers. In the evening, especially as dusk settles in, the gardens and trellises of this nation are as fragrant as any place on earth.

The Sârbi Țuică Still

Just off the pothole-riddled road in the center of the little hamlet of Sârbi, under a ramshackle wooden roof next to a stream, we found this old woman turning a crank slowly, her eyes glazed over, her mouth set in a slight smile.  She was making ţuică, a traditional plum brandy that Romanians can’t exist without.
Ţuică is firewater, moonshine - a 100 proof, scald-the-tongue tradition that isn’t exactly legal but is still the national drink.  Accompanied by the rushing burble of the water beside her, the woman seemed an unlikely outlaw distiller, but there she was.

We took a small detour to Sârbi because there's an interesting brook laundry whirlpool there - a kind of sluice-fed, foaming vortex of rotting boards where the village women wash their rugs and other sturdy cloth.  Nobody was doing their washing, but there was a group of people tasting and buying ţuică.  In the same complex was a sawmill and fulling mill, plus a turn-off in the road where men stood around and watched the passing traffic (which consisted of at least as many horse carts as cars).
The cooling bath was fed with a pipe that ran directly from the stream, and was hung with the cups and buckets of the tasters.

The still was hand-pounded copper, with a long, swan-necked top that looked particularly unstable.  A woodfire was hissing in the brick beneath the still, the crank turned a scraper that kept the mash from sticking.  An enameled bucket caught the intermittent spurts of alcohol that emerged from a low spigot. With one's nose close to the collected, clear ţuică, the effect was eye watering - the fumes were enough to get drunk on.

Ţuică is served before every respectable dinner in Romania, usually just a small amount in a shot glass to clear the palate and prime the stomach.  The man who was giving tastes of ţuică seemed – because of his ruddiness, tilt and excitement  – to be a lifelong connoisseur.  A few bottles of differently aged liquids sat on a table with a plate of bread.  Everyone partook, including our host.

The mash sat uncovered in plastic barrels, smelling strongly under the midday sun.  It was not, as one might say in America, “safely stored,” but it doesn’t matter; any bacteria will get killed in the still.
Plums are the most commonly grown fruit tree in Romania, and are used almost exclusively for making brandy.  As with 19th century American apples, the breeds aren’t developed for eating, but instead for their fermenting properties.  The "Prun Tuleu gras" is the king of Romanian plums, but isn't much by itself - the flesh is very firm and apple like, it doesn't have the liquidity that Americans are used to. Every country house has at least one tree.

Operations like the one in Sârbi aren’t entirely legal, but they’re tolerated.  Traditions run strong in Romania, and the thought of enforcing the ban on home distillation is particularly loathsome to peasant communities who couldn’t afford store bought liquors or the permits needed to make their alcohol comply with the law.  The effect of the ban is limited - ţuică is sold everywhere, in plain sight, on roadsides and in little stores, often in repurposed wine or soda bottles.  But the majority of the stuff is made at home or at a communal still for a family’s own use – it would be impossible and mean to enforce the ban.

At our homestay in Ieud, we were presented with a bottle of the host’s own ţuică every night before dinner.  We had a few tiny glasses, then let it be.  The bottle had been reused a number of times, the threads of the cap had worn out.  The family had grown a pear inside the glass themselves, which initially caused some confusion.  Eventually we got it straightened out; the pear was for flavoring (minimal) and decoration (very pretty), the alcohol was one hundred percent plum.
Perhaps worried about our taste (or tolerance) for the stuff, our host mother also brought out a bottle of cherry liquor and a precious decanter of black-currant alcohol, deep purple, that she wanted Rebecca especially to try.  It was all very tasty, but the ţuică was our favorite - it considerably loosened up the table conversation.

What To Do in Cluj-Napoca

We arrived in Cluj-Napoca on a half-empty train with rain-streaked windows.  That morning we'd crossed the border from Vršac in a Serbian taxi.  The driver was fast, the landscape was a blur of sunrise and outstretched fields.  It had been a glorious day.
On the journey from the plains of the southwest into the foothills of Transylvania, the landscape changed.  Farms were smaller, men mowed hay with scythes, draft horses replaced tractors and, instead of concrete, the houses in the mountains were made of wood.  Romania, in our first glimpse of it, was rural in the extreme, like a gothic fairytale.
But then we got to Cluj-Napoca and spent two damp days floating in a sea of modernity, music and food - the dripping forests, wolves and castles would have to wait.  Above, "Rupa and the April Fishes" - a San Fransisco based band that sang in French and Spanish - plays to a crowd of soggy urbanites.  As we were passing by, a group of young mimes showed up in stripes and facepaint. The mimes danced soundlessly, we felt bemused, the setting could have been anywhere.

We had come to Cluj-Napoca - which is called "Cluj" informally - because it seemed a promising start to a big wilderness.  It was supposed to be our doorway to Romania.  What we found was a separate thing, receiving almost nothing from its surrounds, a kind of island of cosmopolitanism.  After two days we knew nothing about the country and our minds were swirling instead with concert dates and cinema premiers (the Transylvania International Film Festival begins June 1st, there are posters everywhere).
Cluj had been described in our guidebook as a university city, which meant two things to us.  First: the guidebook would probable be out of date.  College towns change quickly, what was new and popular two years ago will be passe by the time we visit.  Second: the town wouldn't be out of date.  If there are students and young people, a city can't help but feel stylish.  Students don't care about how old the town museum is, or the story behind the belltower or what the old mayor said about the Hungarians - they want good places to eat and exciting places to drink.  Case in point: Kaja Tanya restaurant on Inocentiu Micu Klein.  A daily menu, vegetarian options, excellent food, cheap prices, bottles of liquor being passed from hand to hand - it was great, it was fun, we began to fall in love with the city, rain be dammed.

In an old theater space, thin, good looking youths had gathered for an art and fashion fair.  The paint on the ceiling was flaking off, the floor was scuffed and creaky, the whole building felt as though it had just been opened to the world after decades of decay.  It would have felt like Bram Stoker's version of a boutique, but the venue wasn't the point - we were the only ones looking at the light fixtures and crumbling moldings, everyone else was focused on the present.
The clothes were made for very angular people, a few photographers roamed around to document the coming together of Cluj's fashionable set.

The rain never stopped.  We spent two nights and the day between jumping from shelter to shelter, hoping for a break in the weather but never finding one.  What we found instead was exemplary coffee (at Toulouse cafe, the milk was artistically frothed, the espresso perfect) and a cafe crowd that spoke a fluent, easy mix of Romanian and English.
A big stage had been set up outside in the square.  We listened (sipping our second cups) to a full orchestra play for a few umbrella-holding pedestrians, the conductor exuberant, the string section shivering, the audience very meagre.

On a side street, an "international foods festival" was taking place to very little fanfare.  There were some excited customers huddled at picnic tables, but there was a lot of food and few mouths.  Local restaurants had set up tents to dish out hot bowls of ramen and boards of sushi, German sausages, goulash and generic "Shanghai Express."  This man was beginning a huge batch of paella while talking to a reporter - he had his earbuds in and a camera slung around his shoulders.  He seemed excited.

Our best meal in Cluj was at Baracca, a grey-toned box of lights and wine bottles on Napoca street itself.  When we lived in New York, we played (as all New Yorkers do) at being restaurant critics and knowledgable gourmands.  That seems like a long time ago now - it's difficult to find good food in the hinterlands, much less great food.  An elegant, well cooked plate brings with it the thick aroma of nostalgia, an opportunity to dredge up fond recollections and old discussions at different tables.  Now, we talk less about the food we're eating and more about the dim-lit places of the past.  Do we get homesick?  No.  But we often dream of traveling in the New York of our memories.  Was the grilled duck breast at Baracca good?  I can't remember, I was lost somewhere else.

It shouldn't be surprising that a city like this, in Transylvania, is so worldly.  In metropolitan streets, influences and culture jump from country to country, city to city, bypassing everything in between.  What was surprising about Cluj-Napoca was how quickly it had appeared from the pines and hayfields, like a sudden patch of electric light springing up from the 19th century.  Just a few miles away from where we were eating, sheep were being penned in for the night, women were cooking over woodfires.

We finished our last night in Cluj at Old Shepherd Pub on Matei Corvin street, with bottles of Silva beer.  The young owner had spent some time in Britain and insisted that he was modeling his bar after the English pubs he'd grown to love.  He also insisted that we drink his favorite local brew instead of British ale and the cellar space had more of the lost Alphabet City grunginess of the old East village than anything one could find on Avenue A today.
We left Cluj in another downpour, having seen almost none of its sights but feeling that we knew it well - both because its demeanor was familiar and because we'd spent so much time in its boîtes.

Things Albanian People Like

White head kerchiefs. It was one of the first things that set Albanians apart. Whether it was a nice lace kerchief, a simply cotton cloth or an old t-shirt, women opted to cover their heads with white fabric. Most non-religious head covering we've seen, throughout Eastern Europe and the Caucuses, was done in black or just whatever scarf was lying around. In Albania, they were uniformly white.

Littering. Unfortunately, Albanians really, really seem to like littering. Young men do it with relish, sending a wrapper or soda bottle out the window of a moving bus. We saw a woman at Berati Castle empty her cafe's small trash can over the edge of the castle walls. Needless to say, we got into the habit of carrying our garbage until we saw a proper place to dispose of it. Trash covers so much of Albania's beautiful landscape and is basically an ever multiplying invasive species in Tirana. It's a huge shame.

Molto Way. Just about half of the wrappers tossed here, there and everywhere were from Molto Way snacks. These cream-filled croissants are advertised on billboards all across the country and found in the hands of just about everyone. To be fair, there is also Replay, a rival filled croissant packaged snack, but Molto Way is definitely the front-runner in the market. We tried a Molto Way Double, filled with coconut frosting and chocolate frosting. As a loved one of ours likes to say, it was a "sugar gut bomb."

Living on the top floor. This is really a strange phenomenon and I haven't uncovered a reason. At first I thought it had to do with locking family members away to protect them from violent blood feuds, but it seems only to be "vernacular Albanian architecture," as one source put it. Since most houses are in some state of construction, these one floor homes on stilts are everywhere. Many finished houses never bother with walls on the bottom floor.

Warding Off the Evil Eye. While completing said construction, it's very important to ward off the evil eye. This is most often done with a stuffed animal hung from the highest point. We saw teddy bears, cabbage patch kids and one very large Spider-Man that would have fit in at a boardwalk carnival. Good luck charms in high places.

Bicycles. I've come to notice that a large amount of bicycle riding occurs in countries that are either particularly poor or particularly well off. It's probably because you either have a green initiative that develops bike paths and encourages the use of bikes for environmental and traffic purposes - or people simply can't afford cars. In Albania, this is definitely the case and even the bicycles are well-worn, antiques.

Loading down their bicycles. I just wanted an excuse to use this photo, because I couldn't decide between it and the one above. You don't usually think of bicycles as having a full trunk load - until you go to Albania.

Homemade Raki. This isn't the raki of Turkey, made from anise-seed like Greece's ouzo or France's pastis. It's more like moonshine, made from anything. Some locals like to liken it to grappa, but I'm not sure that grapes are necessary. It is often infused, always strong and, as far as we can tell, almost completely homemade. In fact, when we went to buy a small bottle of it, we could find none at all. Jack Daniels, Russian vodka, but no raki. What gives? We went to a bar and the woman pulled a whiskey bottle out when we inquired about raki. No, not whiskey. She handed us a taste. So, we were able to buy a bottle of raki after all - a whiskey bottle filled with the stuff. Home-made for sure.

Work-horses. They trotted alongside our rental cars on just about every non-highway road in the country. Most often, their carts were loaded with huge piles of long grass on their way to begin the transition into hay. We saw this horse-drawn mock pick-up truck a few times and were ecstatic about getting a photo. Sometimes, the horses carried only the load of its owner. This brings me to another thing Albanian people like, riding side saddle. We did not see a single person riding otherwise.


Honorable Mentions 

Being some of the nicest people we have ever encountered, anywhere. This is really true. We also benefited from two other things Albanian people like: Speaking English and America.