Skip to main content

Near the Knuckle

Some weeks ago my knuckle had an involuntary and unpleasant encounter with the edge of a table. Swollen to twice its normal size and still painful I set off for the Glob clinic yesterday to have some X-rays carried out.

Like most poor countries, Albania struggles to provide an effective health service for its people. The Glob is one of a number of private clinics that have been established in Tirana to meet the growing demand for better medical care. While treatment at the Glob is, by Western standards, very cheap it is still a lot more than most ordinary Albanians could afford.

As it turned out no bones were broken and I now have three fine pictures of the inside of my hand.

Apart from the excellent care and good facilities, one of the main reasons for using the Glob is that a number of the doctors who run the clinc are friends. So, after the formalities of the treatment were completed, they took me out for dinner.

We ended up at a rather nondescript but extremely good restaurant some miles out on the Elbasan Road. The restaurant 'Pusi' is the kind of place I would have driven past without noticing. Without the benefit of local knowledge I would never had stopped, even if I had noticed it.

Largely anonymous from the outside apart from one small sign, and pleasant without being in any way special inside, the real reason to stop there is the food, which was excellent. Simple starters of salad, cheese and mixed vegetables prepared us for a huge platter with a variety of grilled meats - tender, juicy and very tasty. All this was washed down with good German beer. Later, it was time for one of the house specialties - spleen. I had never had spleen before and to me it tasted like a slightly more delicate version of liver.

Doctor Dritan had an animated conversation with the owner/manager - I never did find out what his actual role is though he was definitely in charge - and I recognised the words 'whisky' 'raki' and 'Ireland'. Evidently few foreigners visit the restaurant since the owner/manager then brought two glasses of raki - one for him and one for me - on the house. I imagine we were drinking to eternal Albanian-Irish friendship.

Later, he brought two more, and this together with the one I had had to start and the beer was a little more than I was used to. Thankfully, he stopped after two rounds.

While I was still able to stand, the manager/owner invited me to look out the back where raki production was in full swing. The yard was lined with crates of green and purple grapes brought in by local growers. Alongside these were large plastic barrels packed with grapes undergoing an initial fermentation. After something like three weeks these will be ready for distillation and the end result will be more raki.

Our own grapes, which have now ripened, have yet to begin the journey to raki. Tomorrow, Doctor Dritan and a friend are arriving with a large barrel to harvest our crop. After some 20 days these too will be transformed into good raki by Doctor Dritan's father.

I plan to be there on distilling day to sample the first drinkable drops of our freshly made raki.

Comments

ITS said…
After distilling your own raki, you will be handed a certificate of honorary Albanian citizenship.

Make sure to document and blog the entire process!

Cheers,
Anonymous said…
I am so jealous of you OMT! :-)
WARchild said…
Don't drink it all before winter. In November you can make your own sausage and enjoy them together.
Anonymous said…
i hope you get better man!

Popular posts from this blog

Dy Rame Per Tirane

I was watching Top Channel last night, first the news, then Fiks Fare. According to them Tirana's citizens now have a choice not only between Rama and Olldashi, but also between Rama and Rama. A minor right-wing faction, Parti 'Balli Kombetar' , submitted papers to the election authorities registering their candidate, Akile Rama. The people on Fiks Fare got hold of the papers and sent a reporter and camera team to the address listed for Mr A Rama. After much ringing of the bell the gate was reluctantly opened by a middle-aged woman who refused to speak to the reporter and tried to close the gate on her. Back in the studio Saimiri and Doctori - the two presenters of Fiks Fare - revealed that Mr Akile Rama was 73 years old, in hospital, and did not know he was now a candidate for mayor. They also compared two documents - the papers submitted on his behalf, and a genuine document he had signed. The signatures were not even remotely similar. There was an interview with the lea

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.

Guide Turistike

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council , the future is bright for Albania. The Council ranks Albania ninth out of 174 countries for tourism growth over the next ten years. A summary of the Council's report is available, as is the full report complete with many pages of graphs, charts and spreadsheets. This summer I have seen a number of tourists on the streets of Tirana. Some of them may well be Albanian expats, or people of Albanian descent returning home to visit family, but others are genuine 'foreigners'. Judging from their appearance, they are probably best described as 'independent travellers' - the kind of people who are not interested in luxury hotels or crowded beaches. This is a good start, but independent travellers are not the kind of big spenders that the tourist industry likes. In the longer term, if Albania wants to bring in the kind of free-spending tourists who currently holiday in Croatia or Slovenia, there will have to be a huge invest