The Bane Of Our Lives



One thing that stands out in our travels is often the postal system. Post ranges from excellent to appallingly atrocious depending where you go. In Albania, when we first arrived our landlord, Leo, told us that around the 25th of every month they will come and just throw the bills on the ground downstairs and you have to root through them in order to find your flat number. Great. I look forward to playing musical bills in a few days.

Our experience hasn't been with that form of post, although it seems that Albanian delivery drivers have taken a page from the book of Canadian mailmen and like to play the game of "I tried to deliver it, but you weren't in", despite the fact you took the day off from work, and sat in utter silence waiting for the delivery and never once left the couch despite the fact you nearly wet yourself.

So they claimed they tried to deliver a package Pete's mum sent us from the UK. Well, tried being the operative word, apparently. I was up when they claimed they tried and heard nothing of the sort. I'm used to it, but it makes it a bit awkward in a place like this.

Similar things happened in Georgia, and while it usually managed to work itself out for the most part, as in they phoned me prior to bringing the parcel to make sure I was around, we only had one such instance where the post office claimed there was no parcel when our host Mako phoned again and again for us and the package ended up getting sent back to the UK. I guess in a way that was good as it had Pete's winter coat in it, which would have been a bitch to cart around in Cyprus and Greece.

Anyways, so off we go down to the post office. The woman, who speaks literally ZERO English waves us what looks like down the street. We figure, oh there must be some like side door pickup. Nope. We keep walking. Definitely no other post office.

So we go back. She waves us again. What the hell are you talking about, we wonder. Finally she starts miming "8!".

8?

Yeah, 8 apparently.

So we go off and totally forget to come back at 8. In the evening we assume this was. In our defense we'd met up with Erika, Tonino and our couch surfer Dani, so yeah, we totally forgot to go back.

The next day we go and it's closed. Well. It WAS Sunday.

Monday, I go down in the daytime, prepared with my limited Albanian to tell them it comes from England. "Ishta na Anglia!" which didn't get me anywhere and again I get told to come back at 8. Okay fine no big deal.

We both go back at 8, and proceeded to spend 20 minutes with the woman via Google Translate who tried to explain we need to come back at 8.

It IS 8!

No no, 8!

What the actual hell?! She then tried translating into German. What? No, no! English. Anglia!

As we're about to give up she says the word "code". Code? Oh yes! It made more sense than when the pharmacist referred to a prescription as a recipe, so we worked out that she needed the tracking number. Luckily I had it on my phone so I get it out and give it to her. In our defense again the postal system is so appalling that I didn't think the tracking number would help remotely, so never thought to get it.

So in the end she found something on the computer about it. Then she went to a ledger where she found Pete's name and then pointed to a very communist era looking locked steel crate shelf thing. Oh I see. So it's locked away! Hence come back at 8am and someone will have opened it! Right. Got it.

Except Pete was horridly sick in the night with food poisoning so I didn't actually get to sleep till around 330am. Hence I didn't go at 8 this morning. So let's see what Wednesday morning holds. I'm half expecting to get told to come back at 8.

Erin


********UPDATE*********

I went for 8am Wednesday. Let me tell you - I haven't seen any kind of time like 8am in awhile. Puke. I suppose I should get used to it since we have to catch the 6am bus to Athens next Friday. I look forward to that being all levels of pleasant. Not. Especially when this could be the bus.........


No thanks! Too bad we're dedicated to going.... Fuckkkkkkk.

Anyways, much to my surprise I actually retrieved the parcel. I wasn't told to come back at 8, but I did have to pay to rescue it from the communist era closet. 30 leke, which is like 30 cents, so whatever. It was just weird all around and I had to sign like 3 pages of something I have no idea what I was signing. At least now we know it's fully possible to receive post here and it's relatively painless now that we know what to do. As with most stuff when you're in a new country, the minor annoyances are down to miscommunication. All good in the hood now.


Photo evidence of me having rescued it! I'm not concerned about anyone having our address. Number one - the street doesn't exist on Google Maps. Number 2 - if you actually made the effort to come rob us, you deserve our stuff because let me tell you, a hike up a hill of a 45 degree gradient is work enough to deserve my shit.

So there we have it. Our first experience of Albanian post eventually successfully completed. Whew. At least we know for next time.

- Erin


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