I was on the phone today with some friends who reminded me it’s Veterans Day back in the US. One tends to loose track of holidays when traveling.
Locally, most Albanians are observing the end of Ramadan and this weekend they are celebrating the big feast of Bajram. American governmental offices are closed and its staff, taking advantage of the combined holidays, is enjoying a few days off.
I, instead, am preparing for another business trip. This time, by car, from Tirana, Albania, to Podgoriça, Montenegro.
Our organization has planned an event in this area of Montenegro on Sunday, and I’ll be loaded with materials to take and use there, in addition to a bulky exhibit of documents and photos, mounted on 20 large panels to be displayed for an entire day in the town of Tuz, a suburb of Podgorica.
These mountainous zones originally were part of the so called “greater Albania” a century ago before the current Albanian borders were redrawn by the Great Powers of Europe and the new Albania became a nation in November 1912. The inhabitants, in great part Albanians, are also fluent in the serbo-croatian language, officially used in the public schools established under the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Their children and current younger generations are all fluent in more than one language, however, like in Albania where Italian, English, French, Greek and Russian are also spoken.
People in the Balkans are so resourceful that they feel very comfortable dealing with foreigners. If, by chance, there is a verbal communication barrier they don’t hesitate to resort to other means of interaction and easily express themselves with body language instead. Example at hand: today the cleaning lady at my lodging and I had a 15 minutes perfect exchange without knowing each other language. I found out a lot about her and her family and she got answers to her questions about me and my work.
As they say in Albanian: “ç’ka problem (there is really no problem)”!
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