Tuesday, July 18, Tirana, Albania

I took an immediate dislike to the female hostess at my hotel in Shkroda. She was officious, opaque, and generally unfriendly. It didn't help that I misunderstood her and thought I'd paid for two nights when I'd only secured one.
But when she rousted me out of bed on Tuesday morning ("we need to clean the room. We have reservation.") I ended up grateful to her.
Firstly she got me on the road to Tirana, which helped. I was able to connect with a tour group, outdooralbania.com, that set me up with an interesting trip next week. But once I got my things out of the room my hostess bent my ear for an hour about the frustrations of being a young Albanian.
This was a college educated, approx. 30 year old woman, dressed all in white, chain smoking her way through a job that could be fairly said to be under employment.
She just wants to move (with her husband and infant son) to Canada or the US.
{must do laundry, will finish later.}
The hotel was modest, about four stories, perhaps a hundred rooms. It wasn't four starts, as my hostess lamented, but it was serviceable. But when I asked her about prospects for advancement she waived me away. She'd been at the job for six years. "It's like a family here," she told me. But life was hard. "We work to eat," she complained. Her husband worked on air conditioning so he was busy in July, but idled in the winter. For some reason people didn't work on heating if they did air con.
School cost money, even kindergarten. She paid $25/month to put her kid in a premium school instead of the state school where, she said, the staff were indifferent. Later grades also required money if you wanted your child to have a chance for a university education. Except that she had such a degree and it yielded nothing.
I asked about the government. She opined that everyone in the present power structure was someone who had participated in the Hoxha, soviet-style, regime, and they apparently retained the socialist mindset. There was evidence all around that the country was rebuilding, tearing down the old block housing and replacing it with Euro-style apartments. The roads were being paved. A four-lane, limited access highway was being constructed to link Shkroda with Tirana.
But my hostess was very pessimistic. I tried to gently hint that money might influence one's prospects in the New World just like in the Old, but she was hearing nothing of it. A friend had told her of the visa lottery for a chance to emigrate to the US. They have them everywhere. She was keen to give it a try. Canada was off-putting to her because she might end up in a french speaking area. She, versed in English, German, and Albanian, could add one more tongue, but her husband? She didn't think he could do it.
Stuck in a deadend job, hoping to escape to some other country. That was her story.