Hotel Vllaznimi is basically where I hang out when I'm not in my apartment. The waiters are my friends, as well as the hotel manager and owner. They're all such great men and the hotel has wireless so I can get work done which is always nice. They're one out of two places in town that make pizza too so we've also befriended the pizza maker. We've decided, as a small project, to help them translate a menu for their food and for their hotel for this year's tourist season as well as create a simple logo, going off of their orange embroidered design on the uniforms of the waiters. Believe it or not, Bajram Curri gets a decent amount of tourist each year. The amount of tourist coming through this small Albanian town has been growing every year since the government settled. (I'm going to plug a bit) The North Eastern part of Albania has probably one of the most breath taking mountain ranges I've ever scene in my life and if you're ever traveling through the Balkan region you should definitely pass through here. This morning, after work, Garrett and I met for our usual coffee at Hotel Vllaznimi and told one of the waiters that we wanted to help them with a menu we had talked about earlier. Not 5 minutes later we had the owner and manager out our table wanting us to meet them for pizza to discuss the details. This is typically how things get done in Albania, either by chance or when you're not technically at work. When you do plan things or make meetings they usually get pushed back or fall through all together. It is true though that you're always at work when you're out in your community though as a volunteer because you're always being looked at or asked about something, so being in my office sometimes I do less work than outside of my 'workplace.'
Anyway, this was not one of those times and we got a lot done over pizza and beer: translations, prices and room costs, as well as showing the in progress "Women in the Workplace" documentary and showed off our tourism website, which hopefully we can put the website on the menus. We had a great time with our friends and also got some work done, that will hopefully benefit their business.
Every little thing counts.
