On the road again! Er… tracks. This was our last glimpse of the single-platform train station in Otranto.

It’s been a little quiet in this corner of the Interwebs lately, and for that I must apologize. I did warn you I would be focusing on NaNoWriMo in November, but I’ve been slow to get back here to update you all. And I know, after my last two blog posts, that you might be eager for an update. For those of you who are loving the drama, I did, despite promising not to in my last post, write a third installment of the Otranto Odyssey. However, I obviously haven’t posted it. I was debating whether I should or not, because I hate feeling like I’m putting negativity into the world. It’s one thing to tell a story about things going wrong for us and wrap it up with a positive spin, or to once in a while have a post where I’m frank about a downswing in my mental health. It doesn’t feel good to have three massive posts in a row that are downers. And trust me, by the end of our time in Otranto, both Nicole and I were completely devoid of positive spins. We were just miserable, and couldn’t wait to leave. So we bailed out early. Stayed at a hotel in Lecce, and then Durres, just so we could put Otranto in the rearview mirror a few days sooner.

Which is to say that I wrote a third installment, but I don’t want it to be the focus here. So it’s tacked onto the end of this post if you’re interested, but feel free to skip it.

Now, onto the more recent, more fun stuff.

To celebrate finishing National Novel Writing Month, I treated myself to a few days in Vlora, Albania. The best thing about Albania (at least for tourists, I’m sure it’s much less enjoyable for locals, in terms of economy) is the affordability. I was able to book a room in a luxury hotel right on the beach for $360 for 4 nights. Still a big chunk of change, but a fraction of what the same hotel would cost in the States. The Yacht Hotel had top-of-the-line everything and a balcony overlooking the Adriatic. I was thrilled. The bed was so comfortable, the shower spacious and warm, there was heating, which felt like a luxury after Otranto. All of the sheets and towels smelled nice, rather than musty.

Honestly, between the bed and the view, who needs to go anywhere else?

I did wander around Vlora, I didn’t just stay up in the room the entire time. Though, honestly, the hotel room was the highlight of the trip, in no small part because of how miserable I’d been in Otranto, and the prospect of having to go back, even if only for a week. Still, I’d come to Albania, I wanted to make sure I saw Albania. I looked up sights, but not much came up. A few statues, a beautiful mosque, a monastery on the other side of the bay (which I didn’t get to).

Vlora is a nice place to visit. There are dozens of cool cafes, restaurants, and bars. The exchange rate is awesome. The beach is sprawling and the views are pretty. I’m not sure I would say that you should specifically aim to visit Albania. If you’re looking for an affordable beach vacation on the Adriatic, definitely put it on your list. But I didn’t discover anything that I think would make it worth visiting specifically. Vlora, at least, is much like any other touristy little beach town in the world. Pretty and delightful, but not the kind of place I’m going to be telling people about 30 years from now (like Nisga’a Lava Beds Memorial Park. Seriously, put that on the bucket list).

A plaza alongside a cafe in the center of Vlora

I reluctantly checked out of my hotel and, after one night in Lecce, arrived back in Otranto on December 7th. After stepping away for a few days, the difference was stark. I can’t tell you how utterly defeating it felt just being there. It sapped everything from you. Cold literally and metaphorically, damp, and everything so evidently unloved and broken. It made you feel the same.

“How soon can we leave?” I lamented to Nicole as I dropped my suitcase.

“I was thinking about that,” she said, “what do you say to getting out of here three days early?”

“Can we make it four?”

We made it four. I’d loved Lecce, so we decided to spend a night there before going on to Durres. It meant we only had two days left in Otranto, so I finally went for the hike I’d been telling myself I would for a month, and dragged Nicole along with me.

Loved a chance to refresh our rock-climbing skills from the class we took in Zagreb. Notice Otranto in the background.

It was really great, actually. Otranto and the surrounding countryside are stunning, and it was good to get some exercise and fresh air. We got to see a few sights that I’d marked on Google maps, took a lot of photos, and reset ourselves a bit. We kept talking about Kotor. Hoping that it would be better than Otranto and marveling at how low our bar was now set. As long as it was clean and warm, we would be happy. And the photos on the app look really cute. It’s not a big, Instagram-worthy dream-come-true, like the place in Otranto had looked like on the app. It’s just an apartment that looks homey and well-cared for. It’s in a building that’s only 3 years old. We’re immeasurably excited, and planning up a storm. There’s a rug in the living room, and I want to do yoga. We’re going to walk the beach while we drink coffee every morning. There’s a Nespresso! At least, there is in the photos and in the description. Fingers crossed it’s functional.

Anyway, we spent our nature walk/hike through slippery red clay imagining and hoping, and feeling terribly optimistic. By the time it got dark and we trudged back into town, we were feeling pretty good. One more day to pack, and then we were done.

December 10 we set off, giggling delightedly at the lightness we felt, having dropped 100,000 pounds of stone and plaster off our shoulders. We trudged determinedly through town to the train station, and sat there, marveling at just how good it felt. I don’t think either of us had fully realized how much it had been weighing on us. When we arrived there was some shock, some attempts to make the best of it that threw a positive spin on the place, which disguised a lot of what we were really feeling. And as things piled on… well, you know what they say about boiling frogs. As each incident occurred, it was easy to dismiss as just a little worse than we were before. And it was easy to argued that it could be worse, because it could have. Easily. Nevertheless, as soon as we were gone, both of us felt utterly transformed.

We made it to Lecce, and spent a day wandering the streets and window shopping. It’s a beautiful city. “If only we’d stayed here, we would have been so much happier,” we said. There were people, and stores, and things to do. There was life. And stunning baroque leccese, a subcategory of baroque architecture unique to Lecce, where they take the techniques and go completely over the top.

In the evening we hopped a train to Bari, hauled out suitcases to the port, and boarded a ferry to Durres, which we quickly discovered had an ice cream parlor. Being winter, they only had soft-serve, but dressed up with sauce and sprinkles, I think my chocolate-vanilla-swirl was the belle of the ball. And well-earned after pulling the suitcases a mile and a half. We were talking about it, and although we haven’t been able to weigh them, I’m pretty sure the combined weight of my three bags (big suitcase, carry-on, and backpack) is easily north of a hundred pounds.

We slept on the ferry and arrived bright and early in Durres, Albania. We spent two nights here, and had one full day to explore before getting on a FlixBus bound for Kotor. I haven’t seen much of the city, but the part we did explore was, again, just a city. It’s nice enough, lots of nice stores, excellent patisseries, and some cool beach areas. But the highlight for me, once again, was the hotel. Albania is so affordable, we got a room in a gorgeous hotel not far from the port and the bus station. We’re both totally smitten with the Giulia Albergo Hotel. The beds and shower and to die for, everything is so pretty, and the breakfast is awesome. It’s a great mix of local breakfast food and more familiar items for us westerners (eggs, sausage, pancakes), with a barista at your disposal. That was my one complaint about the Yacht Hotel in Vlora. I found the breakfast pretty limited.

So far, this transition has been our smoothest and most enjoyable yet. I think part of it is relief, part of it is that we’re getting better at this, and part of it is that we’re indulging and taking our time. Each leg of the trip is by itself, alternated with good food, showers, comfy beds, and sightseeing. We do the hard part, then recover, and repeat, instead of trying to knock out an entire journey in one go.

That brings you up to date, dear reader! I’ll be sure to let you know how things go with arrival in Kotor, and then Nicole and I are going to turn around and fly to Berlin (with carry-ons only) for Christmas. Expect way too many photos of the Christmas Markets, my favorite thing about Christmas in Berlin (in no small part because of the roasted sugared almonds, which I will probably eat by the barrel).

Thanks, as always, for sticking with me.

Don’t forget! The Next Town Over, a podcast about travel and culture to bring the world to your doorstep, is coming January 3rd. Sign up below to get updates about the podcast and the digital launch party on January 7th!

November 29, 2022: This is Starting to Get Mold

Alright, dear readers, I know I promised the previous post was the end to my diatribe against our current living situation, but unfortunately the saga continues.

So I left off with the flood. While I had a puddle creeping across my floor, the next morning Nicole discovered half her room was covered in water. It had even spread to the stairs. So we messaged Frederica, who responded with her catchphrase, “No! Impossible! Send pictures please.”

Nicole is getting really sick of that. Every time it happens she glares at her phone and asks, “Are you calling me a liar?” Particularly given our track record at this point. I can understand the first time, when we’re total strangers and she knows her cleaning staff are typically reliable, that she would want to verify what we were telling her and get a better idea what was actually going on. But once we’ve established that we don’t complain about made up things, you would think she would switch from “impossible” to “I’m so sorry!” It’s probably just a language barrier, and we both recognize that, but it still rankles when we’re already irritated.

At any rate, Frederica said she would get someone to come look at the windows. Nicole asked if we could also get some towels in case it happened again, and Frederica said, “I don’t think it will rain again.”

Spoiler Alert: it did. And it came as no surprise, because rain was predicted every day that week. Nicole had left to meet with her sisters in Rome by then, and I was quite glad we’d stuck to our guns and demanded extra towels, because even after the guy came to drill drainage holes in the bottom of the window, we got puddles. Not as bad, certainly, but puddles none the less.

Meanwhile, we still didn’t have WiFi. And one day while Nicole was gone I stayed late in bed, reading and working on my novel for NaNoWriMo. Suddenly there’s banging downstairs. Mallet-thwacking, the-mafia-has-come-to-collect-so-hide-your-children level banging. It scared the bejeezus out of me, and for a moment I sat there frozen, trying to figure out what it was. It wasn’t until it started again that I realized someone was at the door. So I went to the stairs and soft of peeked towards the door. There was Marcella, with someone else I couldn’t see. I scrambled, throwing on some clothes and trying to put my hair in something resembling order. By the time I got downstairs, they’d left. I texted Nicole and asked if Frederica had said anything about them coming by, but she hadn’t gotten any messages.

It wasn’t until the next day that I found the internet repeater stuck in between the outer door and the inner one. I looked at the instructions, which made very little sense to me. From what I could figure out, it looked like it required access to the router to set up, which I didn’t have. I tried plugging it in, but no dice. I didn’t want to message Frederica about it if it was something simple, so I spent a couple days trying to figure it out, by which time Nicole was back. When she couldn’t figure it out either, we messaged Frederica. She told me that she would ask the electrical guy again, and then pointed out that he “that day was there,” as if it’s somehow my fault for not answering the door when he came to set it up despite the fact that no one told either of us that they were coming. Still, she agreed to come over to help with it the next day.

She messed around with it for an hour, even took us over to the apartment the router was in, and then threw her hands up in the air. “I think it’s a problem with Vodaphone,” she said, “I can’t fix that. It’s just Vodaphone.”

Which makes no sense at all, because the router itself works fine. The problem is it’s in the apartment next door, and this place has stone walls that are three feet thick in some places. I noticed Marcella trying to bring that up (in Italian, but she was pointing at the walls and measuring them with her arms), and Frederica glibly brushed her off. “I did everything,” she went on, “the SIM card, the extender… it’s all Vodaphone, it doesn’t work. I think you just need to go to another provider and get a SIM card from them, and then I pay you back, ok?”

Except the Vodaphone SIM had worked. It just ran out, presumably because she didn’t put very much data on it. Seeing as she refused to tell us how many gigabytes it would be, just said repeatedly that it was “enough,” I’m putting that one squarely on her. And seeing as WiFi was promised to be included in the listing, I really don’t see how it’s our job to take an hour and a half journey into Lecce to buy a SIM card from another provider because she can’t be bothered to get a router for each apartment that she claims to supply WiFi in. It’s fine if you don’t want to provide WiFi. But don’t claim that you do.

Next was the heater situation. We asked back in January if there would be heaters, because we were worried about the big, stone building in the middle of winter. Now, if I’m an AirBnB host, and one of my guests asks for a heater ahead of time, I’m going to make it available to them upon arrival. Not Frederica. No, we finally got a heater a few days ago, a month into our six-week stay. She told us in advance we would have to pay for the propane, which is fine (well, ok, at this point I’m not really fine with it, I feel like one canister of propane that we probably won’t even use all of is the least she can do for us, but in a broader sense, I get it if you want to charge your guests for the propane they use, particularly given the energy issues with Ukraine), but I still think it’s less than hospitable to tell your guests, who have no idea how things work, have no idea where to go, and don’t speak much Italian, to figure out the propane for themselves. We finally got her to send the gas man, and he was scheduled to come at 3 pm on Friday.

At 2 o’clock, I got a text from Frederica, “There is the gas man outside. Could you open please?”

Nicole and I frowned at each other. No one had knocked. We went outside and looked around no one there. She then says he’ll be there at 4. A few minutes after three, right when he was scheduled to come, he arrived (which makes me think the whole willy-nilly timing thing that Frederica’s got going on is more a her-thing than an Italian-thing). He installed the tank only to tell us the heater was broken.

I laughed. The man looked very confused.

So he called Frederica, and explained the problem. I saw him fiddling with the knob as he talked, clearing explaining that it wouldn’t compress so it could be turned on, which makes it all the more baffling that an hour ago she asked us to send photos of the broken heater, because you can’t visibly tell that it’s broken and she already knows what’s wrong with it, because the gas man explained it to her. Anyway, eventually she told him to take a heater out of one of the other apartments, and he went off and came back and installed it and we rejoiced in not being cold for the first time since we got here.

While he was working, I asked whether we needed to pay for the gas, and he said yes. So I paid $25 for the tank. After he left, Frederica texted me, “In general heating is not included as in my AirBnB rules and also light but I will pay this gas as a gift for you :)”

I told her I’d already paid it, and she expressed her usual dismay (which I’m really no longer buying), “No! I say to the man I have to.”

“Well,” I told Nicole, “he certainly didn’t seem to know anything about that.”

She asked how much it was and I told her, and she said she would pay me back, as well as internet, after we went and bought it for ourselves. I’ll believe it when I see it.

At this point, both Nicole and I were exhausted with Otranto. This city is insanely beautiful. Most of the time I feel like I’m living on a movie set… but after filming has wrapped. It’s totally abandoned. I took these photos on a Saturday night at 7:30 because my mom kept telling me to go hang out with the young people and I couldn’t seem to get it across to her that I wasn’t exaggerating. It’s just empty. There are a few locals wandering around, but as I said before, not many people here speak English, and my Italian is still terrible. It’s also raining more often than it isn’t, though luckily we’ve only had a couple big storms that brought water into our apartment.

Nearly all the restaurants in town are closed, and a lot of the shops are, too. The bar that we went to when we first got here even seems to be closed for the season. So there really isn’t much to do. It’s not good weather to go gallivanting around the countryside, and we don’t even have internet so we can make our way through every Christmas movie ever made. Sure, we can go camp out in that sad, barren room on the most uncomfortable couch ever made, but after one movie that gets really old. And what will all the problems we’ve had here, both of us are counting the days until we get to leave.

I think Otranto would be great in the summer, or even the fall. But this is definitely the off season for a reason.

At any rate, after the heater situation got resolved, I think both of us were determined to just buckle down and bear through the last couple weeks here. It would take a lot to get us to go back to Frederica with yet another problem.

Which brings me to today. I noticed white stuff on my Tom’s (which my mom got on sale at Marshall’s, like a boss. I think they were a birthday gift. I wear them all the time, though not lately, because when it get’s cold I pretty much live in my Uggs), which turned out to be mold. So I was fretting about that, trying to figure out whether I could somehow get rid of the mold or if the shoes were done for. And this morning Nicole and I were sitting downstairs when I noticed some white stuff under a cabinet. We don’t sit in there that often, and it was kind of far back, so it wasn’t an area we would usually pay much attention to.

“Is that mold?” I asked with dread.

Nicole looked. “If it is, we’re not staying here.”

It was mold. Piled up like snow. So we started looking around, looking more closely at the discolored floors, and found that said discoloration had hid patches of white mold all over the lower floor of apartment.

Nicole was ready to get out of Otranto, and messaged Frederica to see if there was a place in Lecce we could move to, but she informed us all of her properties were full, except for one in Gallipoli. Nicole was ready to pack up and relocate, but I was more hesitant.

“We’re leaving in two weeks,” I pointed out. “I’m really not keen on the whole stressful relocation thing. Particularly when I’m leaving for Albania the day after tomorrow, and we don’t know how to get to Gallipoli or how long it will take to get from Brindisi to there.”

So Nicole asked about places in Otranto. Nope, Frederica said. Full up.

Which, honestly, I don’t believe for a second. This empty town? Somehow she’s managed to fill all of her properties in a place that’s a ghost town during the dead of winter? Right.

"Well, I’m not staying here,” Nicole said. “It’s literally a health hazard.”

“Where do you plan on going?” I asked. “Because I’m not packing my bags until we’ve got something lined up.”

So Nicole relented and asked Frederica to send someone to treat the mold, and we retreated upstairs.

Man, and I said I was apathetic before. It just blows my mind. I don’t understand how someone can be so out of touch with their own business that they don’t know the heater’s broken, and the windows leak, and there’s mold, and the couch hasn’t been cleaned in who-knows-how-long.

Marcella showed up with another woman to deal with the mold, and the first thing she did was sweep it up.

I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure the last thing you want to do is cast all the spores into the air. Right? Then she mopped with a mystery solution in a laundry detergent bottle. We’re pretty sure it isn’t actually laundry detergent, because the bottle says “lavenda” and the stuff doesn’t smell like lavender, but it does smell floral in a way that is suspiciously laundry-detergent-esque.

And then Marcella tells us that we can’t leave the windows open so much, because it causes mold. Which is hilarious, because we rarely open the windows at all, because it’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit out there. We told her as much, but I’m not really sure she understood. Also, I feel like that’s the kind of thing you might want to warn people about. She also told us not to leave our shoes on the floor, because that’s how mold happens. Again, something you might want to warn people about.

I don’t get that, either. Every other AirBnB we’ve stayed in had a sheet with all these kinds of things written out. Tips for the apartment, notes about things that didn’t work right and how to deal with it, instructions for the trash. My mom says we can’t expect that level of hospitality everywhere, which I agree with, but it seems to me that’s the sort of thing that’s more for the host than the guest. If you write all of that out once and provide it for the guest, then you don’t have to write it out for each new person individually. We wouldn’t have to ask her about half these things if she left instructions. And the next people wouldn’t have to, either.

Is it passive-aggressive if I write up my own instruction sheet and leave it for the next guests? I can’t imagine the cleaning crew would actually leave it for them, so maybe it is. It’s just that so many issues could have been avoided.

All I can say is I’m really glad I’m getting out of here for a week, and the week after that is our last week here. We keep looking at the listing for our next apartment, scanning it for signs that it, too, might be a dud. But it looks like it’s on the up-and-up. And it looks cozy. I’m really hoping that turns out to be the case. It also says it has heating, which is exciting.

December 14, 2022: And At Last We See the Light

November 29, 2022: This is Starting to Get Mold