If this is Friday...

If this is Friday, we must be in Shkoder...

On the way out of town our bus of 23 STOs stopped at the Austria Airlines ticket office in Tirana (which was always closed when I had time to visit) and confirmed that my backpack had arrived at Mother Theresa Intl. Airport, Tirana, Albania!

We stopped to pick it up on the way out of town, and everyone cheered as I climbed back aboard the bus with the hefty pack on my back...

Shkoder is as beat up and poor a place as you can imagine, though it also has its charm - which is far more than can be said of our 1800 Lek / night ($18) accommodation at the Hotel Rozafa!

Talk about "Soviet practicality!" Room 412 (of course on the 5th floor, since this is Europe) does have a nice open window view of the mosque, a bathroom that has to be seen to be believed, and no elevator access - though from the look of the long-ago broken lift, I probably wouldn't have trusted it anyway...

Other than that - the word "Spartan" would be a compliment. A mattress that passes for nothing of the sort worthy of the word, and pillows with the feel of a sandbag. No big deal, of course - I've slept with a sandbag for a pillow many times before...

Yesterday was classic. Most of us headed straight to the local castle with our drivers/interpreters - who gave us an excellent lay of the land while we got acquainted in the 2000-year-old fortress that has hosted everyone from the Romans to the Venetians to the Ottoman Turks to the partisan resistance fighters of World War Two.

Our LTOs are wonderful, and had organized a welcome dinner at the Restaurant Enigma (not to be confused with the Cafe Enigma) - a great patio banquet on a rocky outcrop 30 feet above the river...

More classic conversation - this time much of it with Marie, a chain-smoking Frenchwoman living as a day-trader in Vienna, and who has literally traveled all over the world, much of it solo. Ya gotta admire a woman who goes sightseeing solo in Iran...

The conversation along the table covered the entire political gamut - sharing tales of local politics from our homes, national politics of one another's countries, and international politics affecting us all.

On the personal level, it was a wide variety of life experiences - a common thread being that almost none of us lives where we were born, and many of my compatriots live lives as permanent expatriates of one kind or another, with election observation making up an alter life. A common question is "what do you do in your other life?"

We are roughly an equal mixture of American, British and German on the Shkoder expedition - with a few French and Scandinavians thrown in. English is the common working language - though German, French, and Italian are intermixed very freely - creating a verbal mélange that's surprisingly easy to keep up with, even for myself...

Several of us stayed out until well past midnight, since there was a wedding party in the banquet hall adjourning the hotel, and the music was blasting - and continued to do so until about 3am.

We don't have the throngs walking the streets here as in Tirana - were told that stopped locally during the chaos after the financial pyramid scheme collapse in the late 1990s - though this is reputed to be the bicycle capital of Albania, and they do seem to pedal about quite a bit. One of our LTOs - Claudia from Germany - told me the Tour of Albania was not too long ago...

Just think - "I coulda been a CONTENDA...... I coulda been SOMEBODY....."

The real work starts today - Area of Responsibility (AOR) familiarization with our driver/translator, then E-Day tomorrow.

I'm assigned to work as a "B-Team" member with Jorge Friedrichs of Bremen, Germany (though born in Munich...). We'll be at a Zone Election Center (ZEC) watching them count the votes, our official duties not starting until 16:00 and lasting until 08:00 the next morning - though we do plan on going out tomorrow morning to watch some polling stations open and the voting just for fun...

Yes - you know I'm a political junkie when driving around the communes on the outskirts of Shkoder to watch impoverished people execute the franchise is "fun..."

This mission is actually unusual in that they expect us to swap off with the "A-Team" members who will watch the voting. We'll be switching duties on a rotating schedule until...

Well, until all the votes are counted, or until the morning of Tuesday 5 July...

A grueling schedule - but that's what I'm here for. After all, aside for tracking down a lost backpack, I've been on political junkie paradise vacation since I arrived...

It's doubtful I'll get to send another message once the real work begins - the next message might not be posted until my return to Tirana on the afternoon of Tuesday 5 July...

SPB