Only Partially Agreeing with Dorothy

As I write this I sit in the Tirana Airport. Alrica and I are leaving Albania for the foreseeable future. And yet, even as I say that, I feel pretty confident we will come back to Tirana. It will likely be a few years hence, but also likely that it will happen.

Why am I so sure? Because of all the cities we have visited and lived in since leaving Reno, this one feels the most like home. I don't mean it feels the most like Reno, but that it feels like a city in which I could really enjoy living longer term. I don't want to speak for Alrica (which is a lie, I would love to speak for Alrica, but I know the consequences if I do, so I won't,) but I think she feels it too. Tirana has enough variety in foods and entertainment, it isn't overwhelming, it is very friendly, and the cost of living is quite affordable. Add to this list that Albania allows U.S. passport holders to stay for one year without a visa and it is a super attractive place to make a home base the next time Alrica and I want to travel around Europe.

There is a saying "you can't go home again." And I agree. Tirana is growing right now, growing a lot. Albania is opening up and trying to be more tourist friendly. There are so many buildings going up (amazing quirky buildings). And I wonder what this will do to the city. Will it lose its inherent Albanianity? Will it become expensive? Will it feel like some smaller version of a Western European destination? I hope not. I want Tirana to hang on to itself and for Albania to hang on to itself.

That's a picture, not an actual building, but how cool would that be! (Not to live in though.)

There is an irony that some cultures which can't be crushed by war and persecution can suddenly be overturned by prosperity. Declare that we are others, that we are inferior, try to crush us, and we resist, we thrive. But let us become successful and comfortable and we let the assimilation begin.

I see it in my own heritage. I am Jewish by heritage, but personally I no longer believe in the tenets of the religion nor in the supreme being associated with it. (I haven't replaced that supreme being with any other who is more or less or equally supreme. I'm reasonably content with no higher power at all.) But why can I make that call and previous generations didn't? I think when Jewish people were othered and tormented by the majority, they had to cling together and the religion became all the more important to their identities. But welcome us into your society and let us become mathematicians and goofy bloggers, and then we don't feel the need to only associate with other Jews or to take refuge in the sanctuary of our sanctuaries.

That's just one example, but the one I can most personally relate to. I'm sure there are many others and that some readers will have a similar experience or family history with a similar experience.

Coming back off my tangent, I wonder if a new prosperity, a flourishing of a tourism economy, will have that same affect on Albania. I hope not, because the next time I return to Tirana, I would like to find it much as I left it.

Dorothy said (repeatedly, while clicking her heels,) "There's no place like home." But I don't entirely agree. I think there are other places like home. Not identical, but other places that could easily become home, a different home, but equal in its homeness. So I would reply to Dorothy, "Well, not everyplace is like home. But I wouldn't go so far as to say, 'There can be only one!'" (I know that I just mixed movie references that are decades apart. Eh, there are worse things I could do. Third movie reference!)

Hexagonal Bed

You may think a hexagonal bed refers to a bed of lovely flowers. Or perhaps a garden full of herbs and fruits and vegetable (obviously in beds.) But what if I told you the hexagonal bed mentioned in the title is the most everyday usage of the word bed?

Alrica and I are in Bucharest, Romania. There is some unbelievable architecture here. Some of the buildings are ornate in the extreme. I've been awed by churches, universities, and banks.

The CEC Bank Palace (built to house a bank on the site of a former monastery)

But I've also been confused by the lack of sense to some places. For example, Alrica and I visited a mall and found ourselves in a long, twisting hallway with no shops and no obvious way to get to where the shops might be. Plus there are a variety of shops on the ground floor of the mall which don't have entrances into the mall. You can only get to them from the street.

Biserica Zlătari

We did head to Therme Bucuresti. This is a huge water park which includes a gigantic botanical garden. You are literally wading through the pools under the canopy of the trees. The "Therme" in the name refers to the fact that the water is heated by geothermal energy. But what's weird is that the water isn't very hot. It is heated, it isn't cold. But it is cooler than bathwater. Even in the separated tubs in which bubbles sometimes blow, ones that look like they would be hot tubs, the temperature isn't any higher than the big pools.

Main Entrance of Therme Bucuresti

Therme has three parts, Galaxy, Palms, and Elysium. The Galaxy is the base ticket. This area has pools, water slides, saunas, water massage beds, kiddie playground areas, and places you can buy food and drinks. Palms is more pools with separated tubs (I would say hot tubs, but they aren't hot) and a lazy river. There are more pool bars to buy drinks here. This is the section under the botanical garden. If you have a ticket to Palms, you may also use Galaxy. The most expensive ticket is for Elysium which includes spa treatments and massages. Again, if you buy a ticket for Elysium, you may also use Palms and Galaxy. We did the morning special for Palms. You must arrive before 11:30 and you can stay for up to 3.5 hours.

It was okay. If you are very into water parks, you might love it more than I did. Palms was calm, I suppose, but I found it dull. Galaxy was more fun, and it has some really cool water slides. I think Alrica enjoyed Palms more than I did and I enjoyed Galaxy more than she did. I guess that demonstrates who the inner child (and outer child) is in our marriage.

Pork stew (red), polenta (yellow), fried egg (egg looking), and cow's milk cheese (white)

We have eaten a lot of fantastic food in Bucharest. One traditional food is polenta (which is like super finely chopped grits.) They are also huge on pork here. We went to a traditional Romanian restaurant last night where Alrica had pork stew with sausage and polenta. I had a chicken and mushroom dish with polenta. Both of them were exceptional. The night before we had pizza. You know how most pizza places have similar toppings, but then there are the few and far between where the toppings are things you never dreamed of? Well, we went to one of those. We ordered the M&M (which does not have M&Ms on it.) It is called that because two of the toppings are mustard and mozzarella. It comes with a sauce, and ours was a honey mustard sauce. What was particularly notable was the crust, which was heavy. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but it is a heavy, moist, full of humidity crust. For a beverage, I had a lemonade called PinPop Lemonade. One of the ingredients is popcorn syrup. Don't ask me what popcorn syrup is. I don't know. But it was delicious. There was a flavor of popcorn that mixed wonderfully with the sourness of the lemon and the simple syrup.

Bucharest is an interesting city. In some ways, it is very American, quite a big focus on cars and roads. Though it does have buses, cable cars, and a metro, so there is some public transportation. You can't get everywhere on it, but a lot of places. We were able to take a bus to a bus to the Therme. But it was over an hour to get there.

In other ways, Bucharest is very European. It treasures its old and ornate architecture. There is a lot of English spoken, especially in restaurants and other tourist friendly industries. But they very much hold on to Romanian. And Romanian is an interesting exceptional language in the region. It is a romance language in a part of Europe that is isolated from other romance languages. When I look at the signs, I can see so much familiarity with words I know from French or Spanish. Of course, I still don't know what people are saying.

I couldn't get a picture of Alrica and I playing on this seesaw, but we did play!

Bucharest is also very much its own place. One thing that is exceptionally popular here are walk up windows. You know how in the States we have drive thru windows at many restaurants. Here, they have some similar for pedestrians. You stand on the sidewalk and order and pay and then get your goods. In some such restaurants, there is nowhere inside to eat. In fact, you can't even get inside some of them. You find somewhere nearby to sit, and you eat your food alfresco. (Or you take it home.)

Now, after all that, I hear you asking about the bed. What is with the hexagonal bed?

The place that Alrica and I are staying is small. It's not a hotel, but like a "one bedroom" place on one of the major streets. But it isn't really one bedroom. It's more like studio with nook. And its small. By small, I don't just mean it lacks square footage (which is true) but that it seems designed for smaller people.

The floor level of the apartment is half a level down from the street. As I sit writing this, my chin is at about the level of the sidewalk outside. To get in, you enter a door that requires that you duck. Neither Alrica nor I could fit through that door if we stood up straight. You come down five steps and enter an itty bitty living room with a kitchen off of the far end. Turning a corner at the kitchen, you find the bathroom, which has the only other door in the apartment. There is no dining room, nor any table on which to eat. There is a very low, small couch in the living room. You go to sit and you are amazed that your butt is still going down for as long as it is. You expect to hit a cushion before you do. There is also a desk in the living room. The desk is regular height. But the desk chair, well, it is another one of those you-think-you-will-be-seated-before-you-are-seated experiences. Short chair and regular sized desk makes things a bit awkward.

But wait. I didn't mention sleep. Where does one sleep? Just beyond the kitchen, there is an opening in the wall (but no door) with a curtain over it. This leads to an alcove. The alcove is pentagonal in shape. And in it, taking up almost all of the space, is the mattress. The mattress is not pentagonal, it is hexagonal. But it is not a regular hexagon. For non-mathematicians, a regular hexagon is one in which all sides are the same length and all angles are the same measure. Like a honeycomb. But this is no honeycomb.

Imagine a rectangular bed where you would sleep with your head to the north and your feet to the south. Now imagine that the northeast corner and the southeast corner were both cut off. (They have to be, because the walls come together.) So if you are of average height and sleeping on the west end of the bed, it's no issues. Here it is the length of a bed. But if you are the average height person assigned to the east end of the bed, well, it's not the length of you.

You have a few options. You could sleep with your knees bent and legs tucked up under you. You could sleep in a sitting position (though that would be tricky for a variety of reasons.) Or you can sleep diagonally. You can't just sleep north to south.

I will let you guess which of the two, Alrica or I, got the regular western part of the bed, and which of the two got the potentially less desirable eastern part of the bed. We will just say, that lucky duck who gets to experience the east side is sleeping with his head (don't read too much into that pronoun, even though it is written in bold print) very close to the western sider's head, and his feet (you can read as much as you want to into that pronoun) much further away from the western sider's feet. The two bodies are definitively not parallel. From experience, (though I'm not saying whose experience,) it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to find just the right angle at which no feet are slapping walls and no heads are slapping walls. But it can be done. (Now add the challenge of sharing one blanket and the experience is fully described.)

Part of travel is flexibility. I meant that more in being willing to make adjustments. Roll with it. Though I suppose in the case of the hexagonal bed, you need the other kind, the body contorting form of flexibility too.

Cloth, Cobbles, Salt, and Dance

Naturally, when you read the title of this post, you say to yourself immediately, "Ah, this is about Krakow, Poland." Or maybe you say "Ah, this is about strange experiments combining static electricity, geology, chemical reactions, and kinematics." Or maybe you say, "Is this the modern equivalent of the four elements of the ancient world?"

Sculpture at the base of City Hall Tower

If the sentence you said was the first of my suggestions, good job! If you said the second, I like how you think. If you said the third, well, hard to argue with you, but it wasn't what I had in mind.

Church of the Holy Trinity in Stare Miasto

We have now been in Krakow for two days and we've seen a lot. We went to Stare Miasto, which means Old Town. Here we saw several beautiful buildings, plazas, and museums. In the heart of Old Town is Rynek Główny, the central square. This is the big market square and it includes a market. In the center of it is the Sukiennice, or the Cloth Hall. Beside one end of the Cloth Hall is the City Hall Tower. And across the square on the other side of the Cloth Hall is St. Mary's Basilica. That's a lot in one square.

I'm a lonely tower. Where's my City Hall?

The tower is sort of a lonely figure. It was part of a much bigger city hall, but when the Austrians conquered Krakow, they destroyed the building, mostly to demoralize the Krakovians. However, they left the tower.

The Two Towers (but not the Tolkien book)

St. Mary's Basilica had its foundation laid in the 13th century, but wasn't finished until the 14th. It opened in the year 1347. When you look at the front of St. Mary's, you are immediately struck by its asymmetric towers. Why is one taller than the other? So this is interesting. The taller tower belonged to the city and was used as a watch tower. The shorter tower belonged to the church. I guess that is a good way to share resources.

The Sukiennice

The Sukiennice is a long building that has been used and is still used as a market. Today, inside, you find stalls selling many crafts. But in its heyday, this was the site of major trade. Since it is called the Cloth Hall, you might guess much of that trade was in cloth. And it was. But surprisingly, the cloth wasn't generally made in Krakow. It was passing through. This trading stop was a major connector for Hungary, Central Asia (present day Syria and Iraq), and Germany. So for many items, Krakow wasn't a producer, but a middle step. There was one item though that Krakow was famous for. More on that below.

Wawel Royal Castle

Beneath the Sukiennice is a huge museum. It was actually an archaeological site. While digging in the square to put in infrastructure, they found artifacts and old cobblestones from a much earlier central square. This began a dig which led to many discoveries. Now you can go several meters below the surface and explore. You can see some of the old cobbled streets and layers of foundations that were found in the dig. Also displayed are many of the items they found. In addition to all this, the museum gives a fascinating history of Krakow as a city of trade. One thing I learned: Do you know the purpose of cobblestone streets? It is to help with traction. In cities with lots of rain, or that have frequent floods (Krakow had frequent floods) paving the streets with cobblestones made them less slippery when wet. Krakow also built the streets so at intersections, many streets have a jig, you have to move a bit left or right to connect to the continuation of the street. This was to slow down floodwaters from just rushing through the city.

Stari Synagogue (note Stari means Old)

We got accidentally lucky in visiting Rynek Underground (as the museum is called in English.) Unbeknownst to us, the museum is free on Tuesdays and we happened to be there on a Tuesday. Bonus!

Seal of the Wieliczka Salt Mine

On Wednesday, we rode the bus to Wieliczka, a town a bit southeast of Krakow. This is a great place, for here is where you find the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Remember how I teased that Krakow was a producer of one of the goods in its market. Salt, that's the one I mean. We learned that at many points in Krakow's history, a kilogram of salt was worth as much as a kilogram of gold.

These are dwarves, made of salt, mining salt

This all began about 13.5 million years ago, which is pretty recent in terms of geology. The Carpathian mountains were in the early stages of their uplift and there was a basin at the foot of them. The ocean levels rose and excess salt water flowed into this basin. But as the sea levels fell again, the basin was left with a giant salty lake. The water slowly evaporated (like over 200,000 years) making the lake more and more saline. There was a lot more evaporation than precipitation in the region, and the lake dried completely, leaving enormous salt deposits.

Nicolas Copernicus was one of the first luminaries to visit the salt mine

But the Carpathian Mountains weren't done growing. They bulldozed their way through the land, pushing the salt deposits into different shapes and lifting it up and placing it underground, but not so deep underground that it would never be found. How do we know? Because it was found!

A very salty last supper (but seriously, look at the perspective!)

People of this region have been mining salt for around 800 years. (That's like nothing in geological time.) For centuries, the salt mine was a huge source of wealth for Poland. It is almost an underground city. The miners didn't actually live underground, instead they worked in shifts so there were always people mining. But at the end of their shifts, they returned to the surface and to their families.

Goethe, yes, the German poet, was also the minister of mines. Did you know that?

For much of that time, ventilation wasn't ideal and the process of mining the salt would release methane gas. The methane would rise to the tops of chambers and if it mixed with oxygen from the air in just the right amounts, the miners, carrying open flame lanterns to see their way, could set off explosions! So there were some miners who "volunteered" to be the methane fighters. They got high pay for the job, and they had to be men without families. They wore wet clothing and crawled around carrying long torches with the flame well above their head. Then when the flame hit a pocket of methane, WHOOMPH!

A sculpture, in salt, of the methane burners

The miners build chapels underground too. At its peak there were forty chapels in the mine. Today, only eight remain. We got to see a few of these. They are beautifully decorated with sculptures carved from... salt! All these pictures are works in rock salt. That's impressive artistic work, right?

They hold services here on Sundays. And you can rent this for weddings.

Originally, all power in the mine was human power. There were winches that had to be turned by four people to bring the cylinders of salt to the surface (and beams of wood down to the mine. They needed the wood to stabilize the tunnels.) Eventually, horses were introduced to the area. But bringing them down into the mine involved putting ropes around them and lowering them. This was so stressful, so we were told, that a good number of the horses died of heart attacks during the descent. So once a horse did successfully make it down, it spent the rest of its life underground.

The winches ran on horsepower. Literally.

The mines continued to operate until 1996. By then electricity has replaced the horses as the source of power for the machinery. Today, they still get salt from the mine, but not by digging. Instead, they have systems set up to catch the water that flows through the ground and then to run it through flumes. This water has become saturated with salt. It is then brought to the surface and boiled away to collect the salt.

The miners would carve the salt into cylinders so they could roll them

But the big money of the mine today is in tourism. They have millions of tourists each year. In the summer season, they sometimes have as many as 100,000 people in a day. There is still a medicinal spa in the underground world where you can soak in the salty brine to help with asthma or other conditions. 

Jesus being born above and I guess people going to see the baby below.

Speaking of (or typing of) tourists, we had a pretty unusual experience for tourists tonight. But it begins with a saint. Saint Joseph is the patron saint of carpenters and craftsman. He is also the patron saint of Krakow. His saint day, or the Feast of St. Joseph is today, March 19. Krakow celebrates this with St. Joseph's Fair each year. For about ten days, the Maly Rynek (or the small market square) in Old Town hosts a craft fair. Lots of small stalls are set up with craftsmen who work in wood, metal, glass, beads, jewelry, and amber. (Amber is big in Krakow.) There are also food stalls. And at the south end of the square, there is a stage. Each evening, there are performances on the stage of local musicians and dancers, again a local craft.

The dancers in traditional costume

Alrica and I went to the fair this evening. One of the featured performers was a dance troupe. They did a lot of traditional dances. But they came down off the stage and they were taking people from the crowd to join them. (They didn't force you. You had to agree to it.) Well, both Alrica and I partook in several dances. I tried to get pictures of Alrica dancing, but with the speed of the moving and the fact that her back was facing me when she was closest, I only got what I got. The lead dancer would explain things before we began each dance, but since I speak no Polish, the explanation did me little good. Still, I did my best, there was no judgment when we lay-people did poorly, and it was a lot of fun! Good cardio too. And now, Alrica and I are masters of a variety of Polish dances. (So long as you don't ask me to re-create any of them.)

Alrica dancing in costume that is traditional for her. But maybe not for Poland.

Summer of Pi

Today, March 14, is Pi Day in the United States. As many people know, I am a big fan of Pi Day. I'm a big fan of pi. I'm sure many people would say they too are big fans of pie, but they mean pie, the delectable dessert. I mean pi, the irrational number.

I like the dessert too.

But Pi Day is not celebrated anywhere else. I suppose it isn't even universally celebrated in the USA. But it's pretty widespread. However, the reason Pi Day is when it is only makes sense in the United States. The date in the USA is 3-14, which corresponds to the first digits of pi, 3.14. But in the rest of the world the date is 14-3. Or 14.3. Or 14.03. My point is that it doesn't give you the first few digits of pi, so there isn't any reason to celebrate Pi Day, except that America does it.

Still, I'm just thrilled that we have any holidays that celebrate mathematics. And so I am sad to miss it.

Luckily, I don't have to feel like I'm entirely missing out. While Albania does not celebrate Pi Day, they do have a national holiday on 14 March. It's called Dita e Verës, which in English translates as Summer Day. Summer Day has been a national holiday in Albania for a few decades, but its roots go back thousands of years, to the early Illyrian settlers. We're talking around the time before the Ancient Greeks colonized this land.

Hot air balloons in Skanderbeg Square!

It involves a goddess named Muse, a huntress and goddess of the forests and the animals. Muse corresponds to Artemis in the Greek Pantheon or Diana in the Roman Pantheon. She had a temple on Mountain Muse in a place called Shkumbin. Today, Shkumbin is in the modern region of Elbasan, Albania. According to legend, Muse came out of her temple once a year, to transition the world from the winter season to the summer season. (Back in ancient times, there were only two seasons, winter and summer. It's not that the world got warmer faster, it's just that humans only made the distinction between two seasons.) And that once a year event, on the modern calendar, is March 14.

A view from the other side

Today it is a very festive party. It retains that pagan element of the change of seasons. But it is also emblematic of the renewal of Albanian spirit. The Earth is reborn in the spring, and Albania is reborn along with it.

There are some traditional elements to Summer Day. One is wearing a verore. This is a red and white woolen bracelet. You wear it in early March and after Summer Day (or traditionally when you see the first sparrow of spring) you remove it from your wrist and you tie it to a tree branch. The belief is that birds will take the woolen threads and use them to build their nests.

Verore for Sale

Another tradition is the ballokume. This is a type of sugar cookie made with Albanian cornflour. It's generally only sold this time of year, and you eat them on Summer Day. (I think you're allowed to bake them and eat them other days too. But you probably won't find them in bakeries at other times of the year.)

Alrica and a ballokume

Here in Tirana, there are concerts in the street, lots of children's activities, vendors selling verore, ballokume, and hot dogs. Skanderbeg Square is filled with hot air balloon. And the streets south of the square are closed to traffic and filled with stages, sport courts for basketball, soccer, volleyball, and tennis, and craft vendors.

There's a hot dog in there somewhere under the fries, under the sauces

So even though no one else was celebrating pi, nor eating pie, we still got to have a celebration on the date of the greatest mathematical holiday of the year. You go, summer! You go, pi!

Artificial Nature

As I spend more time in Tirana, I find I like it better and better. This city has so much going for it and as I explore more, I find more to like.

The last few days have been rainy. That happens, right. You can't have sunshine all the time. Where would you put it? But on Monday, we had a very lovely day. And I took a walk down to a huge park in the southern part of the city, a park which, like one of T.S. Eliot's cats, has three names. Ostensibly, it is the Grand Park of Tirana.

The Grand Park of Tirana is built around a large lake. And while there is a lot of green space around the lake, waterbirds, and other wonders of nature, the lake itself is not natural. You know how I know it wasn't created by nature? Because the name of the lake is The Artificial Lake of Tirana. (In Albanian it is Liqeni Artificial i Tiranës, but the English name I gave is the literal translation.) Remember how I said the park has three names. In addition to the Grand Park of Tirana, most people call it Tirana Park. And its third name is The Park on the Artificial Lake. I guess if you are going to build an artificial lake, you want there to be no artifice about its artificiality. It don't think it could be more plain.

For being artificial, it looks like it's really there!

There is a great path you can follow around the lake. You have choices of walking on the paved path or the spongy turfy path. And in many places there is a path that goes right along the shore that is a dirt path through trees. The lake does have an area for entering to swim. Around the park are some restaurants, particularly near parts of the lake. There are playgrounds for children and also areas with exercise structures for adults. Chin ups, anyone?

I'm sure half the apartments have a great view. Is the other half jealous?

In a few places, the road comes right beside the lake, and there are some beautiful high rise apartment buildings built near its shore. This is a bit controversial. The city has proposed plans to build more such apartments along the lake, but many citizens oppose this. They don't want to lose their green space. I completely understand their point of view. It is so nice for residents of a city to still be able to have that feel of hiking in nature. Sure, they could travel outside of the city, but isn't it great to also have the option in the city, a place you can walk to or reach by bus?

The Chinese Pavilion is a gift from... If you guessed China, bonus points for you

I think one of the challenges in urban planning is balancing green spaces with construction. Personally, I hope Tirana will preserve the beautiful park it has. It is very clearly loved and used by its residents. I saw dozens of other people using the path, and this was on a weekday. So it is not a waste of space by any means. But, as I'm sure you've figured out, my opinion doesn't matter. I don't get a vote, literally! I'm not a citizen. I'm here today, gone tomorrow.

Comfy backrest, protection from the sun, and there are USB charging ports.

So I guess I better enjoy the artificial nature while I am here. Because maybe next time I come to Tirana, there will be less nature and, it may have moved on to a fourth name in a fashion similar to that of Prince: The Residential District Formerly Known as the Park on the Artificial Lake. Try fitting that on the map!

Tirana's Gotta Tirana

As a parent, one does not always succeed. But we have our moments. I know one of my mother's success moments had to do with a birthday card. She likes to retell the story, so it must be a success moment. She got me a birthday card and on the front it said, "Son, when they made you, they broke the mold." It shows a picture of a mold being broken by a man with tools. Then you flipped it open and it says "And beat the hell out of the mold maker." The corresponding picture of the man with tools is not so good for the man with tools.

It was an amazing birthday card. Score one for my mom.

What holds those projecting parts up?

Alrica and I have visited Tirana, Albania before. But this is the first time we are staying for a longer stretch. This gives me a chance to walk the city and explore. And I have to tell you, Tirana is breaking the mold.

I feel loved.

When you visit European capital cities, they often have their own character. London is the ultimate in cosmopolitan. Paris is groomed and artistic. Rome is ancient and haughty. Vienna is a showcase of Austro-Hungarian grandeur. Sarajevo is resilient and functional. But what is Tirana? Or maybe the better question is this: What is Tirana aspring to become?

Good thing he has cling powers, or that head would flip him over

Best answer I can come up with: quirky.

I wasn't expecting to see Spidey again so soon.

There is so much construction going on in Tirana. But why build something that's just a boring rectangular prism when you can build something that isn't? The architecture of the city plays with shapes, colors, and structure. Many of these buildings are still going up and it will be interesting to see them when they are complete.

Like its wrapping its big arms around you

Architecture is just one feature of Tirana that feels different, weird, but in a fun and friendly way. The murals are youthful and surprising. The store names are often puns (and there are a surprising number of puns in English.) It is almost like the city is serious about not being too serious.

I guess this is an English/Latin pun

I walked across bridges over the river where some vendor had laid out thousands of books on the railings. They were in Shqip, so I wasn't in the market, but hey, you have a bridge here, why not use it for something else?

Building not interesting enough? I have an idea, stripes!

I think what best encapsulates this serious about not serious vibe is the sign I saw prohibiting a particular activity. Not only is it not allowed, they make it clear what they plan to do if you violate the rule.

What if you're really trying to become a YouTube sensation?

I think that, like my mother's birthday card, this will lead to a success for Tirana. And maybe this time the mold maker might escape unscathed.

Unexpected Nonexistence

René Descartes walks into a bar. He asks for a beer, but the bartender says, "Wouldn't you rather have an appletini?" To this, Descartes replies, "I think not." And he disappears.

This joke kills at philosophy conferences. René Descartes is a famous mathematician who gave us the Cartesian coordinate system, most of the notation we use today, and a variety of other mathematical ideas. He is also the reason we call the imaginary numbers imaginary. He thought the idea of square roots of negative numbers was stupid. So he called them imaginary as opposed to the numbers he liked which he called real. This is unfortunate because many people then think that imaginary numbers don't exist while real numbers do. But that's not the case. Imaginary numbers are no less real than real numbers and real number are no less imaginary than imaginary numbers.

Setting all of that aside, Descartes is also famous as a philosopher. His best known quote is "Cogito ergo sum" or, in English, "I think, therefore I am." This was a thought experiment in which Descartes wanted to ask what does he really know to be true. Imagine that you can't trust your senses, what you see may be false, what you touch may be false. Can you make any conclusions? Descartes did, he concluded that the very fact that he could ask this question, that he could doubt his own existence meant that he must exist in some form. Maybe his body was fake, but there had to be some mind, something capable of thinking. So he did exist.

The joke plays on "I think, therefore I am." Though, it is logically flawed because it is then accepting "I think not, therefore I am not." That's the inverse of Descartes's original statement and the inverse of a proposition may not have the same truth value as the statement. The philosophers know this, but somehow they still find it funny.

Alrica and I ran into our own question of existence, though not our personal existence. We arrived in Tirana, Albania on Tuesday night. It was a slow bus trip from the airport to the city because of an accident on the highway. But eventually we made it. And we got to the place we are staying.

On the way to our place, we walked down the Rruga Him Kolli. (Rruga is the Albanian word for street or road. Him Kolli is the name of the street.) Much of it was deserted and dim, though there is a Spar grocery store and a pizza place. But the next day we went out while the sun was shining. And this nocturnally dim, empty street is super non-empty in the day. There are fruit and vegetable stands lining both sides of the road. We are living right off of fruit street! One thing I love about many other places is the availability of low-cost, high-quality produce. You can't get everything at every time of year, only what's ripe now. But it is so fresh and delicious and good for you.

We also bought a fruit with which we are not very familiar. It looks like a big pear but with bulges in the pear shape. We asked the woman at the produce market what it was called, though she didn't understand us. So I pointed to bananas and said "banane" and then to tomatoes and said "domate" and then to this fruit. She understood and told us it is called "ftui". I don't know the first thing about eating ftui, so I looked it up. This is a quince, in English, rhymes with wince. In Spanish, the word quince means fifteen, it isn't a fruit, and it rhymes with mean say. But we are taking about the fruit here, not the number. Turns out, you have to cook a quince before you eat it or it is so astringent you won't enjoy it. (Sadly, the cook time is NOT fifteen minutes, which would be such a beautiful convergence of coincidences, I might have to doubt my existence.) I might cook a quince today!

Look, a fifteen! No, no, that's the fruit version of quince.

But the quince being a fruit and not a number (neither real or imaginary) is not the existence problem. We continued our shopping for essentials. We stopped at more than just fruit and vegetable markets. We bought bread at a local bakery. We bought cheese and butter at a dairy store. And we bought some regular groceries (and things like toothpaste) at the Spar, which as I mentioned, is a grocery store. One of the things we picked up off the shelf was a vinaigrette dressing. We had purchased tomatoes at the produce market, purchased feta cheese at the dairy market, and Alrica makes a fantastic tomato and feta salad that uses, (I bet you can guess,) vinaigrette. But when we got to the checkout counter, our cashier had a problem. She scanned the vinaigrette and it didn't scan. She tried again and again. She typed in the barcode number. But it wouldn't go through.

Our cashier did know some English and she told us, while holding up the bottle, "This does not exist." Obviously, she is of the Descartes school of though. Even though she can feel it in her hand, and she can see it in front of her, that doesn't prove its existence. It is kind of a modern day "I think, therefore I am." But this one is "The computer doesn't know this product, therefore it isn't."

Alrica solved this by darting back to the shelves and buying a different brand of vinaigrette that happily does exist. (We ate the salad last night, and so I also have my sense of taste to back up my senses of sight and touch.) But I wonder this: Couldn't I have just taken the non-existent vinaigrette without paying for it? It's not theft if the item doesn't exist, right?

Don't worry, I didn't test my hypothesis. Because if I were wrong my ultimate conclusion would be "I am imprisoned, therefore the vinaigrette exists." And even Descartes would agree that's not worth it. Assuming he existed.