Welcome to travels with Todd

Tuesday morning it was time to retrace our boat ride down the Shala River and across Lake Koman,

our steps through the tunnel, and our bus ride along the anfractuous road that our driver had maneuvered Sunday. Since it was now Tuesday, this time there’d be a small difference – we’d have to stop from time to time for the construction crews who would be working. I neglected to take a picture of the tiny signs they held to control traffic flow that looked to me like oversized red and green ping pong paddles, and, for some peculiar reason, always made me smile.

You might recall me mentioning that we shouldn’t consider the tap water potable. However, there’s other water in the country that is. Thus, on our way to our lunch stop in Vau-Dejës, we stopped at a spring where we interrupted some local entrepreneurs who allowed us

to fill the large container (on the ground in the photo) that would accompany us for the remainder of the trip and eliminate the need to purchase bottled water.

Apparently, aquaculture has no connection to a water ballet

The construction of the hydroelectric dam that created Lake Koman in 1978 and another dam project at Vau i Dejës that had been completed at the beginning of that decade created several artificial lakes along the Drin River. These lakes generated an opportunity to develop an aquaculture industry that today employs an estimated 1,500 people.

While the Drin River Basin hosts over 30 endemic freshwater fish species including the relatively small Skadar rudd (Scardinius knezevici) and the Near-threatened Drin brook lamprey (Eudontomyzon stankokaramani), the principal commercially farmed fish species are trout and carp. We passed a few such farms along our way.

In addition to the fresh water stop, we made a stop for tea (Well, I had tea. Others had coffee) at a lovely spot whose name I failed to note but that provided some interesting littoral views.

What I did in Vau-Dejës

The TL;DR is: not much. But here goes.

Drive 95km south from Vau-Dejës to Tirana. Make a left and drive another 220km to Skopje the capital of North Macedonia and you can find a plaque noting the birthplace of Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu whom the world came to know as Mother Teresa. Although she was born in North Macedonia, she is of Albanian heritage and is celebrated in places throughout the region. One of those places is Vau-Dejës where there is a cathedral named in her honor.

Most of the churches in the area, including the medieval Church of St Mary built around the year 13oo, were destroyed when the country was officially atheist and under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. Sometime after the end of “the communism time,” a new church was built and, likely in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of her birth, was named in her honor.

E invited the group inside but I elected not to join them. When they’d finished their tour, we reconvened outside the church and E allotted our time for lunch. It was at this time that I had my first inkling of a dynamic within this group unlike any I’d experienced before.

(I’ve written elsewhere that even on small group tours there’s a process of self-selection that tends to create small tribes. When presented with opportunities to find their own meals these mini-tribes will actively seek to include all the members. This didn’t happen – at least for me. Even early in the trip our group of 12 was getting along quite well and I’m confident that had I asked to join one or two others they would have happily acceded but since no one sought me out, I spent most of our time in Vau-Dejës by myself. And I’m fine with that.)

My exploration of the town led me nowhere particularly illecebrous so I alit in a small byrektore across from the church. It was a happy choice. The food was passable but the proprietor was exceptionally solicitous. He first offered me use of the toilet then, in a questioning tone, repeated “wifey?” He was asking if I wanted to use his wi-fi. Between his limited English and my even more limited Albanian we still managed a bit of a conversation.

I followed this with a short walk and, at his invitation, joined E at his lunch venue. We chatted and shared some grapes that were nearly as tasty as the tomatoes I’d eaten in Tirana.

At night in the Shade of the Fairies

We had a leisurely time in Vai-Dejës because we were less than a half-hour ride to Mrizi i Zanave – Albania’s first agritourism business and, perhaps, its most well-known farm-to-table restaurant. It’s quite close to the town of Fishtë and, if you read the first post about this trip, you might recall that L, the receptionist at the Vintage Hotel in Brussels, was not only from Fishtë but had made two recommendations for things to do in her hometown. One was to visit and have a meal at Mrizi i Zanave.

In 1998, Altin and Anton Prenga emigrated to Italy where they trained in culinary arts and became chefs before returning to their native village of Fishtë where they established a small three hectare farm producing cheese, wine, sausages, smoked ham, marmalades, and other products that would serve as the basis for their slow-food farm to table enterprise. Using a combination of savings from their time in Italy and grants from the EU and several NGOs, they opened their restaurant naming it Mrizi i Zanave a phrase meaning “in the shade of the fairies” from a poem by famed local poet Gjergj Fishta that described his hometown.

We settled into our rooms,

and gathered for a brief tour of the spaces where they age local traditional cheeses,

cure hams (exterior photo only)

and visited the wine cellar – repurposed, as were the other buildings from their original use as a notorious prison –

and where, for a modest €10, we had a wine tasting that included two whites, two reds and a rosé.

(I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that this was the extent of our tour because we really got no other sense of the farm’s day to day operations or how large the farm had become.)

When I get feeling better when I’m feeling no pain

I fear this section will disappoint some readers. After a lovely sunset,

some time spent outside a spoon fed bunker,

and a childlike tractor-train ride,

we gathered in one dining room for the most sumptuous meal of the trip. The food arrived in waves with three or four items to taste through four or five courses and the servers described each dish. Here’s the potentially disappointing part: I took no notes or photos of what we ate. All of the food at Mrizi i Zanave is seasonal so they have no set menu. As nearly as I could gather from the staff, they contract with local farmers to provide anything they don’t grow on the main farm. There were some meat dishes I didn’t try but I savored everything I did.

I also savored the conversation. By coincidence, I happened to be seated near G and all our colloquies generally settled in subgroups of four. It was here that G made the revelation I noted in the previous post. Though quite different from mine, I learned that he has a strong association with and attachment to the song Moon River. (His is familial. Mine springs from my admiration of Audrey Hepburn.) He also revealed that he owns a pair of functioning fully restored jukeboxes in his home – one of which is exclusively filled with 45s of The Beatles. He’d acquired many of them by blindly ordering the collection online. This conjunction of musical interest strengthened our connection – at least for the week.

While it wasn’t overly late, some in our group expressed an interest in sitting at the bar that was between the main hotel and the cabins where five of us would spend the night. I wouldn’t be among the night owls. The expansive meal left me sensing the descent of an enveloping abbiocco – an impression I couldn’t shake and one that led to an early bedtime.

Tomorrow, our group will continue our southward journey to Durrës and Divjaka-Karavasta National Park. Meanwhile, I have a few additional photos I can share.