Randomness on the Road Part 6

 

Hmm.

I can’t believe there are 6 installments of this series.  I can’t believe I’ve been on the road this long.

When I was younger, I had an idea of going nomad, of running away from my life in corporate America.  I always thought it was just a pipe dream, something a person like me could never do.

Now it’s been 2 ½ years of wandering aimlessly.  A weird and wonderful journey that I still can’t believe is now part of my life resume.

Three birthdays spent in different countries (Greece and Portugal), 13 countries visited so far (not counting layovers in various airports), and still no end in sight.  I’m not crazy about that last part.

I’m still working on getting my business to profitability and making a stable income.  It’s been exhausting and frustrating.  The news coming out of the U.S. doesn’t make it any better.  But, still, I keep pushing.  I hope to be housed in Portugal by the end of 2025, but I doubt I’ll reach that goal.

In the meantime, here’s some more randomness.

In my travels, I have come across some interesting trends in food.  I think I’ve mentioned that the milk and eggs aren’t refrigerated in the grocery stores.  But I’ve also bought eggs that still had feathers on them, potatoes that still have dirt on them.  These massive carrots were in Thailand.

It just makes me feel like the food is less processed than in the U.S., that it goes through fewer hands to get to market.  It feels like a farmer just came into the store and dumped his produce into a bin.  “I grew this in my garden now pay me for it” or “My bird just pooped out this egg.  Wanna eat it?  Enjoy!”

I got a surprise when I first went to the grocery store in Tirana.  I had to use my handy dandy Google Translate app to make sure I was getting the right stuff, but soon realized that the labels weren’t in Albanian.  The main grocery store in the city is called Conad which is an Italian chain.  All the labels and the wines are from Italy.  Okay.

During my brief stay in Türkiye earlier this year, I had a prime view of a movie or TV shoot happening right outside the window of my apartment.  This was not the first time I’d seen camera crews around Istanbul.  There’s always something going on around the city and Balat specifically because is a famous historical neighborhood.  I was eating at a restaurant last year and had to ask the waiter about the guy walking the street and talking to everyone.  Through broken English and phone translation, he told me it was the mayor doing press for TV.

While in Tirana, I spoke with the waiter over my pizza one day.  He figured I was from the states and asked me about living there.  As per usual when talking to curious natives, I told him to avoid the country at all costs.  I don’t think he believed me, though.  He still had the American Dream drummed into his head and the only thing he could see about the place was making more money.  I could understand at least a little – he told me he only made about 600 euros a month, one of the lowest salaries in the Balkans. 

I have no idea how he survives on that, but I know that whatever money he would make in the states would immediately get snatched away from him.  The simple fact that he couldn’t move around as easily without a car in the states as in Tirana is a good enough reason to stay in Albania.   

The influence of American music persists across Europe with Tirana being no exception.  The first restaurant I ate in was playing Katy Perry’s greatest hits.  I still hear odd remakes of American tunes that always has me staring at the ceiling with my head cocked to one side as I try to identify it.  There’s been a lot of strange coffee shop/lounge style remakes usually done by women.  Most of them have been interesting to say the least.  There was one time I heard a lounge style remake of Rick James’ Superfreak which was just … wrong.

I will always mentioned any time I’ve seen my name out in public.  The hotel in Istanbul, the clothing shop in Bulgaria, the taxi stand in Cyprus – all Daphne all the time.  I also have a brand of chocolate found in Istanbul.

A spice made from the leaves of the tree that bears my name in Cyprus.

And this is my name in its native Greek: Δάφνη.  If I hadn’t looked it up, I never would have recognized it.