You know
those days that are ridiculously stressful and busy? The ones where you keep wishing time would
slow down so you could have a moment to stop and breathe? Well today was one of those days. Since the
60-member group had split up for the night to 12 different homes, we all met at
a mutual location this morning, the Opera House at the center of the city. From
there we walked 20 minutes through the bustling streets of Tirana to the
Albanian Parliament building, which stood tall in white grandeur. At the gate
we endured the scrutiny of stoic security guards, who carefully checked each of
our passports individually before letting us in. To our surprise, and I’ll be
honest, our delight, at least four TV news stations were there to cover us as
we sang a collection of Albanian songs on the steps of Parliament. One after
another over a span of thirty or forty minutes, members of parliament arrived
in their chauffeured cars and walked through our midst as we stood on either
side of the red carpet leading up the steps.
We left
Parliament after receiving many expressions of appreciation from important
figures such as the Minister of Defense, the Speaker of the House, and other
top leaders of the nation. We rushed to load our tuxes and dresses in the bus in
order to be on time to our next venue, a local radio station where we would be
featured live. As we drove through the city, I could see the chaos of Tirana’s
morning traffic from my vantage point in the front seat of the top deck of our
bus. The rule in Albania seems to be, as nearly as I could figure it out, that
if you can pull off a maneuver without getting hit—it's legal. That being said,
cars swerved in and out of lanes, even directly into oncoming traffic.
Pedestrians and bikers dodged cars in wild evasive maneuvers and a flash of
bright headlights from a car indicated to others, "I'm not stopping, you
better move!" Several times even our bus driver, Ardjion, pulled in front
of and around other drivers, coming within just inches of trading paint. On the
second floor looking down on other cars, I found myself flinching at every turn
and repeatedly pressing my imaginary brake.
But we got
to Radio 7 without a scratch. Well, we almost got there. We came to a street
where the power lines were hanging too low for our large bus to make it through
without creating a town blackout, so we had to disembark and walk the rest of
the way. It only took a brief fifteen minutes, and we were soon at the radio
station ready to record. They were grateful enough to have us that they ordered
us chicken sandwiches from a nearby restaurant, and after a quick lunch we were
on the air. Four of our members were interviewed by the radio station anchors,
and intermittently we would sing a song. After our segment, we stuck around for
another forty minutes to record an album with the mikes and equipment they had
set up. The room was small and the weather warm, so the end of our session found
us sticky and hot and sweating profusely. Despite that annoyance we had a lot
of fun, and interestingly enough the music came alive to us in ways that it
hadn't before.
Leaving the
hot recording studio, we returned to the bus and headed to our next location
where we would be covered once more on live TV. This time were going to the gravesite of
Skanderbeg, Albania's national hero. In the fifteenth century A.D., Albania was
composed of dozens of divided and scattered tribes. The Ottoman empire was
expanding and moving to invade Albania, but Skanderbeg, a Christian, stood
against them and rallied all the tribes to fight together as a united country.
They, as a power of one unified force, stopped the Ottomans from advancing. Since
then Albania has hailed Skanderbeg as their hero, and a monolithic monument in
his honor has been erected at his gravesite. The plan was for our group to
stand in front of this monument and sing the Albanian national anthem.
But
apparently there is truth in what has been said about the best laid plans of
mice and men often going awry. The recording, traffic, and travel having taken
longer than we had expected, we were now late for our TV appointment at the
gravesite. And on top of that, when we finally reached Skanderbeg's gravesite,
we were on the opposite side of the river from his monument and for some reason
I still can't figure out, our bus was unable to cross the bridge to the other
side. To add to our dilemma, none of us were changed into our formal attire and
there was nowhere to make that change happen. So with only 20 minutes left
until we were live on the air, we frantically offloaded all the dresses and
tuxes and designated the top floor of the bus as the girls’ changing room while
the guys changed on the first. Now the first floor of the bus is about half the
size of the second and not all the guys could change there at once, so I
spotted a nearby bridge and led the rest of the guys underneath it, where we
were able to change hidden from view. I can only imagine the thoughts of the
locals passing by as a double-decker bus stopped, spilled out a group of
Americans who raced to the bridge and re-appeared wearing tuxes before breaking
into a sprint to the other side of the river! I’ll bet there are still
Albanians puzzling that one out.
After
crossing the bridge, we still had to run about three blocks to the gravesite,
and let me not fail to mention that the weather was about 90 degrees and humid. When we got
to the gravesite, all of us were panting and dripping with sweat (although I
have been told that girls don’t sweat--apparently, they glow). That being the case, there was a lot of sweating and glowing going
on in our group as we lined up to perform, having by some miracle made it there
on time. The evening sun buffeted me with its rays and every inch of my body,
roasting in the black oven of my tux, was screaming, "I'm on fire!" and
anxiously trying to put out the flames with sweat.
 |
| The Skanderbeg Gravesite Monument |
After two
songs, we entered Skanderbeg's monument and the blessed relief of the shade.
Inside was a statue of the man himself surrounded by iron shields which hung on
the walls; on each one was inscribed a name of one of the tribes which were
once divided. We sang some more songs in this room while we cooled off, and
enjoyed the acoustics of the smooth cement walls.
In my book,
we had already done plenty for one day – but apparently no one was reading my
book. We left the monument and walked a
few blocks to a theater where we performed a concert for residents of the city
we were in, Lezha. The audience was responsive and despite this being our
fourth concert of the day, as I fell into the groove of our harmonies I was
uplifted by the enjoyment of making music with my fellow musicians.
By the end
of the concert we had worked up quite an appetite, and located a restaurant called
Pizza Bar Nr. 2 (I still haven't found number one). This pizza bar resembled a
club as it had a very relaxed environment and was on the fifth floor, with an
open rooftop and glass railings so that the sounds and smells of the city came
to me while I dined on top of it. To my happiness, the food was cheap, about $6
a person with everything included. I was once again impressed by the service of
the Albanian wait staff, who quickly responded
to any
need. I stood at one point to go talk to a friend, and three of the servers,
thinking I was getting up to grab something, rushed to my aid saying,
"Please, sit down. What do you need?" American servers, take notes.
The night moved
from late to later, and we moved from exhausted to debilitated. We pushed our
weary bodies to make one last trek, back to where he had left Albert our bus,
across the river. The best part about being as tired as we were is that it
meant we would sleep extra well—any lingering jet lag would not get the better
of me this evening!
