date taken 8/7/2020
How many of you tend to browse through old summer pictures on the colder days, I'm curious to know? Looks like I'm slowly becoming one of those, and I'm not even the seaside fan.
And how many of you have friends that are the most tireless individuals, capable of breathing down your neck until you agree to their ideas?
Fortunately, I have one, and she persuaded me to pack a suitcase at a time when Covid was still raging, quarantine schedules were changing, and travel to most countries was a mental noun.
Knowing her for over a decade, I know she would never give up on the idea of visiting her.
Flights were too expensive at the time, so my only option was to take the bus with whom I would continue my journey from Pristina to Tirana.
The agreement was that I would stay for a week, that we would go to the sea (which is beautiful in Albania), we gonna hang out and then I'm taking my precious back....
We didn't go to the beach, we didn't go out, we didn't have much fun.
It was bad timing, and I knew it from the start, because how could it not be given the circumstances?
Although life in Tirana appeared to be normal, except for the fact that gloves and masks were taken very seriously there, and thus every walk reminded me of walking through the hospital circle.
I tried to get up early in the morning, hang the camera around my neck, and do my own research until the last day, when her and her beloved's passions subsided, and then we drove to the nearby "city" beach.
I remember the wind blowing and me spending most of the day in a t-shirt, the water being full of algae, and she being afraid to enter it because she had recently been bitten by a fish.
I remember feeling guilty because I didn't fully enjoy the visit, but I was still there; I remember that their English sounded like my Albanian - cringe; and I remember looking at the two of them and wishing to myself that I would never fall into a similar relationship.
First and foremost, I remember starting to walk away from them, slowly along the beach, leaving wet footprints in the sand while still dragging my camera with me.
The warm rays of the sun that caused me to squint every now and then, and my gratitude that I can enjoy the moment while the world around me collide.
Silly delighting in the people and the ways in which they have come up with the idea of manipulating tourists on the less-visited beach - freshly roasted corns. However, the beach has a local character, there is no entertainment.
The only thing I was thankful for were the cigarette sellers, who walked the entire length of the beach, carrying a suitcase full of stinky nicotine sticks.
Then the dark clouds rolled in, covering the already chilly beach and stealing the warm rays I was enjoying as I flipped from side to side, we were gone in a few minutes.
I was gone tomorrow morning...
@monochromes