A dab of competence (Albania, Greece, London).

Wow, well, okay, let me first apologize for the lack of updates. I've done a lot since Montenegro, but spending time to sit down and upload photos and type up an update hasn't been one of them. Get ready, though, because here it comes! (We now resume our reularly scheduled programming).

Last update, I was in Tirana, Albania, spending a couple days enjoying the chaos there. Tirana, as far as I could find, didn't have a lot of culture to share. Up until the 1990s, the communist party was the dominating influence in life. When a parliamentary government finally came, Albania was well behind many Eastern European countries. It's economic problems continue today, as evidenced by the worst domestic infrastructure that the Balkan Peninsula has to offer.

As I mentioned in my last post, transportation in Albania (especially northern Albania) is an experience in and of itself. There are no real bus "stations." Rather, whatever buses exist will congregate at one street corner or another, depending on if they are traveling North or South or East. As such, there are no ticket offices, and since the specific corner at which the buses choose to congregate changes periodically, asking a local is pretty much the only way to know where to go. Luckily, Albanians are eager to help. The general setup results in a system where the most effective way to get a bus to where you want to go is to get to a corner where buses are idling, and simply yell out your destination. Within seconds, you'll have four or five Albanians sheparding you toward the buses you want ("Berat!", "Berat, yes, yes this way! There, Berat!"). It's really effective, once you know the procedure.

Thus I mastered travel in Albania, and went from Tirana to Berat. Known as the "City of A Thousand Windows," for good reason:

Berat, taken from the Illyrian fortress atop the mountain near Old Town. My hostel was one of those buildings.

The city is set on a big, muddy river, but the white windowded buildings that the Ottoman Empire brought to the region more than make up for the lackluster natural surroundings. The main attraction in Berat, however, is clearly the castle.

Albania has many castles like this. Built by the Illyrians long ago, they are pretty magnificent, although by now the whole castle thing is starting to get a bit old, even castles built by a different empire than I've seen before, such as these.

After a night in Berat, I continued down the coast to Saranda, my last stop in Albania. Saranda is a nice beach town, but for me its main attraction was the fact that I could get an overnight bus from there to Athens. I have to admit, the view from my hostel, which was on the 8th floor of an apartment complex, was pretty awesome.

I spent most of my time in Saranda on the beach and eating some great local seafood.

The next day, I got on an evening bus to Athens, which was as sleepless as you would imagine. In what would be a terrible precedent that I set through all of my Greek travel days, I arrived into Athens around 6am during a general strike. Economic troubles in Athens, and the threat of privitization of many unions as part of so called "austerity measures", means that the unions will announce certain days to strike in protest. Needless to say, no buses or metro run during a general strike, so I took a cab to the port. Luckily, the dockworkers opted out of this particular strike, so I was able to get a morning ferry to Aegina, about 50 minutes off the mainland coast, where I was set to start my sailing adventure.

I sailed with the Aegean Sailing School for five days, and it was incredible. I was taking a course called "Competent Crew," which means I spent the week learning the basics of sailing a yacht. Luckily, I was on the boat with four other people, all of whom were taking a more advanced course, so I got to tag along in all of the things they did as well. The yacht we were on was a 44' Cruiser made by Bavaria Yachts, and it was really fun to sail and live on. The winds were great for us, and we were in a different port of call each night. During the day we sailed and took lessons, and then we got to see and explore each island during the evening and night. All in all, it was my ideal vacation: learn something new, see amazing sights, swim in the ocean, meet lots of new people. Plus, when the wind died down we tied together a bunch of bumpers and dragged them behind the boat with us on top...

After my sailing adventure was complete, I had a few days until I was scheduled to fly to London. Since I didn't want to be moving around a lot, I decided I would take a boat to Crete and spend some time on Greece's largest island. Most of what Crete has to offer is in the form of more castles, so I decided to take the times and spend it sleeping and eating and beaching instead, which was great. Unfortunately for me, the day before I was supposed to take an overnight ferry back to Athens, a bunch of notice fliers started going up all over the towns...

Turns out, they were announcing a general strike for the two days I was supposed to be travelling out of Greece... yaaaaay. I called the ferry operator, and they said the ferry wouldn't be running because the dockworkers were striking. To make matters worse, the Athens aiport was only going to be open for five (5) hours a day, since the air traffic controllers union was deciding to participate as well. My flight from Athens to London happened to fall within the hours that the airport was operating, but with no ferries to get to Athens, and no flights from Crete to Athens that would make it possible to do it all in a day, I was forced to rush to the Airport in Iraklio, Crete, and take a flight to Athens a day early. It was a close call, but I got into Athens about 22 hours before my flight to London was scheduled to leave. Of course, with so many cancelled and delayed flights due to the strike, there was no available hotel rooms within 30 minutes of the Airport (and certainly no budget rooms), so I ended up staying in the airport. Not an ideal circumstance, but all this fun sometimes has a price, I guess. My flight to London the next day went without a hitch, and I was sitting in Jake and Andrew, my good friends and fellow Sigma Nu's, living room in Covent Garden, London, later that evening.

London was a marvel, and it was made better by five other Stanford friends' London visit coinciding with mine. All in all, it was Jake, three Andrews, Eric, Jesse, Mikey and Clay in the aparment. Since I have been to London a number of times before, I used the daytime to strategize for my Africa leg (and watch Wimbeldon) while everyone else went sightseeing or was working, and we all went out at night. We went to an Arcade Fire/Mumford and Sons concert in Hyde park (amazing), saw Billy Elliot the musical (also amazing), and enjoyed the big city nightlife.

Whew! That was a big update. I'll try to update more frequently while I'm here in Africa. I flew out of London yesterday afternoon, and am now safe in my Hostel in Nairobi, Kenya. I'll be spending a couple days here getting ready to move out into the countryside. Stay tuned for (more jungle-y) updates soon!

-C