A New Intern; His Perspective on Albanian Food

Since arriving in Albania, I've encountered different food, I've struggled with the language barrier, and I've had to adjust to life in a larger city — but one thing I've not really had to deal with is culture shock. Life here in Albania is not so different from life elsewhere. People always ask me what the weirdest thing here is, ask me how foreign it is here — I always struggle with answering that question or giving them a response that would intrigue. I always settle with the response: "It's not that different in Albania; it's not that strange."

However, that's not to say there aren't differences between Albanian and, say, American culture. Of course there are. We live in a dynamic world with dynamic people after all and Albania and its culture is no exception. But the differences are not instrumentally huge. This first blog post will more or less consist of a list of things that have to do with food!

The restaurants here are amazing and really convenient. A lot of them have outdoor seating too, so it makes it quite simple to just pause while you're walk, decide you're hungry, and plop yourself down. There's usually someone watching the outside seating, so a server comes to you and gives you a menu fairly quickly. A common thing that people eat at these more casual restaurants is something called "qofte" (pronounced chofta), which are these nicely sized sausages, along with fries and a few other things. You can order a really good sized meal for two people for less than 10 dollars many times, making it actually cheaper a lot of the time to dine out! A dream come true!

Many of these restaurants have at least one person who speaks fairly good English, so ordering food has never been too much of a hassle. The times where they don't have someone who speaks English, we just shoot from the hip and point at a few things on the menu and hope they taste good! We haven't been disappointed yet with the food, even when we're not sure what we're ordering.

The baked goods in Tirana, Albania, are to die for! Truly, they're delicious. There's bakeries everywhere you go in Tirana and everywhere there's the smell coming from them. There's cakes, donuts, scones filled with every filling imaginable, and a lot more. In addition to the baked good being tasty, they're also inexplicably cheap, making them an affordable thing to snack on from time to time.

Lastly, there's these tiny markets that are no bigger than a smaller bedroom — they're just as, if not more, numerous as the bakeries. These are the places you should go to get your everyday groceries. Unlike in the U.S., these smaller places are cheaper and more convenient than the huge supermarkets. It's the opposite in Albanian, really, with the supermarkets being the more expensive out of the pairing. Although the markets do accept credit and debit cards, which is something the tinier markets do not do. 

Albania has been a fantastic experience thus far, with the amazing food being only a part of it! I'll continue this blog focusing on other parts of this great place, its culture, and any other aspect of this country I can think of. Thanks.