Hey guys, since I last talked to you I made the drive from Parga to Serande and then on to Fier, Albania.

On Friday, I set out from Parga and made the relatively short drive to the Albanian border. Along the way, I caught the last views of the Greek coastline that I’ll have for quite some time. Here are some scenes from the stretch between Parga and the border:

After crossing the border, it was only a short drive to my destination of Serande. Along the way, I stopped off at a beach just south of Serande that someone recommended to me in Greece and had a dip in the ocean.

I had gone back to Serande because the owner of the Hasta La Vista hostel, Albano, had been a great and fun guy when I was there on my last night before heading into Greece and he had invited me to come back to the hostel on my way out of Greece to play a show at the hostel. I was glad to oblige! The show was set up for Saturday evening, so I got in on Friday afternoon so I could catch up with Albano and meet the new crew at the hostel. Upon arrival, Albano and I went to the fish restaurant down the street on his recommendation. After ordering, I was pretty mortified when they brought out whole fried fish with heads on and all the bones. Albano didn’t understand the problem, but I had never eaten a fish like that before and I just couldn’t quite get into it. Albano was glad to eat my share of fish and I had his share of fries, so we both had a little something in our stomach leaving out of there and life went on 😂

In the evening, everybody just kind of hung around the front of the hostel and had some drinks and got to know each other. It was a pretty good crew! Albano does a great job of fostering a good social vibe at his hostel.

The next day, Saturday, it was time to get down to business. I had one big goal for the day besides playing the show, which was to get a haircut. Mission accomplished on that, Albano and I set about doing a major cleaning on the lower level of the hostel which is where the show was going to be that night. The lower level is a great huge space, but they had been doing some renovation down there and it needed about 3 hours of work before it was ready for people to be hanging out down there. I was glad to pitch in a little sweat equity to help my buddy out at his hostel!

Albano had invited some local people to come over and hang out, but nobody decided to show up – so it was basically just the other hostel guests that came down to listen to me. Which was ok because they really sat and listened and everybody really seemed to enjoy it. I only played about 20-25 minutes at a time and then we’d put on some background music and just hang outside for a while before going back in for another set. It was very low key, but also a lot of fun!

At various points throughout the evening, my speaker was also used as fuel for a dance party and later on we even did some kareoke with it. I was able to convince almost everybody to come up for a karaoke song, so that was a lot of fun. Finally, at about 2am the police showed up and told us that the party was over since they’d gotten a few calls from the neighbors. Haha. So all in all, it wasn’t so much of a show as it a party, but it was still a great time!

In the morning after check out, Albano led a group of 5 of us out to the national park about a half hour north of Serande where the “blue eye” is located. Blue Eye is basically a fresh water spring where you can jump into the freezing cold water. We had a good time with that and the area and water was beautiful to look at.

The drive from the Blue Eye to Gjirokaster had some pretty nice scenery of the valley:

Driving in Gjirokaster trying to find the hostel where Katerina needed to be dropped off was a nightmare. Google kept sending us to roads that didn’t exist and everything was up and down these giant hills. It was super stressful driving there and we spent about a half hour driving around in circles. Ultimately, I got her as close as I could with the car and she set out from there on foot. I heard tonight that she found the place so all is well.

After leaving Gjirokaster, I had about 2 hours to my destination for the evening of Fier. I had no intention of doing anything here other than getting rested up and prepared to enter Macedonia for the first time tomorrow. I arrived in town at sunset and checked into my hotel room and have been chilling here ever since. There was more nice scenery between Gjirokaster and Fier:

Tomorrow I’m headed 3 hours away to Ohrid, Macedonia where I have a hostel booked. On Tuesday, I’ll make my way to Skopje where I’m playing a show at a bar in the evening. And on Wednesday, I’ll be getting some special company starting with Mary’s arrival in the afternoon and Anna-Maria arriving in the evening.

That’s all I have for now, so I will talk to you again soon!