For the past 3~ months I've lived in Romania. Is that the right way to use "~"? One can never know. I guess I'll start by outlining thoughts and things. So as a Romanian-Amerikkkan, I'm supposed to know how to speak romanian. but i never learned as a child,which is supposed to be something like the best time to learn a language. Or so im told. in all fairness ive done pretty well for myself and can speak way more than i used to be able to which was basically zero. but its a constant battle with my inherent laziness. im really such a sad case! i also have anxienty and general paranoia so the fact that i cant speak extremely fluent romanian makes it difficult to go outside here. i still manage to but its something that almost phsyically hurts. i am aware this sounds pathetic, its because it is! i am a student in community college. this is because i dropped out in my sophmore year and got my ged in what would've been my senior year. i went through a period where i did nothing at all and had to eventually learn how to do things on my own and that, basically, if your not working for yourself nobody is. I leave romania on the 12th of june. i am also taking classes for the summer to accelerate my graduation timeline. it seems that i will graduate on time with my original graduating class which is nice i guess.
heres a photo i took in tirana. i was there briefly for 3 days a month or so ago. wonderful country, friendly people friendly food friendly prices. ive solo traveled a lot. i found out that this year you really need some sort of rental car to ACTUALLY experience somewhere. im pretty sure most people who do fake travels like theyre aristocrats going on a grand tour dont ever experience the country they go to. i also hate using that term experience but there isn't really a substitute. for example in tirana i walked something like 10 miles in a bid to see as much as i could. i ate out every time i ate and went to museums bla bla bla. and so at the end im sitting there tired as hell and unfuffiled.
What i wanted to talk about was the character of the people here and on that i can only say some anecdotal things that i picked up. first, the one person i had a long conversation with, a tour guide (unrelated, i would never go on a tour and spit on those who do honestly), gave me a great crash course in the country that i couldnt get online. and thats what its all about, by the way. i asked for travel recommendations in the future and he listed almost every balkan country. guy even mentioned montenegro! the admission of serbia was very funny. albania looked to be on the up but the story he told me was one similar of romania, the young are leaving! well to be clear romanias young seem to be staying/returning but this is an isolated case as we are the fastset growing economy. he told me that following the fall of hoxhaism, the entire train transportation system was ripped up because, and i'm serious, "we dont need them, we have cars!" and everyone just went along with this. well they did have another war/civilwar/???/ but that was because the entire country got fooled by a ponzi scheme
so that should all tell you about the character of the country i guess. these people think that coffee means a shot glass of the strongest espresso known to man. god bless starbucks because someone needed to teach these eurotrash what coffee actually is. i only half joke here. there was a lot of milling about, something characteristic of a third world state. but this was europe?? likely a holdover of the complete question that was the albanian state during the cold war. the man i spoke to that i mentioned earlier was equally as confused as i was to classify it. he also liked to say "and that is why..." a lot. unrelated. i believe thats all i have to say today. this was more of a test on how to do this than it was actual writing. which i also cant do buut i digress. i dont have images on my laptop like that so i dont have much to put here but ill leave you with this parting gift (:
