Day 133
Location 25: Tirana, Albania
Mar. 13, 2023
When I booked five nights at Trip'n'Hostel in Albania, I wrongly assumed the name referred to "trip", as in a nomadic adventure. The hostel's welcome sign was decorated with hand-drawn funky mushrooms and I quickly realized "trip" referred to a more psychedelic adventure.
The very first thing I witnessed after waking up in Trip'n'Hostel was two turtles going head to head for a pile of cucumber. It was like watching a WWE match made for the elderly. My god, was I tripping already?
Next, two hostel employees began playing guitar and passing around a joint. I hadn't smoked weed since getting high for 24 hours in Amsterdam, so this was a nice welcoming to Tirana.
In the evening, I met the hostel crew at a nearby cocktail bar where they sat with two random guys they'd befriended.
The two random guys were large. Not simply overweight, but rather—like Steve Buscemi—their presence was unsettling, but commanded your attention. Oh, and they were overweight.
Both were Albanian-American, and one was from New Jersey. I joked that Jersey is New York's garbage dump and he joked back that Long Island is trashy in its own right. After a few drinks, the two men leveled up in their obnoxiousness and—in perfect step with them—I leveled up my teasing. Then someone leaned over and whispered a secret in my ear.
Hey Dylan, just so you know these two guys aren't just Albanian-American. They're in the Albanian-American drug trade. They're international cocaine dealers.
