Different Rules

Day twenty-seven, Albania. The Villa Osmani in Durrës is a rock in the surf. I am mostly on my own here, working, taking stock.

Coming to Albania took something out of me. The Bosnian policeman was still sitting in my neck. Aldo, who manages the Namaste and is Albanian, had told me the country was safe and hospitable, and he was right.

I use the time to write copy for an agency and to look after a few websites. In the afternoon I walk the beach at Durrës, which reminds me of Mallorca: music, beach bars, one hotel after the next. The sky is grey and doing a fair impression of my mood.

Then the phone goes. Frankfurt. Sebastian: „Frank, are you in for the podcast?“

Of course I am. It is fourteen years since we last took proper time for each other. I know him from university: sunny, warm-hearted, a serious Christian. Talking to him lifts me out of the worrying, and I notice how much of that I have been doing.

Here is the thing I keep running into. The further I go and the quieter it gets, the more clearly I can hear the voices inside that spend all day telling me what I ought and ought not to do. At home they never stop commenting.

Here in Albania they are struggling. They can't judge what is happening, because they have nothing to measure it against.

Nobody warned me that this is what leaving would do.