Saturday in Tirana

If your normal weekend starts with a lie in, a visit to the Supermarket, a trip to the gym or a coffee and pastry at your Wi-fi friendly high street, then you should be living in Albania. This Saturday started as a normal day except that I had no hot water and the kettle had also stopped working. The cooker (both gas and electric) were in fine form and I was able to heat up water, wash and eat and plan for the day.  Then my landlord, Bedri, called and he installed two more light bulbs. I had three in the house already, but room for five. In my extra-luminous home I thanked him and he assured me that an 'engineer' would be round to sort out the water boiler. Ten minutes later another neighbour, Ermiliano, popped round and fixed the problem immediately. He then took me into town to purchase a mobile phone and car insurance.

The phone was bought at a store called Neptun (no 'e') where there are about three staff for each customer, and there are many customers. We left, but as we put the SIM inside it asked for a PIN which I had, but then an authorisation code, which I was missing. Helpfully, all the instructions on the phone were given in Hungarian. We went back to the shop and explained the problem. Different staff helped and provided a second phone which accepted the SIM with just a PIN, but still displayed all messages in Hungarian. I changed this to English somehow, but will now be useful if I ever need a NOKIA fixed in Budapest.

The next visit was to the wholesalers. Ermiliano was after cheese, meat, cigarettes and other items for his father's store in Schoze. We bought in bulk and took them back to the car, parked randomly on the side of the road near a police station. Ten minutes later I was buying car insurance for my English-registered Citreon. For this we met up with another family friend and walked to nearby offices. A very helpful staff member wrote and signed an insurance certificate after seeing my documents. She signed it and so did I. I paid 120 euros and am now insured on the streets of Albania for twelve months.  We picked up Ermiliano's wife, had a delicious ice cream, and were soon home in Schoze. My genial host and chauffeur then attempted to mend one of the headlamps on my car, but was beaten by French technology.  I enjoyed lunch, listened to England winning the Twenty20 match with Australia and then went back into the city. This time I took the bus, and with temperatures in the 70s had a brilliant afternoon getting to know what is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.