Furgon Flip Flop

Durres is the second largest city in Albania. Living in such a large city here makes me wonder sometimes if I am missing the "real Albania". Life in the villages and smaller towns is much more provencial and much more conservative. There are certain liberties that people in Durres and Tirana enjoy and certain restrictions on behavior that they no longer acknowledge. I tend to forget how different this country can be from the cities to the villages.

This became clearer Thursday as I was traveling by furgon (mini-bus) to Elbasan from Durres. I hadn't experienced a "furgon flip flop" since my days in Belsh during training. The furgon filled with 8 passengers in Durres and I was seated next to the window in the middle seat. Beside me were a young man and a young woman, husband and wife. Two older women and a young man were in the back.

Halfway to Elbasan, the furgon stopped to pick up a middle-aged couple. A problem arose. Four passengers would have to ride in the middle and the back to accomodate the couple. The older woman naturally moved to the back seat to sit next to the others. However, the older man would then have to have a place on the middle seat, and having him sit next to the young wife was not an option, lest her honor be put into jeopardy. But wait, if the young couple simply switched seats the situation would worsen considerably. The young wife would be sitting next to me! A young, virile, (dare I say) attractive, 25-year-old man, and who knows what unmentionable advances I might attempt on her during the rest of the trip. So, the solution was easy. I would crawl over the couple from the window and then be wedged between the two men on the middle seat. A seat designed for three, which always seems to accomodate more. It's situations like the furgon flip flop that remind me where I am.