#literally had to stop myself from telling them about like. the entire prison industrial complex

[anotherpapercut]

today I was teaching the kids about Juneteenth and it was just a couple of them so we were basically just having a conversation about the history of slavery and segregation in the united states and without really thinking about it I brought up that a common justification for the subjugation of black and indigenous people was/is that they weren't christian or weren't the right kind of christian which is true but also a very controversial thing to say where I live and I'm kind of worried I will get in trouble if one of them tells their parents about it

[violetsystems]

#personal

Yesterday after two extremely long email chains, I was able to link my hosting and my epic account to a new email.  They both happened around the same time.  In both threads, I spent a lot of time explaining my situation over and over.  That I was let go from my job.  That I was locked out of the work email attached to the accounts.  I ended up having to provide a bank statement from four years back for the hosting.  I sat there skimming through page after page.  My spending was just erratic back then.  I looked at the liquor store charges in disgust.  I felt like it was more the universe nudging me with a gentle reminder than anything.  As I installed the professional version of Teams and thumbed through the Azure Active Directory panel, I realized something else.  I am incredibly overqualified to make somebody else money at my expense.  The other dull realization over the last week has been about finances.  I spent a large amount of my days biking back and forth around the city.  I purchased that bike years ago with the profits from a freelance job.  I designed a Drupal website for a video production company that wanted to encode ads in house before YouTube or Vimeo was industry accepted.  That was over twelve years ago at this point.  The same messenger bag from over fifteen years ago draped over my shoulders.  I maybe spend more time at the store but less on groceries.  My mind isn’t scattered around fifteen places at once with no answer.  I am a person who is bothered by ambiguity as much as the next person.  But I’ve also travelled to Seoul fifteen times alone on a passport without really knowing anyone out there.  On my way through the loop I stopped at the county offices to ask a security guard about state id’s.  He told me I’d have to queue up at the location I suspected.  Anything these days is easier to do before nine am.  I still wake up insanely early.  Ironically I’m up before the markets.  These days I’ve spent more time researching investment portfolio strategies than looking for salaried long term work.  It is true that living in America has offered some protections for people in my position.  But the ambiguity I’m living in regarding the final agreements for the end of my employment are still legally up in the air.  The decisions I made in the short term really don’t rely on any of that.  I chose to become liquid.  Like not in some hippy sense.  The truth of the last two decades of working a salaried job was that I was unable to rise out of debt.  I worked a non profit salary feeling that the environment was more suited for a person like myself.  I even sat in meetings like the Office where we scoured through gallup poll statistics.  I remember the echo in my head as the room was addressed.  People like us wouldn’t fit in working in the corporate world.  It was a Prison Mike speech.  All the dementors lined up outside the hallway so no one could leave or dissent.  Years later, I’m like Neo.  Flushed down the vacuum tube and stranded on my own little pirate ship.  Purple bandana notwithstanding.  Left with a final message from the Epic Games customer service agent encouraging me to play Fortnite.

It’s hard to miss a motherfucker riding around on a bike with pink handlebars, I know.  But really the experience from my side in the last two weeks has been telling.  Nobody wants to address it other than the fight to reestablish my identity.  Being locked out of your email sucks.  But this is kind of par for the course in IT land regardless of how liberal you think your employer is.  A lot of my life was tied up in my job.  It was a hard reset.  Twenty years of email is just gone.  It’s not backed up anywhere.  I can’t dig through and reference anything.  It wasn’t like this was the first traumatic thing to happen in my life.  I broke up with my girlfriend over ten years ago.  I had worked with her for years at that same job.  I literally got so many friends and people I cared about jobs.  Mainly because I thought I’d want to work with my friends.  I’m kind of used to getting burned by the truth in that respect.  I’ve had to spend a lot of time alone protecting myself from giving too much.  When I walked away from a ten year relationship I had to give up the car I paid for and the apartment I paid most of the rent in.  And in that respect, I started my life over far quicker.  A twenty year job and resume ending on an understandably legal note is just life.  The hardest part about getting a job is finding the right one.  And in an election year with a swarm of vultures looking for a poster boy, now may not be the right time.  And yet for all the shit I’ve done over twenty years, I’m still just as invisible if not more.  I feel like this is a real skill.  Much like building computers on the cheap and hosting enterprise level services from your couch.  I spent eight hours a day trying to motivate people to do work.  Now I just live my life.  This isn’t to say people could copy my advice and have the same results.  The first and most obvious fact is that to this very day, people think they’re better at knowing me than me.  And nobody really knows who I am or what my value is aside from a few people.  Most of them are hidden under layers of industrial camo for occupational reasons.  But I’m the one out in the open.  I’m the one wandering the streets while people ask me to read into their messages and agenda for free.  I’m the one who writes or posts a logo and could stand to benefit from the viral activity sparking up my financial portfolio.  Or I’m the one who can plug back into the matrix and get siphoned off for less than I’m worth.  I’m the one standing here three weeks later while nobody other than the people I write for even give a fuck.  I’m sure people spend hours talking about me.  How they’re worried about me and how the government did this or that?  But nobody even calls or cares to reach out from that old life I left behind aside from the people I’ve helped.  Even then.  Total silence.  And you thought pink was a loud color?

Week three and what I’m going to do is fairly simple.  I’m taking a break.  I’m pausing from life.  I’m paying my bills and holding down my liabilities comfortably until my birthday at the earliest.  I’m researching my benefits.  Organizing my expenses online.  Experimenting with my skills.  Building a better home office than any salaried job has ever accommodated.  I’m working for myself.  I’m not really entirely sure I can even claim unemployment.  I spoke with my dad last night about it.  It was nonchalant conversation.  He was all for taking the money.  That money is taxed.  It’s a complex situation.  And a highly political one during a time when politics in America literally don’t do shit.  Money does.  I have a COBRA extension to my health insurance.  That can be expensive but I’m not too worried about it.  I rescheduled a dentist appointment on Monday.  I got up to speed with them two years ago so I’m not expecting anything bleak.  I have vision insurance.  I have a battle axe of a resume and no fear of interacting with people.  I think that’s the worst thing about losing your job.  The self worth aspect of it.  Jamie Dimon of all people was talking about how he went from working 80 hours to zero.  It affected his net worth.  Not his self worth.  The problem being is that Jamie Dimon works for a bank.  I worked non profit academia along the same lines.  I’m also in an extremely opposite situation.  My net worth, liquidity, and choices to eliminate debt put me somewhere I haven’t been in twenty years.  And the mind fuck of it all is a lot to adjust to.  Kanye is out there crying every second of the day.  Super rich.  Super in debt.  Doesn’t make sense right?  Kanye was also three floors below me trying to teach a class at my old job.  I’ve literally been pile-drived continuously and held onto an invisible hand lovingly the entire way.  And here I am.  Not making excuses.  Not pointing at politics.  Not shouting nationalistic bullshit to divert the attention from the real problem.  It’s a lot to face for sure.  I deserve some time to process it.  Truth be told, the severance is thirteen weeks.  I’m not sure when that starts because I haven’t seen the lump sum yet.  It’s a tricky, contractual thing and I have no choice but to wait for it.  It definitely confuses my situation in terms of unemployment.  Definitely didn’t get to take advantage of any boosts other than the jetpack in Crucible.  I have money.  I can pay my rent and utilities.  And there’s no shortage of people watching to make sure.  Just nobody asking how I’m doing.  Which is good because that’s only for you to know.  People should already know.  Pink isn’t a hard color to read into.  Blue... that’s not my team.  I’m far too angelic for that kind of shit show. <3 Tim

[gaiatheorist]

Daddy Issues.

The idea here was to write about ‘something else’, to clear my tangled mind of all of the hugely impactive peripheral issues floating in my atmosphere right now. It’s not going to work, and no quantity of “That is in the past.” or “I broke that cycle.” can blase-away the fact that a deeply dysfunctional development skewed my life into what it is now.

They and them, and this and that caused me to develop into what I am, an unemployed, 41 year old she-ish thing sitting typing into a knackered old Chromebook, with loads of keys missing, mainly on the left side, so I have to keep correcting typos, where I think I’ve hit the key with my dead hand, and it turns out I haven’t. That’s a literal observation, but also a fitting metaphor, a damaged person, using an unfit for purpose tool, to the best of their limited ability, in a tenacious-draining attempt to just keep functioning.

It’s not the ponies, and the foreign holidays, and the ‘stuff’, of course there’s a niggle that my eldest half-sister was given a house, and my younger one is undertaking her second degree at Oxford, interspersed with exotic holidays, when I’ve never even held a passport. I chose this path, I willingly elected to remove myself from their lives, I can’t resent them their indulgences, because I was the one who opted out of those spheres.  

There was no real drama to me ‘running away from home’ at the age of 18, no screaming rows and flouncing out, I’d been spending increasingly longer periods of time at the boyfriend’s house, one night in October 1995, I just didn’t ever go back home. He’d given me a Yale key, and told me the combination of outside-lights-on that mean his ex-girlfriend was there, and I ought to walk another lap around the block until she was gone. That’s a weird thing to remember, that if the outside light was left on, his ex was there to walk the dogs, and I was to stay out of sight, like dirty laundry. I was his rebound from her, they’d separated, after 11 years, in the July or August, I met him in the August, and I’d fully moved in by the October. For a few months, I was a shadow-thing, second-best, in hindsight, he might have held out hopes for a reconciliation with his ex, familiar ground and such, he always did prefer the easy option. I’m not easy.     

It wasn’t as ‘planned’ as the time I was going to leave sixth form, and take a job in a pharmacy in town, renting a room from a friend’s boyfriend. It wasn’t as dramatic as the time I was going to leave and live in my boyfriend’s grandma’s spare room, in the house where the gas and electric meters kept running out. My mother physically attacked me that time, screaming at me that I wasn’t taking THAT because she’d paid for it, dragging my clothes out of the bin-liners I was cramming them into, and tearing out a fair-sized chunk of my hair, when I just continued stuffing things back into bags. I needed to be out of there, for both of us, for all of us, we’ve since acknowledged that our respective ‘escapes’ from our fathers and families were more similar than either of us wanted to admit. We’re more different than we are similar, but, in a way, I also ‘jumped into bed with the first man that would have me.’ 

Her father was a monster. He was a paedophile, and he’s the grain of sand at the core of my oyster of not-telling, and not-asking-for-help. Why ask for help when there isn’t any, why change situations to protect others, when that takes away all of your own protection? I broke that cycle, I ‘saved’ my half sister and female cousins. Yes, I destroyed the family, but a family based on secrets and lies is worse than a fractured one. (Weird side-thought, I’m the only one of my siblings and cousins with a male child, I might have protected those girls, too, he’s dead, he died during his prison term, but his wife is still alive. If I hadn’t spoken out when I did there are at least five girl-children that might have been placed in his bed.) 

Her out-of-the-frying-pan was more obviously abusive. My father, not quite a monster, was violently unstable, and emotionally controlling. Bruises and scars fade in time, but the memories of emotional and psychological abuse are always there, temporal trip-wires, ready for the next trigger. My father, and her father, are the reasons I’ll never work in certain industries. Un-pretty-ing myself is a defensive mechanism, protecting me from some predators, and reducing the risk of being accused of being a try-hard slut, who will never be pretty, even under three inches of make-up. I’m content in combats and a ponytail, I don’t feel any need to paint myself pretty, but part of that links back to my father constantly berating and belittling any early attempts at femininity in me. I am clumsy, not graceful, and I’m never going to be a classic beauty, I accept these facts, but my non-binary, middle-ground ‘aesthetic’ rules out most customer-facing work. Cheers, Dad. 

Years of very hard work have enabled me to mostly disable my flinch-reflex. I’m one of the dead-behind-the-eyes types of abused children, rather than one of the hides-under-a-table types. My mother and father were both physically violent to my brother and I, so we learned the dead-response, our parents wanted the gratification of a reaction, and the two of us were already so emotionally messed up that denying the reaction was the only power-play we had. We would probably have had a lot less beatings and broken-things if we’d rolled over and showed our bellies, but we turned into resistant rock-children, unresponsive to the battering and berating, to frustrate our parents. Cheers, Dad, I can now stand face-to-face with violent and aggressive individuals, and keep my body language and tone of voice neutral. 

My father was unreliable, and unpredictable. When we still lived with him, there was no indication whether he would pick up his mandolin, and sing a nonsense-song with us, or backhand-slap us for no apparent reason. There were giddy-good times, but they were always tinged with the trepidation that we might do something bad, and set him off into a rage. We were never the reason for his rage, he was just mentally unstable, but that existence, coupled with the Catholic upbringing, caused behavioural shifts in my brother and I. He’s more ‘outward’, more hedonistic, more careless, he is more settled now, but for quite a long time, he lived a what’s-the-worst-that-can-happen sort of life, dangerous behaviours and risk-taking. I’m the other end of the spectrum, everything I ever do has to be risk-assessed to the nth degree, I’m incredibly self-limiting, and that probably has impacted on my mental health. (Piss off, well-meaning articles about the importance of an active social life, my Daddy Issues have really screwed up all of my human interaction.) 

Not wanting to ‘set off’ my father, and being hip-deep in the slurry of Catholic guilt complexes, I became a timid, invisible thing, so worried about being ‘caught’ and punished, constantly on-edge. That constant, all-encompassing paranoia tips your ‘normal’ anxiety response, being on-guard all the time for what other people might do to you doesn’t leave much energy spare for ‘yourself’. I never really built a sense of identity as a child, my adolescence was spent raising my half-sister, because I’d had the temerity to do away with my mother’s free childminders, so there wasn’t much time for exploration and development. I frustrate people-trying-to-help, when they ask me what I ‘enjoy’ doing, what I do ‘for myself’, because I can’t answer. Outside of a very strictly limited range of activities, I don’t know what makes me ‘happy.’ (I’ve just looked at Facebook, my younger half-sister is in Thailand, I’m sure she knows what makes her happy.)  Thanks, Dad, for having so much ego of your own that I skipped that step entirely, and became a different kind of doormat to my mother. That malleable need-to-please suits some people, but it never really sat easily with me. The little girls who grow up being told how nice and pretty they are seem to continue to seek that affirmation as women, it was something I’d never had, so I’ve never ‘missed’ it as such. I know I’m not ‘ugly’ or ‘stupid’, or any of the other things he called me, but that ‘cutting off’ behaviour is hard-wired, I don’t seek meaningful bonds with people because they might turn out to treat me like he did, and I piss people off with my ‘get the first one in’ self-deprecation. (Bored of telling professionals “I’m being facetious.” when I mock my disability and such.) 

My mother left him. I don’t know how many attempts she had made previously, but there were a lot of blood-and-snot-and-dufflecoats-over-pyjamas midnight car trips to stay with friends of hers for a few days. Children normalise events, ‘most’ people would be traumatised by those escape-flights, I suppose we were, until they became our ‘normal.’  I was seven, and my brother five, when we started having to sit very quietly in the waiting room of the solicitors. We looked at houses, and there was very little said about Dad not moving with us. She moved back to the village where her parents lived, and, for a little while, we were a single-parent-family, with Dad not paying the maintenance money on time, and either turning up, or not, to take my brother and I to his house at weekends. When he did bother to turn up, there were arguments, there never seemed to be any food in at his house, and he’d just bugger off and do his own thing all weekend, leaving my brother and I in the house. He started to lock us in after someone complained about us running feral, and he started to unplug the phone from the wall when we’d phone our mother to say he’d locked us in again. The overnight access stopped, there were more rows about the maintenance money, and we ended up going to the ‘Education Office’ for school uniforms, coats, and shoes, you could tell the other children in similar predicaments, because there were only two kinds of coat available, the better-off kids used to yell “Edjo!” at us. The lesson I learned from that was that people, in general, are untrustworthy. So I don’t trust people. There is always food in my house when I have my son here, and most of it isn’t the horrible cheap-tasting freezer-shop rubbish my mother used to buy, for convenience, because she worked long shifts, and because she was a genuinely awful cook. 

The single-parent-family thing lasted a couple of years. Mum-got-a-boyfriend before Dad-met-a-lady, with hindsight, they both reverted to pattern, she found a violent alcoholic, and he latched onto a quiet mouse of a thing, who wouldn’t say shit if she had a mouth full of it. My brother and I didn’t like the new man, we were already both damaged enough not to want to ‘bond’ with this stranger in double-denim who had moved into ‘our’ space. Our ‘normal’ wasn’t his ‘normal’, we had been raised in chaos and squalor, he had been raised by a mother with very exacting standards of behaviour and housekeeping. From the familiar, disordered squalor of living with a mother who vacuumed the downstairs carpets once a week, and was so lax with the laundry that we grew out of anything at the bottom of the laundry basket before it was washed, to new rules. Stupid rules, like slippers indoors, and dishes put away as soon as they were washed and dried. Those rules made no sense to us, because we’d never known them. We didn’t like him, and then he started hitting our Mum. He battered her, we’d been there before, we’d phone the police, and chase him out of the house, and lock the doors. (Back then, the police wouldn’t ‘interfere with a domestic’, but if they had a drunk and disorderly causing a public disturbance outside, they had to do something, my brother and I were street-smart.)   

She didn’t learn, one of the many reasons I don’t really have a relationship with her. We, her children, would try to protect her, because she wouldn’t protect herself. She always took him back. 

He battered my mother, he attacked my brother more than once, but never laid a hand on me. I like to play fierce on that one, to pretend he sensed the fire in me, but I suspect he just knew how the police would view him assaulting a young girl/woman. 

I couldn’t live there, with that, I made sporadic attempts to get out before I eventually did, and inherited a new ‘father’, whilst creating another.  Too fast, too young, too much, “I want to give you babies” was a line from a Pulp song we’d puppy-love say to each other. His reaction when I showed him the pregnancy test was the reason I only ever bore one. (Fairly certain that a student who passed through the school I used to work in was his daughter, though. That’s a different story.) 

I gained a functional-patriarchal father-in-law. Christ, we’ve butted heads over the years, we’re both obtuse. I’m stronger, and faster, and taller, and leaner than all of his various daughters, step-daughters, and daughters-in-law, he didn’t understand me, he didn’t try to, he tried to feed me cake, to make me soft, and compliant. Not my style.  He had some very rigid ideas of what females should, and should not do, we ‘should’ work in shops, or be nurses, and wear nice blouses, we ‘should not’ be capable of independent thought, or ever challenge the authority of a superior testicularly endowed person. You can imagine how that worked out, along with the “Here, lass, you can’t lift that, I’ll get it!”, and such. That was his way, and he was set in it, there was no point in me trying to change him, but my son has seen me tense and clenched-of-jaw enough times to know what I object to. 

My son. I made a child, and, in doing so, made my ex into a father, apparently ahead of his schedule, but my reproductive system is very badly damaged, I didn’t know if I’d ever conceive and carry again, so I took that one chance. I’ve reflected back frequently, over the last couple of days, since Fathers Day, about how the ex ‘parented’ our son. He didn’t. That was ‘my’ job, because he’d been raised to think so. Aside from the biological fact that I breast-fed the tit-limpet for a year and a day, and that my body was slowly recovering from childbirth, I can’t see a biological distinction to validate the weird division of everything. (I’ll gloss over the fact that I had such massive post-natal depression that I was hallucinating, and shaved my head, but continued zombie-ing on, with a forced smile, because ‘at least he is not ginger!’)  The ex “couldn’t” change nappies, because the wipes, the bags, and the nappy-tapes were “meant for women’s hands.” Obviously, he couldn’t breast-feed, but he didn’t pick up the midnight-screaming ‘grub’ either, he never learned the subtle differences in ‘hungry’, ‘wet’, ‘soiled’, and ‘attention, please’ cries, they were all just an elbow in my ribs until I made them stop, with my weird woman-magic. 

He didn’t like to handle ‘the grub’, he said he felt that the baby was too small, too fragile, for his man-hands. I may as well have existed in the 1950s, where children were strapped to the woman until school-age. (There’s a ‘Dinosaurs’ aside, the boy didn’t call him ‘Dad’ for years, we were ‘Mum’, and ‘My Mum.’) He was a Saturday-Dad, except Saturdays were band-days, I worked on Sundays, so, after Sunday lunch at the in-laws, he’d take the small one to the park in town, where he said he “Felt like one of those Dads with weekend access.”, hmm, I wonder how you could change that? As the boy grew, nothing much changed, I was responsible for him, and the house, and the ex. The ex was ‘emotionally absent’, some computer game, some TV show, some band practice, he never taught the child to ride a bike, or lace a pair of boots, because he was always ‘busy’, or ‘tired’. I have taught the boy many, many things, but it hurt my heart a little to have to ask the ex to show him how to shave, that’s something I couldn’t teach him. 

I have had some incredibly bad examples of fathering, and I married a man who didn’t fancy getting involved with the process. Fathers Day is awkward for me, because I can’t join in on the love-fest. I have Daddy Issues. 

[abarbariansperspective]

For my last full day of my trip, I wanted to do something memorable, and I figured that since I failed to move myself from my hostel bunk in time the previous day, I’d finally make it to Albania. Things worked out, as my original intent this past year was to fly to Tirana. Obviously that didn’t happen, but here was a chance to make it to the country, and for a mere 17€ to boot. When I first arrived here in Montenegro, I had my eyes on visiting Tirana, but the six hours it would take threw off my plans-I wouldn’t have had nearly enough time to do things, plus I was paranoid I’d have to stay overnight and potentially miss my flight back to Moscow. Hence, a slight alteration: I’d head off to Shkodër.

Having talked to fellow travelers in the hostel who’d been there, I was pretty excited. That excitement increased the more I did my research, as evidently the city is one of the oldest in the Balkans! The bus ride was a four hour one, and since it departed at 8AM, it meant there would be a solid amount of time to see the city. In comparison with the crossing to Dubrovnik two days prior, it was a sinch to get across as the entire process involved far less hassle. What was interesting to note was that you saw signs of Albania even before reaching the border. I’d say that a good twenty or so minutes prior, signs started becoming bilingual and the minaret of a mosque made an appearance. And to be honest, I didn’t expect to see that, for whatever reason; I know that I shouldn’t be surprised, what with the border being there and all, but still. It took some time to get to Shkodër and civilization, but the plains and the small, dispersed houses were aesthetically pleasing. Finally, we came closer and closer to the outskirts.

I first thought that, “this can’t be the city” when we were driving through. I mean, it was all grungy and super industrial! However, as we drove further in, we passed stall after stall of goods, so unfortunately that was my introduction to the city. Further throwing me into the hustle and bustle of the city was the fact that our bus didn’t pull into a station, but the driver stopped in the middle of the city and let us off. Yeah, the first introduction wasn’t the best. Mercifully there was a sign (printed directly from Google Maps) indicating where we were and where the major sights are located. Also, a helpful local came up to help a visibly confused me, and he pointed me in the right direction. Armed with this, I set off to find my first destination. By stroke of luck, I found a restaurant that I had researched right off the bat, so that was fortuitous. Cafe San Francisco is an American-themed place, but I found their cuisine to be a solid blend of Albanian and my homeland’s. Mind blown, right? The waitress who seated me in the terrace immediately lit up as I told her my nationality, as she wanted to move to America. I’d be told in advance that Albanians have strong feelings for America (I saw a street named Wilson, for example), so her enthusiasm didn’t take me by surprise. As I was being seated, I noticed some Mormons in the booth next to me, and we started talking. Out of the four of them, they’d each been in the country for between eight to nine months, which I give them full kudos. It was a bit surreal to encounter my countrymen and women in Albania of all places, but I’ve long since learned that you’ll find them (and Mormons) in seemingly arbitrary places.

After lunch, I found a small tourist agency who pointed me to the the places I had earmarked to visit. My first stop was the excellent Marubi National Museum of Photography, which was literally across the street. So, off I went! The museum itself was a mere two stories, but I spent quality time there. Name after the Italian who set up shop in the city and who pioneered the art of photography in Albania, it was fascinating to see the technique involved over the ages. The skills both he, his sons, and his apprentices had were vividly on display, and I thoroughly enjoyed strolling through and observing their pictures from over the ages. To start off the gallery though, I should add, there was a short series of videos to help set the background and context for their lives/work. Everything was super engrossing, and I easily spent an hour there. Plus, their work collectively shed light on the traditions and history of one of Europe’s least known countries. I’d definitely recommend visiting!

Moving on from there, I strolled down the promenade a bit before going to my next point on the itinerary. The Museum of Memory was a few minute’s walk from the promenade, and it really helped to shed light on both Shkodër and Albania as a whole. While you may be thinking that the name sounds somewhat cheerful, it in fact is dedicated to the victims of the Communist regime. Long story short, it was a brutal time, and Communism lasted longer in Albania than anywhere else in Europe. Interspersed throughout the gallery were placards that gave extra information about the dark years. Further along at the end, you saw the actual cells prisoners were kept in, and oh Jesus was it rough. I’ve been to plenty other prison tours, but for sheer brutality I think this took the cake. One sign that I deliberately chose not to take a picture of chronicled the physical and psychological torture the regime utilized, and I’ve never been closer to vomiting than after reading it; that includes going to the Museum of Medieval Torture in Prague, to hammer home the point. It was that messed up. While the Albanians had to endure a long spell of bleak lives under a very (and I’m deliberately understating it) harsh government, walking through this museum was necessary. Necessary to understand the power of human cruelty and hope, and I will always be pulling for the Albanians to forge a brighter future.

After the somber visit, I decided to head off to the castle above the city, Rozafa. It was tucked away towards the outskirts, so I walked about thirty minutes to get there, then another seven or so agonizing minutes up the winding, cobblestone path to the top. To be pretty honest, it was only okay. The view, especially when (unfairly) compared with Kotor, was nice, but it didn’t particularly blow me away. I spent about fifteen minutes there before heading down, which kinda tells you what you need to know about it. Okay, so I should confess that I was antsy to make it to my bus back to Montenegro (which I did; I had five minutes to spare), so I guess if I had longer, I would’ve taken a bit more time. Still though, I don’t see why it’s listed as the top thing to do in the city.

Finally, it was time to head back to Kotor. I realize that I spent a few hours in Shkodër, and again, I’d like to reiterate that if I had more time, I would’ve done more there. Sadly, I was constrained by the need to make my flight the next day, thus staying overnight was out of the question. The day trip did simultaneously quench my thirst and pique my interest in the rest of Albania, so maybe, just maybe, I’ll try to visit Tirana in the near future! Getting back was a bit more complex than the direct way to Shkodër, due to the previously mentioned lack of a bus station. So, I had to take a bus from there to Ulcinj (which apparently has very good beaches, a fact I’m just now discovering) across the border. As I had just missed the bus back to Kotor, I had to wait for an hour and a half. Glancing up at the times, I noticed that the next bus going back was almost at 9, so instead I decided to go to nearby Budva and then finally take a bus or a taxi back; I braced myself for the wait, but there was a rest area where I happily plopped down with my Kindle. However, I was in luck. When I went to buy a ticket, the lady there told me that the impending bus was going back to Kotor! Thanking my lucky stars for being thrown a bone and missing out on a further 90 minute wait, I nearly sprinted out to wait for the bus. My enthusiasm was ever-so-slightly dented when I realized that it’d make stops along the way, but I didn’t care-I was almost back at my hostel. To make a long story short, we arrived two hours later, but I was able to crash on my wonderful hostel bed. All in all, it was a good, long day on the road that was a fitting conclusion to my awesome vacation.

          Montenegro Day Six: Actually in Albania For my last full day of my trip, I wanted to do something memorable, and I figured that since I failed to move myself from my hostel bunk in time the previous day, I'd finally make it to Albania.