Sourcing

One of the tasks I’ve been given to perform on behalf of my handlers, the Plagenhoefs, is to find the fencing material for the children’s play area at the church.  In the States a search of this kind might yield a dozen or so good options.  In Albania I have only found two.  Iron work is a common enough trade, but having someone build a fence entirely out of iron is prohibitively expensive.  They have rolls of chain-link fencing here, but there aren’t the components to properly assemble it.  Today Kreshnik and I took a trip up to Vorë.

Albania has some eccentricities to it which I can not discern the genesis of.  When I first moved here, back in April, I can remember telling Kreshnik I wanted to buy some oil for my leather boots.  “I don’t think we have that here,” he replied.  Honey, real honey, must be purchased at a market, it cannot be found in regular stores.  If you want a quality fencing made of metal that won’t cost in the thousands of dollars, you will not find a place that sells it within the city limits of Tirana.  All of the people I spoke with about such a material mentioned a fabricator in Vorë.  Vorë is about half an hour to the north and west of Tirana.  SH 2, the highway that connects Tirana to Durrës is also called Rrugë Industriale (industrial route) which is a carry -over from the days of communism.  

If you ever need to know someone, who knows someone, who knows how to get their hands on shoe dressing, honey, or low cost, quality, rust resistant, metal fencing, send them my way.  I know people here.