One Dollar = 77.58 lek; .50 pounds; .63 Euro
It has been hot here, and the coming week highs are all in the mid-90s. I am going to buy 50 kilos of tomatoes tomorrow morning. Servet, my driver, got a price of 65 lek/kilo, which works out to about 84 cents/kilo, or 38 cents/pound. I'm not sure what variety they are, but they look like San Marzano, and Albanians call them "heart" tomatoes because they're shaped, if one has an imagination, like a heart. I think they look like an upside-down pear, but I have no imagination. I gave away most of my canning jars before we left Mississippi, but I saved and brought with me about three dozen quarts and four dozen pints, so I may not have to order any.
Adnand, my first driver, got a job with a local company that imports Tuborg and Carlsberg beer. If he had to take another job, this one was fortuitous. Servet speaks very little English, so we're teaching each other. He has an ice cream factory in his house. He lives on the first floor of his apartment building, and sells to the public through a storefront store out of his apartment. He also sells to restaurants and stores in town. It is really good. So far I've had chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, wild berry, and hazlenut. So far he won't let me pay for them.
Between the beer and the ice cream, if I can't grow up, I certainly can grow out.
Servet has a degree in music from Tirana University. His two daughters are in grad school, one to be a dentist and one a lawyer. I think he is fairly typical of underemployed people here. Jobs are hard to come by. Adnand was really excited to be getting a full time job, and Servet was really glad to be my driver.
I wrote in a post a couple of weeks ago about the U.S. economy and how neither candidate seemed to be addressing it. In this morning's NY Times Tom Friedman has an editorial along similar lines, and since he agrees with me, it is ipso facto a brilliant article and I recommend it to you.
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