Sloppy

I have been a bit sloppy lately with writing on my English Blog. Looking at my stats I have quite a few foreign readers, so I know I have to do more to keep them happy. I hope this will be a good effort to do so! :)
Last weekend I went with most of the embassy personnel and some other Dutch from Tirana to the south-west of the country to the sea. It was about a 4.5 hour drive, which would normally be quite doable, but with these bumpy and rocky roads here and going up and down the hills (with the inevitable turns), it wasn't a pleasant drive. What hardly anyone will do in Albania is camping, which is of course the thing we did! Next to a beachbar was a small field with olive trees, where it was possible to camp free of charge. When something is for free, we Dutch are always front in line, so we set up half of the place with tents. I was able to borrow the tent and mattress of Cas, as he preferred a nice, comfortable hotel, but then again: he is the deputy CdP. The beachbar was a very nice place and said to be one of the best in Albania, where the Prime Minister also goes on a trip (his bodyguards were there with their big 4x4 and their guns...). Most of the seaside in Albania is not that good, due to pollution and rocks, but this beach has a lot of sand and no pollution, but is therefore also very hard to reach and (for Albanians) expensive. The Albanian Jetset was very well represented this weekend. What is the Albanian Jetset you might think, well that are Albanian men, mostly with overweight, driving big cars, earning their money on an undisclosed manner and having (fake) blond (but very nice) girlfriends/wives, who only use Lancaster and have Gucci glasses. Besides dancing in the bar till late, swimming in the sea, getting red from the sun and reading a lot, we also went paragliding. For those who don't know what it is: it is running down a hill with an instructor (ok, it's tandemparagliding), with a parachute already opened on the ground and then floating down to sea-level on the wind. It is a great experience, although not as thrilling as skydiving. That it sometimes goes wrong as well, we experienced first hand. The person who went first ran down the hill, only stopped when he thought they already lifted and fell over on the rocks (was a rocky hill). His face and body were covered with bruises and wounds. After this we moved to another hill where the ground had no rocks, just grass and all went fine. Only 3 persons could jump on Saturday and the others on Sunday and I was the last to jump on Saturday, but I was down first. When the other 2 were using the up-current above sea to stay in the air longer, my instructor just led us down to the beach. As Saturday afternoon is quite a busy time for the beach, it was hard to find a spot to land. Of course I landed on a parasol and we were immediately surrounded by dozens of kids,
who apparently never saw this before. It was a great happening!
Today back to work without air-conditioning in a 30+C surrounding! Wish I was still at the seaside...