Lunch With The Mafia?

Yesterday we stopped for a lunch of kabops at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant. After sitting there a few minutes and watching the comings-and-goings around us, Robin remarked that it appeared we had inadvertently sat down at the local mafioso hangout. For instance, a shady-looking pair were sitting next to us conducting various business with people that would just walk up randomly, and the parking lot was full of Mercedes autos with Albanian plates.

At some point we struck up a conversation with one of the shady guys ("Albert") at the next table. It turns out that he is from Albania and frequently travels back and forth across the border. I stupidly mentioned something about not liking Bush after introducing ourselves as Americans (despite my policy of attempting to keep politics out of conversations). It turns out that Albert was actually one of the few Bush-lovers on the planet. He had very strong words to say about wanting to kill us if he was a "muslim-men". Despite his ethnic biases, he was actually quite a nice guy. He bought us a round of drinks (everyone here is trying to get us drunk I think) and we chatted for about an hour.

Albania has had a very hard time coming to terms with the fall of communism. Not being wise to the ways of capitalism, most people in the country apparently lost their life savings to pyramid schemes. Many of those that now have money have come through it by less than honest means. Albert had lots of money. Albert mentioned that the town (Ulcunj) was full of mafioso. I point-blank asked him if he was Albanian mafia. He completely ignored the question, pretty much confirming our guess.

Another entertaining, yet puzzling, thing happened at lunch. Earlier in the day we had seen a young(ish) woman get out of a car with an older lady. The woman was decked head to toe in green. A green polkadot dress, green high-heels, even green fingernail polish. The older lady stood there primping the woman's dress before they set off to walk around town. During lunch this pair showed up at our restaurant and had some words with the owner. They then went into the restaurant. A few minutes later the woman in green rushed out with a younger gentleman and got into the back of a car parked nearby. The older woman and another person came out, got into the front of the car and drove away. A couple of bystanders (young boy, old man) stood there staring as they drove off. I don't know if the old lady was pimping out the woman, if we had just witnessed the start of a shotgun wedding, or what.

Today our landlady outdid herself. After eating a hearty breakfast we were just about to get up and leave. Suddenly the daughter brings out a huge platter of fresh cheese and told us the mother was making us something else. She had gone out on the patio and fried up a large plateful of fried pastries. Although we were already full from breakfast, we could hardly refuse. Will have to do a lot of extra walking today I think.

We've taken to walking down to a local cafe after breakfast and having coffee with Feri, a man we met who drives a cab and gives tours. Well, we had coffee; Feri was on his second (local, strong) beer when we got there this morning. Very nice man with a lot of information about all of Montenegro.