When you’re living overseas it’s fun to find places that randomly have unexpectedly familiar food items from home. These items are usually the trashiest elements of your food culture, and you are inexplicably drawn to them. Even if you would never eat a Pop-Tart or whip up shells ‘n cheese back home as a grown adult, you will find that the distance between your country of birth and your host country make you long for the familiarity of food that is particularly processed.
A place in Tirana that gives us hits of North American Food Nostalgia (TM) is the Gjerman store (I promise I didn’t misspell that). Reading that sentence it looks strange that I endorsed the Gjerman store as the official Albanian provider of real North American Food Nostalgia (TM), but that’s the reality. It’s right down the street from us and has coconut milk, Asian foods and spices, cheddar cheese, and other random foods that I had given up on ever finding here. The Gjerman store filled in all my food blanks with turmeric and ground ginger, nori and tikka masala, capers and BBQ sauce.
I thought I was set. I thought wrong.
As it turns out, there’s another food import game in town- America’s Favorites. We found out about it at the Stephen Center, the Western style restaurant run by missionaries that gives us Dr. Pepper, great french fries, and delicious “American style” breakfasts on the weekends. They had table tents advertising America’s Favorites as their supplier of Dr. Pepper, so we tracked them down on Facebook.
A central goal was finding out if we could get two precious and necessary canned items: canned cranberry sauce and canned pumpkin. Thanksgiving is on the horizon and we have plans.
We all agreed that making the walk (about an hour one way) would also be a good way to see a new part of the city. So yesterday we made a mission of trekking all over Tirana to patronize missionary run niche businesses catering to foreigners and their love of HFCS, trans fats, and food with a shelf life longer than the lifespan of a family pet.
America’s Favorites was on the opposite side of town on the far edge of an area where we had never walked, and I’ve already established that Google Maps doesn’t know Tirana, so we made a quick pit-stop at Stephen Center to get an actual printed map.
We were told to “look for the spray painted red arrows and follow them to our destination”. I’m not joking, y’all, these were the official directions on the flyer at the Stephen Center. Treasure map, check.
It was nice to be setting out into a new part of town, even if we had no idea how to get where we were going and had dubious faith in the flyer or the existence of red arrows to guide us.
The first part of our walk was familiar. Here are a few shots from around the neighborhood where some of us live.
Here’s where I whip out some metric even though I have no realistic distance reference for it in my brain. The American store was 3 kilometers from our home, and pretty soon, we were definitely in new territory.
We kept walking further out, until we found ourselves in a distinctly more rural suburb of the city. The air was fresher, there were more trees, and the roads were no longer paved. Since it had rained for two days the roads were, instead, mud slicks.
We started to doubt the mission. Was it worth it to walk this far just for the novelty of novelty food?
At this point we came around the corner and saw a pale, red haired child in a yard. I jokingly said “We must be close”, and then, as luck would have it, her mother came out and asked us, in English, with a thick English accent, if we were looking for the American Store.
Why yes, we were! She kindly gave us directions and told us where to turn next. Let it be known we absolutely would never have gotten there without her, so maybe her job is to just wait for wandering foreigners and set them on the right path.
Once we forked off down another muddy, rut filled road we finally started seeing the red arrows the treasure map referenced.
We all agreed it was worth the hike and the exploring at least, and now that we actually knew we would find the place that was nice, too.
Then we actually found the place.
There was a brief hesitation, as the isolated atmosphere and the building in front of us came together in one slightly disconcerting mood.
We already knew it was run by missionaries, okay, fine, to each their own. But it was really unfortunate how much it looked like a compound. I was getting some of those vibes, which I fully admit were probably merely coincidental because it’s just what I think of when I happen across enormous concrete compounds run by religious people in rural areas.
As we were truly hesitating, a friendly man came out and helpfully led us in- the customer service in the general vicinity of the store was already great, between the child and the mother AND the man. Although, then again, maybe they could re-think the system of sending foreigners to a restaurant to get a map to be told to look for spray painted arrows in the backwater of Tirana, but I guess it’s working. I’m not the one running an import food store in a compound so I’ll defer to the experts.
We walked into the first floor, which was dimly light, dusty, and appeared to be an office supply warehouse. It was filled with huge reams of paper and boxes, revealing another industrious arm of the operation. Between saving souls, selling snacks, and storing office supplies, PLUS employing various friendly trail guides, it was clear these people were busy.
A sign (more descriptive than the spray painted red arrows, certainly) pointed us in the right direction to the second floor. Scott, despite being Canadian, was excited to drop major leke on favorites from America (yes, yes, I know, North America encompasses Canada, Canadians are thus ALSO Americans, but you know people from the US claimed the “American” and Americans have given something back they took approximately 0 times in history, so here we are, sorry Canada, you are Canadians forever in spite of geographic truth. Also, I think that sign makes it clear what they were going for. Also, here is a third sentence inside of a parentheses).
Upon entering the store, it was pretty much exactly what we had assumed based on the FB page- shelf stable processed and/or canned food, a lot of it junk food, which makes sense since they’re importing it from across an ocean and they’re probably doing so on ships. But they did have canned pumpkin, which means Bobby and I can make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, and they had cranberry sauce, which means Thanksgiving will be officially authentic. Black beans and cheap taco shells also scored points. And, let’s be honest- sometimes you just want some trashy shells ‘n cheese and a sleeve (or seven) of Oreos. Props to them for providing a way to fill that need.
We stocked up on things we would probably never buy in America, just because we all kind of sensed that we would probably never walk out there again. Our curiosity sated and bags filled, we left the compound.
But not before seeing this…
I like the juxtaposition of these things, which pretty much sums up the entire situation. Glenn Beck has quite the global reach, and so does Dr. Pepper. Like me, Dr. Pepper was a long way from Texas sitting there in Albania.
The road back was just as it was on the way in- windy, muddy, and lined with construction and sometimes trash. As luck would have it, we ran into the owner of America’s Favorites on the way out (or WAS it lucky?? the perfect timing of the red haired child and mother AND the friendly man started to seem a bit suspicious when added to “randomly” running into the owner). She told us the building used to be a government/military compound, which made me feel far less guilty for seeing it and immediately thinking it looked like a compound. I just know a compound when I see one, y’all.
She was incredibly kind and sweet and offered us a ride down. We demurred on account of our mud packed feet, and a vague communal sense that this might be a situation where we were compelled to be polite in a nice stranger’s car as she drove us to our home and inquired after our relationship with Jesus.
She accepted our decline and then asked if we wanted to be on the mailing list, to which Scott replied, with a bit of an arch to his skeptical tone “What kind of mailing list?” Good point, Scott*. Apparently it’s just a standard “New shipment of Pop-Tarts, come and get ’em!” list, and not a countdown to Rapture mailing list, so we signed up and thanked her before continuing on our slippery way.
Between the walk to the Stephen Center and then America’s Favorites, we covered more than 7 miles. I think we all agreed that it was worth a one time trip, but no one really feels any need to go back. It’s nice to have a place you can go to find familiar junk food, and thanks to them our Thanksgiving is complete. You can place orders for delivery, and it might be worth it in the future to go in together on canned food- pineapple, pumpkin, and black beans are all legitimately missed in our house. In the end, though, I think I’m not only too lazy to walk back there, but I’m probably too lazy to coordinate a delivery.
That night, I made up a batch of shells n’ cheese, cracked open a Dr. Pepper that hadn’t been resting below Glenn Beck, and enjoyed the sweet, albeit processed, embrace of home.
*This is not meant to be a dig at Christianity in particular, I just don’t enjoy being on mailing lists where I’m being proselytized (holy crap, I spelled that right the first time, it’s truly a miracle). Plus, I don’t just hand my e-mail out to every store owner on the street. I have class, even when I’m standing in a mud puddle clutching a plastic sack of shells n’ cheese, Dr. Pepper, and too many boxes of brownie mix.
Narrator’s Note August 2020: This was originally published October 15th, 2012, on Blogger. I have searched for updated information on America’s Favorite’s, but they no longer have a FaceBook page. They are also no longer listed on the Stephen Center website. But legend says, if you head out to Rruga Hasan Vogli, and look for the red arrows, and chant “Pop-Tarts, Pop-Tarts, pumpkin in a can, shells and cheese and Dr. P, JC is the man” a small, red haired child will appear and lead you to the compound, which will rise like magic out of the mud and mist.
