Albania, we love you and we tried. But somehow you don't want us ;)

After more than two weeks our housesit in that cute southern Albanian village has come to an end, the owners are back and happy with how everything turned out. The dog is a little confused having two pairs of owners, especially since we are still hanging around in the vicinity for a few more days or so. Poor doggie ;)

But she loves us, feeding a dog for two weeks straight will forge alliances! But we are happy to see her back with her owners who have become good friends. We onboarded them also, you can meet them here

And, like we are used to after a housesit, we have moved back into the van... it's as obnoxious as ever! Stuff everywhere and way too much micromanagement of things that get in each other's way. We are so tired of van life it's quite funny actually ahahah. We have toughened up also. We feel the annoyment but we just don't let it get to us like we used to. Some real mental toughness has developed which we are really proud of! We never regret having chosen this life but man is it coming to an end fast for us.

It's been more than four years now, with longer and shorter housesits and rentals spread in between. The main reason we stayed here in Albania was to find a place to live, we must have looked at more than a dozen options in the last year that seemed promising on paper. But in the end only three out of those had us saying YES and commit. Here's is the neighborhood of one of the candidates that sadly never materialized, near the large tree you can see in the distance hidden in the brush.

The first two failed - first one because the paperwork is not final and more of a "promise" to "eventually get the real paperwork" - which some Albanian friends of ours have strongly recommended against because it may just turn out to be a huge mistake according to their local knowledge. So that fell through last year.

Then the second option vaporized itself over last winter after waiting for months on any updates by the owner; so finally when we got back here, when we found out the owner is not the sole owner afterall and hey, there are now new special government decrees making buying and selling property in that specific town impossible until 2030... we let go of that concrete option for good. Lol. So that fell through. But we were happy: at least something decisive. We can gladly accept another no, what we can't accept is prolonged states of limbo without any forthcoming information or progressing clarity. And we tolerated that for 10 months or so - enough is enough.

But then, new options showed up and we decided to go try for a third time because we really dig this country and area ;)

Our third attempt to seriously purchase an old house and a small piece of land... has now fallen through as well. It's a no. Again. And though we still love Albania, we feel this qualifies as a pointer to look elsewhere. Where I wasn't able to let go of Albania so easily after the first and even second attempt didn't work out, now it is starting to feel like we are going in circles and becoming more clingy to this area than I like.

We are getting tired of hanging out in the same corner of Europe, seeing seasons come and go, people sowing, working their gardens and eventually harvesting their fruits while we hang in there to wait for some sort of confirmation that the place we want to buy is actually going to get sold as advertised...

Incredible how tough it can be ahahaha. You would think if someone offers a house for sale he'd be eager to actually sell it... but in the end we seem to find the opposite is true, at least for us, here. We take it as a sign to move on. And for that, we feel grateful.

We have now been taking care of the last things here, meeting the people who have become our friends and saying goodbye and are now back to the magic beach where our love affair with Southern Albania began a good three years ago. Feeling nostalgic a bit!!!

This time though, after a few days of relaxation on the beach, we are not sure when or if we will be back. We feel ready for a new leap, and really there is only one place left in the "european" mediterranean area we have not seen yet: Italy! And so that is now the next target. We will take a ferry and check it out, a short distance across the sea. And we will see how Italy greets us.

The magic van-life home-scouting tour continues. Hopefully, for a last leg until we finally find where life wants us to settle ;)

We are ready! Let's gooooooo

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Thanks for stopping by <3