It was a morning after.

It was a morning after a long day and night, but the morale stayed as energetic as it’d been all week. No medals and we were moving slowly, but surely, and laughing a lot. The sun was shining again. Even with my sunglasses, the first hit was like an espresso and my whole head had to adjust to the pick me up. At first what I saw confused me. How did that wall get painted?

Just in front of the hotel was the pink wall that Morcky had been screamed away from the day before. It was a weird story where the owner of the building (who on day one was super skeptical about us and gave a ‘no way you’re touching my wall’ impression) had approached Morcky and invited him to paint the wall. Once he’d started to do so, the woman who had painted it pink showed up and popped a valve. She was pissed and the wall was abandoned. Now it had been transformed.

did that wall get painted? Never mind the woman, we’d gotten in late last night. So late it was already light when I walked into the hotel. Shearer had come back with us and inspired by one of Pawel’s birds, regurgitated his dinner before swan diving into Morcky’s bed. Morcky slept on the floor and I was absolutely impressed that he’d gotten up to work at 8am on a Saturday morning. ‘What else was I going to do,’ he said to me. ‘You know how cold and hard that floor is?’

From that point on things were almost routine on Day 4. We were becoming at home in Tirana. Ripo and Pawel followed a local shop owner to the neighborhood where she lived and had acquired them a large wall. The rest of the boys went over to a wall we’d been offered last night. We knew where to go and were even getting used to crossing the streets, well aware that human ‘Frogger’ seemed to be one of the young pastime’s of this newly capitalist country.

By 18:00 we were all standing on the same street hitting a long wall and sipping on bottles of beer. We were all in a rather glorious mood, admiring the never ending Noah’s ark as one pair of healthy youngsters bounced by after another. Albanian woman look as tasty as the tomatoes and that sounds crass, but we were 14 guys on the road and every last one of us was floored by their ripe beauty for four solid days. Four days? We’ve only been here four days? I keep getting confused by the days lost in transit. 18 hours to Tirana. You must be fucking kidding me.

There was another sight that floored me as I crossed the bridge to meet up with everybody. It was a guy, I’d guess 40 looking 50 years old and sat like a human stump on a dirty blanket: legless, toothless and suffering through the slowest sort of work- waiting for kindness. It isn’t that I haven’t seen this sort of thing before, though I surely haven’t encountered it enough to be desensitized. What strikes me most is the realization that no amount of money will ease the pain of the world. Kindness becomes currency, and calamity can indeed make cousins of us all.

Anyway, the wall where we were hanging was to be the last piece of the trip. Chaz, Morcky, Dexter and Attila had all started painting and there were still meters of trashed wall to the left and right of the start and end of their work, one seemingly available spot on each side. Ripo wanted to write out a big falemnderit, and Gus, one of the kids we’d met was about to paint the walls of Tirana for the first time, but than things started to go wrong. On one of the open spaces a security guard came to declare it forbidden country. That piece of wall was a no go. On the other open space, the owner showed up and said that he didn’t want a new layer of paint on it. There would be a new layer he said, but it would be a solid color. I saw Ripo get frustrated for the first time all trip. That’s impressive if we consider that his luggage never showed up and each day of the trip part of his work was calling to various airports to receive new and never to be fulfilled promises that he’d be reunited with some clean underwear sometime soon.

This piece was somehow special. It was bringing our adventures in Tirana to a close and was the first time that all the boys got up on the same wall. Ripo paced around for a few minutes and then went to work on the green metal door that started where Pawel’s piece stopped. SLIDE. This is what he wrote. As in, Let It Slide … get on with it and smile, because who knows about that morning after and if it ever comes.

Of course the morning after arrived again, and when it came, it was our time to go. Ripo never got to write a direct thank you and the close of Operation Tirana provides an appropriate place to do it. falemnderit Tirana … outside Albania people recognize how little you have, and during our trip you showed us just how rich you actually are.

One of the downsides of group travel is the group no matter how nice that group is. You can end up spending a lot of time waiting and then waiting for those who had gotten distracted while waiting. When we’d hit the airport in Istanbul, Chaz and I didn’t wait. You knew what you had to do and where to be. On each of our four flights, we’d been lucky enough to always get exit seats, the sort where you can stretch your legs all the way out. The check in line was long, the sort of length that can give me a bit of stress when I first see it even on a day when I’m actually two hours before my flight. It was long, but it moved quickly. This wasn’t Belgium. There were more than two windows open and the staff was friendly and quick. At one point, the guy responsible for the process began calling for people on the flight to Amsterdam to bring them to the front of the line. ‘I live in Amsterdam,’ Chaz said to me with a smile. The Turkish guy in front of us looked at him in a puzzled way and then, visibly struggling in English, told him he had to go to the front. ‘I’ll just wait my turn thanks mate.’ The guy looked really confused by this and showed his concern, calling to the responsible and telling him his worries in Turkish. ‘Amsterdam,’ the guy asked us. ‘I live in Amsterdam,’ Chaz replied, and just like that we were checked in and headed back to Germany where half of us would grab a train back towards our own beds.

• Photos by: Alexander Malecki
• Arty Farty Gallery
• Modart Website