Ice Skating in the Summer

Right around May, some brilliant entrepreneur opened an ice skating rink to further enhance the family friendly city that Tirana is. Brilliantly, this structure was built on the outskirts (and I mean outskirts) of town...the kind of place that can't even get bus service. That hasn't stopped the expat community from making regular trips to it.

Ainsley has been to the rink (...and rink is an unquestionable overstatement) once already with her school and she was very proud of abilities to avoid falling down. She was also insistent on putting on her own pads.

As you can see we were the only patrons this summer afternoon. Everyone was either at the beach, had no way to get out to the boonies (where it's located), or perhaps they were just too embarrassed to wear the required crash gear.

After watching for several minutes, the pregnant lady had to take a spin. With the help of my friend the penguin, I avoided a fall.

Oliver mainly watched but after a while he joined us on the ice, running around in his shoes. He mainly wanted to stare at the zamboni (yes, they have a zamboni). Shane also ended up in shoes after squeezing his size 13's into size 10 skates--the largest ones they had.

Patinazh is 'ice skating' in Albanian. This is the entrance to the rink. The door opens to a flight of stairs leading you below ground to the icy wonderland. Normally one would note the nearby auto graveyard (see background) and automatically conclude remoteness of location, however, that rule doesn't apply isn't hard and fast in Tirana. Did I mention this place is in BFE? My theory is that one of the local criminal kingpins has a daughter who wasn't going to be satisfied with another pony.