What good New Jersey native could pass up an opportunity to visit a genuine “New Jersey Snack Bar Coffee” in Tirana, Albania?
Well, I couldn’t, but I have to confess, I walked out thinking there was more going on there than met the eye.
Born and raised in New Jersey, USA, I was amused to find the New Jersey Cafe not far from where I lived recently in Tirana, Albania.
I made a mental note and stashed it away to be forgotten until the next to last day I would be in Tirana, before leaving to go to Sofia, Bulgaria.
I was taking an afternoon walk and thinking about a late lunch when I found myself across the street from the “coffee.” I was duty-bound by fate to check it out.
Although there’s a large sign visible from the street, the cafe is not below the sign; the entrance is off to the right.
An eyewear shop occupies most of the street frontage below the cafe.
I entered a dark passage through doors next to the optometrist and walked toward the back of the building where hand-written paper signs directed me to the left and up a flight of stairs.
I saw what appeared to be a large dining room behind a glass wall and doors straight ahead. One table had some outerwear hanging on the backs of chairs, telling me that a small party occupying the table was off doing something else temporarily.
I turned to my left, where a cozier room had several small tables, a counter, a cash register, and a variety of packaged snacks on display.
I seemed to surprise a man behind the counter when I pushed open the glass door to the snack bar. I expected him to greet me with something like “Hey, welcome,” but the puzzlement on his face spoke more like, “What the hell are you doing here?”
So I spoke first. “Uhh, you have food? Lunch?” I did a little sign language, like a fork-to-mouth gesture for eating, which he understood.
“No food,” he said.
He quickly shifted his gaze from me to the table with coats on the chairs in the outer dining room, where several large men were arriving from somewhere, and filling the seats where the coats were parked.
With one of the guys in a tailored sharkskin suit, sans necktie, and a couple of others in dark, semi-dressy, open-necked casual wear, I thought they were the cast of The Sopranos.
One guy in a tracksuit I pegged as the local hitman, but my imagination may have run away from me by then.
At least it felt like I was in the right place.
My host moved quickly away to attend to the Jersey-styled guests in the dining room while I sat myself down at one of the tables in the snack shop.
I pulled out my phone and started to peruse the internet.
When the host returned, I innocently took a chance and asked, “Coffee?” And I scored, but I passed on any of the wide varieties of candy bars and crackers available.
I couldn’t resist trying to chat up the host. So I cheerfully mentioned that I was born and raised in New Jersey, USA, which is why I stopped by.
He tried repeating my pronunciation of New Jersey with a wry twist of his mouth, and it was clear he’d not had much practice with it.
Nevertheless, I sipped a fine cup of java, read some posts, left money on the table, waved goodbye, and walked downstairs and through the dreary hallway that took me back to the street below, not quite knowing what to make of the place.
Then thinking about it on the walk back to my room, it occurred to me that Albania’s New Jersey Snack Bar Coffee in Tirana actually spoke a lot about my native state, not to mention a slice of the local culture in Albania.
It did without saying much of anything at all.