I know I said in my previous post that it would be the last one on Albania, but it turns out there is one more after all. Sorry about that.
I hadn't planned to share this but it turned out to be a far bigger story that I could have ever imagined. One that spans several countries and is chock full of twists and turns and shocking discoveries. It started out, I imagine, very similar to how it must have felt for the team behind the hit podcast Serial. When they stumbled across their incredible story for season one. Where only when you start pulling the thread do you realise what you've gotten yourself into and how deep it goes. i.e. a very deep, mysterious hole filled with thread. Spine-tingling stuff.
I can only assume this story will also become a podcast at some point. Perhaps Serial host Sarah Keonig will be the voice of it. Who knows.
Anyway, here’s the story.
In my travels with my wife all across Albania recently, I noticed that out the front of many restaurants, cafes, and even service stations, I would repeatedly see the same chef statue. It was always a portly, Italian-looking man with rosy, plump cheeks and a moustache, standing in one of several poses. One hand was always either giving a thumbs up or hanging down by his side, and the other would be in a gripping motion. Either from above or below, where you might place a menu board. It was a simple job: a friendly face to greet you with a menu, or even a special or two.
The only thing is, the chef statues were never holding anything. Their hands were always empty. Holding and gripping thin air.
Every single time.
Why was this happening?
Why were these chefs being denied their one job - to hold a menu?
And what were patrons thinking when seeing these chefs, with their confusing empty hand gestures, grasping at thin air? It was all very mysterious.
I wondered if these were cursed chefs, who had been punished for culinary crimes and made to live out their days as a concrete chef statue. Maybe these were the chefs who had treated their in-house staff badly. And as a result, now had to stand empty-handed for all eternity, desperate for a menu that never came.
I even saw one out the front of a cafe at a service station whose fingers had been removed. I assumed this must have been one of the very worst chefs.
This was where I thought the story ended. We crossed the border into Montenegro and I said goodbye to the cursed chefs. I locked it away in my mental filing cabinet under 'cursed chefs of Albania'.
It would only be one week into our stay in Kotor, Montenegro, walking around the old town, where I would be confronted with this:
A terrifying hand-less and moustache-less chef looming above us. The smile and rosy cheeks were gone. His thumbs up a stoic gesture given the dire situation over on his other arm. Missing fingers is one thing, but a whole hand? What had this chef possibly done?
Fortunately this would be the only chef we would be confronted with during our time in Kotor. One was enough. This would be a fun twist, I thought. I would write this up with the frightening Montenegrin chef being the plot twist at the end.
Case closed.
Except, it wasn't.
I assume no one ever thinks they're sitting on a huge story. Maybe they all happen like this, the best ones anyway. They start with a curious thought. Something funny that catches the eye.
That's what happened here anyway. I had written up the short story and KB and I had arrived in Mostar, Bosnia, for a long weekend trip. We would be here for a few days before moving on again to our next home base.
And as we walked through the beautiful little old town looking for a place to eat, along the smooth cobblestones and past little wooden buildings like something out of a fairytale, I saw it.
There, out the front of a charming little restaurant, inexplicably, was another cursed chef.
His glowing, vacant eyes stared straight ahead, willing you to gaze into them. I dared not. His left arm had been severed at the wrist, like the one in Kotor, and in place of a menu board, a charred wooden spoon had been taped crudely to his arm. Like some sort of culinary pirate.
We continued on quickly, but only metres away, we saw another. All fingers bar one thumb had been removed and a larger wooden spoon bolted onto the outstretched hand. His chef's hat a blood red colour.
In hindsight, it seemed the Albanian chefs had actually fared pretty well and if I'd had any lingering doubts that we were witnessing the absolute very worst right here on this street, they vanished instantly as I turned again to see the most haunting and terrifying chef yet.
The cursed of the cursed.
At that moment a member of staff in the restaurant caught our eye and we looked away quickly. Not because of the chef but just that we weren't sure about the menu. Plus the atmosphere was a bit lacking.
In the end we walked back to one of the other restaurants (blood red chef's hat) and enjoyed a nice meal. We looked out at the incredible views and people walking across the bridge and tried not to think about the cursed chefs.
'How is the food?', asked the waiter.
'Great, hvala (thank you)!' we replied enthusiastically.
Had we just spared another chef?, I thought as the waiter disappeared into the kitchen.
From everything we’d seen, I certainly hoped so.
And yet somehow, I suspected, this wouldn’t be the end of it.
To be continued…
We lived in Shkodër for a while. I never noticed this, but good eye!
Can report a sighting in Thailand too!