We aren't destination people... we are explorers.

We've been in Berat for two weeks now. Which has been okay... we like the city and the area and the campground we are at is great. But even when we like a place, we are ready to move on after two weeks. We aren't destination people, we are explorers. Which is why our home has wheels. 

So what's keeping us here?

Well the major thing is Ruth's dental work. She's having Invisalign braces made, and we were told they might be ready to pick up on Thursday (yesterday), but we never heard from the dentist. So we are hopeful that we'll hear from him sometime today.

The other thing is that we are waiting for a water filter that we ordered from Germany. When I made the order, I had been told that DHL courier gave the shipper a delivery time frame of between 6-8 days, but the supplier said he expected it to be quicker than that.

Well yesterday was day 6. Which is okay... we planned on maximum 8 days based on what we had been told.

The problem is the status updates and the tracking information.

The last update on the tracking number is from November 26th...

Shipment was prepared for onward transport.

Destination country/region: Albania

Fr, 26.11.2021, 02:31 hours

Recipient:

DHL Service Point Kevin Read, 5000 Berat

And absolutely nothing since then.

The supplier says "well, it's on its way, maybe DHL can tell you more".

So yesterday we walked into town. We needed a few groceries anyhow. We went to the DHL office and the woman didn't speak much English, but enough that we could understand.

She said that the tracking number I have isn't a DHL tracking number and that it's an Albania Post tracking number and that I have to go to the post office. I tried explaining to her that it was DHL that gave me the number, and I even showed her the email. But she showed me a list of tracking numbers on items she was expecting that day and they are all 10 numerical digits. My number is two letters, then nine numbers, then two letters again. I entered the tracking number into the Albania Post website and while the number goes in, it doesn't display any information at all. At least when I put the number into the DHL website it gives me the info up until the 26th.

So we went to the post office. Nobody spoke English there, so it was a little difficult communicating, but eventually another customer stepped in to help with the translation. The post office insisted that number had nothing to do with them and we had to go back to DHL.

So we did. But the woman says that there's nothing she can do. 

Scenery along the way.

So when we got back to Max, I emailed the supplier again. He says that they had a big snowstorm in Germany around the time that it shipped, and DHL is swamped because of Black Friday and Christmas stuff, and that it might take an extra couple of days. Well, we don't mind an extra couple of days, but if that turns into another week we would be upset.

He got back to me again later and had obviously done some more digging. He said that DHL handed it off to Albania Post when it entered Albania. He's assuming that the post office will deliver the package to the DHL office here which is how it was addressed on the shipping label. He also said that he shipped an identical item to Greece around the same time and it took four days, so he blamed the fact that Albania isn't part of the European Union.

But all of this begs the question... what's the point of having a tracking number, if you can't track it???

So apparently all we can do is wait.

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