So this is me, a tourist
and a YouTuber on Albanian News.
I know.
What the hell?
So let me tell you exactly how I got here.
Good morning, people.
It is 7 10 a.m.
And I am in Albania, in the capital city of Tirana.
It's ten degrees Celsius on a November morning.
In 15 minutes, I'm about to be picked up
by a car from a news channel that wants
to do like, a quick interview with me.
I'll tell you in a bit about
how I got myself in this situation.
I've decided I'm going to make a Vlog about this
because I saw this short, YouTube short, basically, that Johnny
Harris made a couple of days ago about behind the
scenes of how he was going to get an award.
To be clear, I'm not delusional, I'm not comparing myself
to Johnny Harris, but seeing that process of how this
stuff works behind the scenes was really interesting.
I'm wearing my best clothes for the occasion, which are
a $5 H&M shirt and $8 undersized jacket that
I got from a second hand market in Shkoder.
And my hiking shoes. Can't film with this
camera because this is way too clunky. I want
to be as unobtrusive as possible.
So I'm going to film with this thing.
The driver is here.
Should be a logo of the news channel in the car.
Hi. Hi.
Thank you.
Starting the day off with some Techno Music
I am at Euronews studio, which is like
20 km away from the city center.
So I'm pretty impressed how fast we got here.
And I went in and saw the actual studio where
I'm gonna do the interview and they said I couldn't
film with this thing over there, which is totally fine.
I guess they don't want any distraction.
I think my translator is coming in like, ten
minutes and then I should being going live.
Okay.
They're just putting on the mic. Just a sec.
Good morning.
Good morning and thank you for having me.
Thank you Malvina.
I guess I'm heading back. Hello.
So that was the interview and
most of it is in Albanian.
So I feel like you guys are not
gonna get the content of the interview.
So let me just recap what happened.
They just dropped me off with their
car back in the center again.
So I'm going to get a coffee
and unpack what the hell just happened.
Okay, so I basically got myself a big
*** cappuccino from this chain called Moncheri.
Albanian coffee is so freaking good.
Basically anything that's good in Italy, pizza, coffee,
it's probably going to be good in Albania
because there's a pretty big influence of like,
Italian culture or Albanian culture.
So I'm going to try to unpack
everything that just happened in there.
My friends actually found not just a live link to
the interview, but like an actual video that they
posted of the clip of the interview.
And it was 30 minutes.
And that was the first thing that really caught
me off guard is how long it was.
And I will actually link the whole thing in the
video description so you can go and watch that
if you speak Albanian. I think you can
hear me speak English in the background.
I thought I was coming in for a very short
segment, just a few small fun questions, but they went deep.
They were asking a lot of really good questions.
When we started out, that whole translator thing really threw
me off because I'm really not used to that.
These two hosts/cohosts that were interviewing me
were very professional, very nice, speak amazing English,
but they have to do it in Albanian
because it's an Albanian TV show.
So when they started off, basically they were
speaking to me in Albanian and like almost
simultaneously, or maybe like 5 seconds after that,
I would hear the English version.
It takes a few minutes to get used to
if you're not used to that at all.
When I was putting on the mic, it was like a bit..
I was like, oh, is this how it's going to work?
I knew a translator was coming and I thought
it was going to be someone sitting on the
show with me, translating it, like manually for me.
But no, this was like a real
time translation of whatever was going on. Okay?
They're just putting on the mic. That's how this works.
In the past,
when I was in college in Oklahoma in the US.
I've done like one or two TV interviews, but
that was just like five minutes of questions regarding
stuff and this was regarding some social activism, political
activism that I was involved in in college.
But it was never like this.
It was never in a studio.
And that was so freaking intimidating.
I'm not going to lie.
One of my friends just messaged me and told me
that I looked pretty chill in the interview, but I
was anything but chill by the end of it.
I was like properly sweating all inside my shirt.
Those people were wearing jackets and I'm wearing like
a tshirt and I was like completely wet.
But yeah, that was pretty crazy.
When I came back here, I was shaking.
I think I was just more overwhelmed than
I thought I was in the moment.
I do this all the time.
I'm filming with a camera on me all the time.
Sometimes I'm filming in kind of public places, which is
a little nerve wracking for sure, but I'm never in
the middle of a studio with a country's audience watching
it when it's being played live and not edited.
And I have no control over, like,
what exactly is gonna be put out.
Whatever I say is out there.
I'll recap some of the more
interesting questions that they asked me.
They're asking me about the places I like to
travel to which I've talked about a lot.
It's pretty obvious.
If I have 15 videos from Mexico,
that probably means I really like Mexico.
If I have a lot of videos from
Indonesia, that probably means I like Indonesia.
If I'm spending like five to six months a year
in the Balkans, that probably really means I really like
spending my time here with the people of the Balkans.
Be it Serbia. Montenegro. Albania.
It's always a blast being here.
And they were asking me some, like, logistical
questions, which was really interesting to me.
You know, they were like, how do
you manage to fund your travels?
And pretty simple, with this stuff.
There's a lot of ways to make money from this.
And I don't know if this is something you don't want
to know, but I think it's really very important to hear
for aspiring travel filmmakers. Traveling is not
as expensive as you think it is.
And travel filmmaking can make you more
money than you think it might.
And to do that, you don't necessarily have to make
it big and have millions of followers or subscribers.
You just need to have a skill set that you can
market to people who are willing to pay for it.
Yeah, that was such a cool experience.
So after everything was done, I
met up with Malvina Gorreja.
She's the reporter that found me.
She actually saw one of my videos
that went viral in Tirana about Tirana.
So this is how.. this is how this interview happened.
I made a video recently about my first day
back in Albania and specifically focusing on Tirana.
And it looks like it's gotten a lot of views
in Tirana and like, a pretty nice, positive reception.
This lady Malvina emailed me like a week
ago and she thought I'd already left.
But I got back to her and
I was like, no, I'm still here.
And they're like, okay, do you
want to do this morning show?
And I was like, sure.
In the back of my head I was thinking that
I usually go to bed at 5 or 6 A.m.
on the weekends, and now I'm going
to just be up at 06:30 a.m..
But I was very responsible.
I actually went to bed at like midnight yesterday, woke
up at 6 45 and got all of this done.
One of the cool things about being able to
stay in a place after you film there is
that you get to experience amazing things like this.
Usually what happens is I film in a country and
by the time I'm editing those videos, I'm in a
different country, I'm in a different part of the world
often.
This was really cool.
I'm still in Albania editing videos from Albania,
and some of this stuff has gained traction.
And some people, every once in a
while, they're like, saying hi to me
and saying that they appreciated the video.
I appreciate it online too, but it's different
when you get that feedback in person, which
is not what I usually get.
So I think that is going to be it for today's video.
It's only 1030, which means I have
to stay awake for another 12 hours.
I don't know how, but I only have a few days left
in Albania, and I wanna make the most out of it.
So if you like this video, don't forget to like it.
If you want to see more videos like
this, feel free to follow my Facebook page
or subscribe to my YouTube channel.
And if you want real time travel updates, feel free
to follow me on Instagram @nadironthego
I'll catch you guys in the
next video from definitely in Albania.