Transition days are the in-between hours nobody writes about — the airports, the lounges, the layovers where nothing happens and everything happens. Tirana to Tbilisi was one of those: a chaotic check-in, a hidden business lounge with no bacon, a surprisingly good schnitzel in a Turkish airport, a $40 shower, and two lounge-hopping stops to kill ten hours between flights. By the time I boarded, I’d been awake 15 hours and crossed three time zones without technically arriving anywhere.

🧭 Wander — Tirana Airport and the Conveyor Belt Standoff

Woke up early in the morning to take a taxi to the Tirana airport — €20. The airport was a bit chaotic, with lines overflowing for most airlines. Fortunately I was flying AJET, and their check-in is in a separate and isolated area — a small mercy in the bedlam.

Despite being there early, the check-in desk didn’t open. Staff were present. They were waiting. For what? The conveyor belt people. The conveyor belt people weren’t there to turn on the conveyor. So everyone stood there — staff, passengers, bags — in a silent standoff with a machine that had one job and one switch. Eventually the belt people arrived, the belt rumbled to life, and check-in resumed. Albania, I will miss your particular relationship with process.

✋ Unwind — The Hidden Business Lounge

Checked in, passed security, then passport control, then headed to the business lounge. I used my Chase Sapphire Reserve card to get in. The lounge is small and somewhat hidden behind a plain door — the kind you’d walk past if you didn’t know it was there. It had a large breakfast offering, but it was entirely Albanian: no bacon, no eggs, just Albanian dishes, fruit, pastries, and cereal. My last Albanian breakfast, fittingly, was Albanian. No substitutions. The Curry Principle holds even at the airport.

🧭 Wander — The Ten-Hour Layover in Turkey

My flight left at 9:40 am and landed around noon. I have a 10-hour layover in Turkey. Immigration was a breeze — I was the first one at the counter. But then I got sent for an extra search in customs. Nothing bad found, so I moved on, only slightly annoyed that being first in line had earned me the secondary-screening lottery.

I checked the flight schedule board. My connecting flight wasn’t even listed yet — which meant the check-in desk likely wouldn’t check me in for hours. This is the liminal space of long layovers: you exist, but the airport doesn’t acknowledge you yet. Your flight is real but invisible. Time stretches.

👅 Palate — BigChefs and the Schnitzel That Shouldn’t Have Been Good

I went over to BigChefs, a restaurant inside the airport, and ordered a schnitzel. I was expecting “airport food” — the sad, reheated, overpriced genre of sustenance that exists only because you’re trapped. But to my surprise, it was quite good. Crispy. Properly seasoned. Not a life-changing schnitzel, but a layover-changing one. When you’ve been traveling since 6:30 am and your next flight is hours away, a good schnitzel in an airport restaurant feels like the universe cutting you a break.

✋ Unwind — Lounge Hopping: Kepler Club and the $40 Shower

Around 3 pm, I headed to the check-in desk. Much to my surprise, the whole thing was automated — I dropped my bag off and headed for the lounge.

The Priority Pass lounge did not have showers — a critical omission for anyone on a 10-hour layover. So I ended up paying $40 to use the Kepler Club lounge, which has sleeping pods and showers. The lounge also has a few hot drinks like coffee and hot chocolate, but not much else. The value proposition is the shower and the pod, not the buffet.

I took a shower to get refreshed. My day started at 6:30 am and I hit the lounge at 4 pm — nearly ten hours of airport life, and the shower was less a luxury than a reset button. Clean, alert, human again.

There’s a two-hour limit at Kepler Club, so after my time was up, I headed back to the Priority Pass lounge, where there’s a three-hour time limit. Lounge hopping is the layover traveler’s sport — you learn the rules, you play the clock, you maximize the free coffee and the comfortable chairs. By the end of the layover, I’d visited three lounges across two airports.

🧭 Wander — Boarding at 9:55 PM

My flight to Tbilisi departs at 9:55 pm and is supposed to arrive at 1:15 am. By the time I board, I’ll have been awake for over 15 hours. I’ll land in Georgia in the middle of the night, in a country I’ve never been to, with a new alphabet I can’t read and a language I don’t speak.

This is the thing about transition days: they feel like wasted time while you’re in them, but they’re the seam between two worlds. Albania is behind me. Georgia is ahead. And somewhere over Turkey, at 30,000 feet, I am neither here nor there — just a traveler in the gap, waiting for the wheels to touch down.

By the Numbers

Item	Amount (EUR)
Taxi — apartment to Tirana airport (TIA)	€20.00
Tirana business lounge — CSR Priority Pass	€0.00
BigChefs — schnitzel at Istanbul airport	—
Kepler Club lounge — shower + sleeping pod (2 hr)	$40.00
Priority Pass lounge — Istanbul (3 hr)	€0.00
Day Total	€20.00+

Three airports, three lounges, one stubborn conveyor belt, one surprisingly good schnitzel, and a $40 shower. Some days you climb mountains. Some days you navigate the space between them. Tonight I land in Tbilisi at 1:15 am. Georgia — country number five — begins in the dark.