The original plan was to get a late train to Skopje, Macedonia, but this is no longer running. The train is supposed to go Thessaloniki - Skopje - Belgrade, and we were going to catch the first leg today, and then the Skopje - Belgrade leg in a couple of days time. As the Greek side of the journey no longer ran, we weren't sure if the Macedonian leg would, so we wanted to get to Skopje with plenty of time to change plans if we had to.
Therefore, we opted to get the early bus and get out of Thessaloniki without experiencing it at all. It ended up merely being a place to rest our heads. The little we saw didn't really thrill us, but I'm sure once you got away from the main streets it would have been quite beautiful. Oh well - another time!
Back down the 3 flights of stairs and onto the street, we walked back again to the bus and train station, although the cool morning air made this bearable. At the station, there was already a big green bus waiting, so we set up camp. A few other people joined us, mostly with tiny amounts of luggage. They might have been taking advantage of the offer for €20 one way, but only €30 return. Obviously we were only going the one way.
A little after 8am, another bus pulled up right in front of us, and this turned out to actually be the bus we wanted. We put our things on, milled around outside the bus for a while, then had our tickets checked and on we popped.
The journey was uneventful. Apparently we went through a really rough, bumpy, jerky and downright uncomfortable half an hour, which seems to be the half an hour I passed out well and truly. I didn't even have my travel sickness tablets! I was just so, so, so tired. Dan and I generally wear our seatbelts on these even though we don't have to - Dan made the good point that if something goes wrong and our insurance asks us, at least we can say we were wearing our seatbelts! This seems a really insignificant detail, but I mention it because I want to remember just how uncomfortable these seatbelts were - the clasp sat in exactly the wrong place up on my lap, and my arm was always resting on it and it was painful. Ok, whinge over.
The bus ride was about 4ish hours. It took me a while to realise but we actually got in early - we were supposed to arrive 11.30am local time but we were at our accommodation already by that time. But first: tickets from Skopje - Belgrade.
The train station was somehow hidden. We could see the tracks, but couldn't find the actual station. An unassuming set of doors in the corner of the bus station led us into the completely still and silent train station. Ok, we made it. We found the ticket offices, and I thought all of them were shut, but Dan noticed a lady sitting at a computer at one. However she, like all the other booths, had a blocker up across the little speaky-hole. We sort of loitered around to see if she would look up but nothing, she adamantly looked at her computer and no where else, so we shuffled off.
We wondered if there was somewhere else to buy tickets or maybe a machine so we did a half hearted look around the station, before noticing that a man was talking to the lady at the ticket office. She must be open after all! We leapt at the opportunity and lined up behind him. When it came to my turn, I apologised for only speaking English and she said she speaks a little - she understood us perfectly and the little she spoke she spoke well!
I asked if there was a train running from Skopje to Belgrade and she said, yes, but it goes overnight. Perfect! That's exactly what we were after - the sleeper train. She explained the ticket prices and the bed situation, and then gave us the price. We hadn't worked out the exchange rate yet, so we dithered with our calculators before coming up with it being €20 per person. Awesome! We went to pay, but she would only take cash.
No matter, we managed to find an ATM easy enough and returned to her, this time a queue forming very closely behind us. The lady looked exasperated - I think she was supposed to be on her lunch break. A few minutes later, we had ourselves two tickets from Skopje to Belgrade in our hot little hands and we were able to go find our accommodation.
This proved slightly more difficult than we expected. Being a non-EU country, we didn't have the ability to use the internet. Dan had pre-loaded the address into his offline maps, but after walking for about 10 minutes, we were supposed to be right on top of it. The area was...rural, to say the least. Crumbling houses, stray dogs, no sign of a city. Either we are in completely the wrong place, I thought, or we have chosen very, very badly.
We eventually worked out that the numbers of the houses was not chronological, and in the distance we could see a little sign saying "Aloha". Let's give that a go! Through the gate and...a little slice of paradise, it seemed! A small, round pool, outdoor chairs and what looked like beautiful apartments surrounding it. Ok, maybe this won't be so bad after all.
There was an open door and a stair case, so we made our way over to that. Nothing. Peeked around a corner. Nothing and no one. A lady popped out, and spoke to us. I apologised and said we could only speak English, and she ended up having only a very small amount of English knowledge. Turns out she was the cleaner, and we were about an hour earlier than we were said we would be because our bus ended up getting in much earlier.
The next few minutes was a flurry of phone calls to "the boss", passing phones back and forth for translation, before we were ushered down a set of stairs - where we found the reception. She motioned for us to sit and said "5 minutes!" Apparently she still had to clean our room. We told her not to rush, and sat in the cool reception area, which bizarrely also had a small gym.
Soon enough it was time for us to be ushered to our room. She opened the door, and we were presented with a beautiful apartment, complete with well. Yes, well. Apparently this run down area of the neighbourhood is the "old city" and various bits cannot be destroyed. Therefore in the centre of our room was an ancient well covered with glass, turning it into a coffee table. Pretty cool! It made the sound of running water all day but thankfully that stopped at night (otherwise I would be up peeing every 5 minutes).
The first thing I noticed was that we didn't have a washing machine, and this concerned me. I hopped on the booking site to make sure we had been given the right room, and we had. I had found some tokens in the corner of the room and thought maybe they were for the washing machine down at reception, so I thought no more of it, got myself comfortable (which means taking my trousers off) and sat down for a few minutes.
Knock knock. I fly off the bed to put my shorts on while Dan answers the doors - it's the manager, come to take the booking fee and give some information. Dan follows him back to reception while I stay in the room, exploring what we have. I find a menu for food and drink in the fridge,and that we can even order room service. A short while later Dan returns with an enormous map, and explains that the washing machine is free to use, and the tokens are so we can have something out of the fridge.
All questions answered, we wonder what to do next. We really, really needed to do some washing, and not having the machine in our room meant we were at the mercy of others - namely, the machine was already being used. As we were pretty stuffed, we decided to find somewhere for lunch, then do some grocery shopping and call it a night.
So lunch. Where to start. Turns out our accommodation was about a 15 minute walk to anything really. The places I had wanted to eat were mostly in the Old Bazaar which was quite a while away, so I had found another within walking distance that was supposed to do traditional food. When we got there, we were presented with a massive menu. I ordered us some wine (which was a bit pricey), and then when the waiter returned I asked him what he recommends from the menu, what traditional/local food they serve.
"We don't really have local food," he replied, and pointed to the meat saying that they have meat. I was a bit surprised as the reviews said it was great for traditional Macedonian food. In fact, I had written down a list of food I wanted to try, but my list was in Latin characters, and there was only one thing I could make out on the menu with the Cyrillic. One thing famous in Skopje is a really flavoursome baked beans dish. When he said they didn't have traditional food, I pointed to this on the menu, to which he replied, "we don't have that at the moment."
So to be honest, I was pretty pissed off. I think we just got a really dud waiter, but I didn't know what to order. In the end, we got two starters (which were in many ways the same, and again the waiter didn't say anything to help us). One was good - it was feta stuffed peppers, but the other, which was a baked feta (so much feta!) was just too salty. Then our meals came, and they were really average too, and tasteless. I left pretty unimpressed, and bloated.
On the walk back we passed a mall, and as my cold was progressing more and more to a possible chest infection I wanted to get some vitamins. On the outside of the mall we had seen there was a DM inside, so in we went. The previous day in Thessaloniki we had stopped into a pharmacy for some hayfever tabs and some vitamins - the vitamins there ranged from €7-16 - no way was I paying that when I was paying 40c in Berlin! The DM here was cheap and stocked the same German things, but was literally twice the price. Ok still, so that made my vitamins 80c instead. That's fine!
Also here was the supermarket. A real, enormous, proper supermarket. The kind that had been lacking for a long time on our travels. We bought breakfast (the usual, eggs, mushroom, tomato and this time a baguette), as well as wine (of course, a big bottle of Macedonian red) and we bought some pastries for dinner, and made up a leafy salad. Done and done! There was also some blue fanta in the mix, but sadly only the bottle is blue, not the liquid!
We left the mall and returned to our room. I had a nap, and then we worked on writing for a little while with the doors nicely open, looking at the lovely little pool. Periodically I would get up and check on the washing machine - finally, it came free! I ran back to Dan and we put some already-sorted clothes into a bag. The washing machine was in Macedonian but we figured it out from the pictures, and soon a load was underway. The dryer looked like it still had hours to go on it, so this would mean we would be hanging the clothes up all around the apartment.
For dinner I microwaved one of the pastries and put together a simple salad. I had found the apartment already had balsamic vinegar, so easy! With it we paired the wine - a giant 1L bottle with a dancing man on the front. When we were living in Germany, our favourite drop was a €2 Macedonian bottle of Cab Sav/Merlot so we had high hopes for Macedonian wine. This wasn't great, but it did the job. Before dinner, we noticed a few cats had been hanging around, and 2 of them in particular were pretty friendly (although a lot more skittish that Greek cats). One very much wanted to be inside our place - which meant we had to close the door.
We managed to get another load of washing on this night too, which pretty much cleaned all of our clothes. We hung it all up around the flat on every available surface, including across the TV and Dan fashioned a line out of some shoelaces. Excellent - soon we will have clean clothes!
We only drank half the bottle when we decided we had had enough. Also while shopping we had bought a couple of cheap Macedonian brand colas to see what they tasted like - so we had plenty of liquid that night. Then...bzzzzzzzzz.
BBBbbbbzbbzzzzzzzz.
There's a big fly in our room. Doing laps. We tried to ignore him for a while but it proved too much. Dan tried to slap it with his flipflop. Just ended up banging on the walls (Sorry neighbours!). We lamented having no bug spray when we thought of my hair spray...ok, this wasn't going to be nice, but it might stop this thing. It came close to me, and I gave it a good spray with the hair spray. It obviously didn't particularly appreciate this, and it's flying around the room became increasingly frenetic.
Dan and I each brandished a thong and tried to hit or squash the fly as it zoomed past us. We were essentially trying to play tennis with this fly. Back and forth. Swing. Miss. Swing. Miss. Jump. Miss. I was literally breaking out into a sweat, and I was working so hard. Eventually the little fucker landed on something, and Dan was able to put it out of its (and our) misery.
On that note, we pretty much went to bed. Tired after our fly swatting workout!
Til next time,
xx
Therefore, we opted to get the early bus and get out of Thessaloniki without experiencing it at all. It ended up merely being a place to rest our heads. The little we saw didn't really thrill us, but I'm sure once you got away from the main streets it would have been quite beautiful. Oh well - another time!
Back down the 3 flights of stairs and onto the street, we walked back again to the bus and train station, although the cool morning air made this bearable. At the station, there was already a big green bus waiting, so we set up camp. A few other people joined us, mostly with tiny amounts of luggage. They might have been taking advantage of the offer for €20 one way, but only €30 return. Obviously we were only going the one way.
A little after 8am, another bus pulled up right in front of us, and this turned out to actually be the bus we wanted. We put our things on, milled around outside the bus for a while, then had our tickets checked and on we popped.
The journey was uneventful. Apparently we went through a really rough, bumpy, jerky and downright uncomfortable half an hour, which seems to be the half an hour I passed out well and truly. I didn't even have my travel sickness tablets! I was just so, so, so tired. Dan and I generally wear our seatbelts on these even though we don't have to - Dan made the good point that if something goes wrong and our insurance asks us, at least we can say we were wearing our seatbelts! This seems a really insignificant detail, but I mention it because I want to remember just how uncomfortable these seatbelts were - the clasp sat in exactly the wrong place up on my lap, and my arm was always resting on it and it was painful. Ok, whinge over.
The bus ride was about 4ish hours. It took me a while to realise but we actually got in early - we were supposed to arrive 11.30am local time but we were at our accommodation already by that time. But first: tickets from Skopje - Belgrade.
The train station was somehow hidden. We could see the tracks, but couldn't find the actual station. An unassuming set of doors in the corner of the bus station led us into the completely still and silent train station. Ok, we made it. We found the ticket offices, and I thought all of them were shut, but Dan noticed a lady sitting at a computer at one. However she, like all the other booths, had a blocker up across the little speaky-hole. We sort of loitered around to see if she would look up but nothing, she adamantly looked at her computer and no where else, so we shuffled off.
We wondered if there was somewhere else to buy tickets or maybe a machine so we did a half hearted look around the station, before noticing that a man was talking to the lady at the ticket office. She must be open after all! We leapt at the opportunity and lined up behind him. When it came to my turn, I apologised for only speaking English and she said she speaks a little - she understood us perfectly and the little she spoke she spoke well!
I asked if there was a train running from Skopje to Belgrade and she said, yes, but it goes overnight. Perfect! That's exactly what we were after - the sleeper train. She explained the ticket prices and the bed situation, and then gave us the price. We hadn't worked out the exchange rate yet, so we dithered with our calculators before coming up with it being €20 per person. Awesome! We went to pay, but she would only take cash.
No matter, we managed to find an ATM easy enough and returned to her, this time a queue forming very closely behind us. The lady looked exasperated - I think she was supposed to be on her lunch break. A few minutes later, we had ourselves two tickets from Skopje to Belgrade in our hot little hands and we were able to go find our accommodation.
This proved slightly more difficult than we expected. Being a non-EU country, we didn't have the ability to use the internet. Dan had pre-loaded the address into his offline maps, but after walking for about 10 minutes, we were supposed to be right on top of it. The area was...rural, to say the least. Crumbling houses, stray dogs, no sign of a city. Either we are in completely the wrong place, I thought, or we have chosen very, very badly.
We eventually worked out that the numbers of the houses was not chronological, and in the distance we could see a little sign saying "Aloha". Let's give that a go! Through the gate and...a little slice of paradise, it seemed! A small, round pool, outdoor chairs and what looked like beautiful apartments surrounding it. Ok, maybe this won't be so bad after all.
There was an open door and a stair case, so we made our way over to that. Nothing. Peeked around a corner. Nothing and no one. A lady popped out, and spoke to us. I apologised and said we could only speak English, and she ended up having only a very small amount of English knowledge. Turns out she was the cleaner, and we were about an hour earlier than we were said we would be because our bus ended up getting in much earlier.
The next few minutes was a flurry of phone calls to "the boss", passing phones back and forth for translation, before we were ushered down a set of stairs - where we found the reception. She motioned for us to sit and said "5 minutes!" Apparently she still had to clean our room. We told her not to rush, and sat in the cool reception area, which bizarrely also had a small gym.
Soon enough it was time for us to be ushered to our room. She opened the door, and we were presented with a beautiful apartment, complete with well. Yes, well. Apparently this run down area of the neighbourhood is the "old city" and various bits cannot be destroyed. Therefore in the centre of our room was an ancient well covered with glass, turning it into a coffee table. Pretty cool! It made the sound of running water all day but thankfully that stopped at night (otherwise I would be up peeing every 5 minutes).
The first thing I noticed was that we didn't have a washing machine, and this concerned me. I hopped on the booking site to make sure we had been given the right room, and we had. I had found some tokens in the corner of the room and thought maybe they were for the washing machine down at reception, so I thought no more of it, got myself comfortable (which means taking my trousers off) and sat down for a few minutes.
Knock knock. I fly off the bed to put my shorts on while Dan answers the doors - it's the manager, come to take the booking fee and give some information. Dan follows him back to reception while I stay in the room, exploring what we have. I find a menu for food and drink in the fridge,and that we can even order room service. A short while later Dan returns with an enormous map, and explains that the washing machine is free to use, and the tokens are so we can have something out of the fridge.
All questions answered, we wonder what to do next. We really, really needed to do some washing, and not having the machine in our room meant we were at the mercy of others - namely, the machine was already being used. As we were pretty stuffed, we decided to find somewhere for lunch, then do some grocery shopping and call it a night.
So lunch. Where to start. Turns out our accommodation was about a 15 minute walk to anything really. The places I had wanted to eat were mostly in the Old Bazaar which was quite a while away, so I had found another within walking distance that was supposed to do traditional food. When we got there, we were presented with a massive menu. I ordered us some wine (which was a bit pricey), and then when the waiter returned I asked him what he recommends from the menu, what traditional/local food they serve.
"We don't really have local food," he replied, and pointed to the meat saying that they have meat. I was a bit surprised as the reviews said it was great for traditional Macedonian food. In fact, I had written down a list of food I wanted to try, but my list was in Latin characters, and there was only one thing I could make out on the menu with the Cyrillic. One thing famous in Skopje is a really flavoursome baked beans dish. When he said they didn't have traditional food, I pointed to this on the menu, to which he replied, "we don't have that at the moment."
So to be honest, I was pretty pissed off. I think we just got a really dud waiter, but I didn't know what to order. In the end, we got two starters (which were in many ways the same, and again the waiter didn't say anything to help us). One was good - it was feta stuffed peppers, but the other, which was a baked feta (so much feta!) was just too salty. Then our meals came, and they were really average too, and tasteless. I left pretty unimpressed, and bloated.
On the walk back we passed a mall, and as my cold was progressing more and more to a possible chest infection I wanted to get some vitamins. On the outside of the mall we had seen there was a DM inside, so in we went. The previous day in Thessaloniki we had stopped into a pharmacy for some hayfever tabs and some vitamins - the vitamins there ranged from €7-16 - no way was I paying that when I was paying 40c in Berlin! The DM here was cheap and stocked the same German things, but was literally twice the price. Ok still, so that made my vitamins 80c instead. That's fine!
Also here was the supermarket. A real, enormous, proper supermarket. The kind that had been lacking for a long time on our travels. We bought breakfast (the usual, eggs, mushroom, tomato and this time a baguette), as well as wine (of course, a big bottle of Macedonian red) and we bought some pastries for dinner, and made up a leafy salad. Done and done! There was also some blue fanta in the mix, but sadly only the bottle is blue, not the liquid!
We left the mall and returned to our room. I had a nap, and then we worked on writing for a little while with the doors nicely open, looking at the lovely little pool. Periodically I would get up and check on the washing machine - finally, it came free! I ran back to Dan and we put some already-sorted clothes into a bag. The washing machine was in Macedonian but we figured it out from the pictures, and soon a load was underway. The dryer looked like it still had hours to go on it, so this would mean we would be hanging the clothes up all around the apartment.
For dinner I microwaved one of the pastries and put together a simple salad. I had found the apartment already had balsamic vinegar, so easy! With it we paired the wine - a giant 1L bottle with a dancing man on the front. When we were living in Germany, our favourite drop was a €2 Macedonian bottle of Cab Sav/Merlot so we had high hopes for Macedonian wine. This wasn't great, but it did the job. Before dinner, we noticed a few cats had been hanging around, and 2 of them in particular were pretty friendly (although a lot more skittish that Greek cats). One very much wanted to be inside our place - which meant we had to close the door.
We managed to get another load of washing on this night too, which pretty much cleaned all of our clothes. We hung it all up around the flat on every available surface, including across the TV and Dan fashioned a line out of some shoelaces. Excellent - soon we will have clean clothes!
We only drank half the bottle when we decided we had had enough. Also while shopping we had bought a couple of cheap Macedonian brand colas to see what they tasted like - so we had plenty of liquid that night. Then...bzzzzzzzzz.
BBBbbbbzbbzzzzzzzz.
There's a big fly in our room. Doing laps. We tried to ignore him for a while but it proved too much. Dan tried to slap it with his flipflop. Just ended up banging on the walls (Sorry neighbours!). We lamented having no bug spray when we thought of my hair spray...ok, this wasn't going to be nice, but it might stop this thing. It came close to me, and I gave it a good spray with the hair spray. It obviously didn't particularly appreciate this, and it's flying around the room became increasingly frenetic.
Dan and I each brandished a thong and tried to hit or squash the fly as it zoomed past us. We were essentially trying to play tennis with this fly. Back and forth. Swing. Miss. Swing. Miss. Jump. Miss. I was literally breaking out into a sweat, and I was working so hard. Eventually the little fucker landed on something, and Dan was able to put it out of its (and our) misery.
On that note, we pretty much went to bed. Tired after our fly swatting workout!
Til next time,
xx
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