Guess what? It was time for us to check out again - we don't stay still for long, do we? Check out was easy enough - we placed all our bags in the downstairs reception (unmanned) and hoped it would still be there when we came back.
Today the intention was to visit Lake Matka as it was supposed to be beautiful. This did not happen. Sorry for ruining the story line this early in, but we never, ever made it to Lake Matka. We came reasonably close, but not close enough. How did this happen? You need to know the date for this story. May 1. First of May. May Day. Public holiday.
We arrived at the bus station just after 11am (going to the wrong bus station first) and saw a fair few people milling about. Each bus park had some numbers above, and we found the one with 60 as that was the one that was supposed to take us directly to Matka. A crowd was starting to gather - and we knew that the next bus wasn't supposed to leave until 12.10pm (about an hour away).
As it got closer to the time, some groups of people started crowding nearing the front and side of the bus in the 60 parking lot. The crowd grew bigger, and started to squish closer together. I chatted briefly with a girl from Sweden behind us, who said we needed to buy a travel card - which Dan did while I held our place in the line.
At about 12.05, there was a massive flurry of movement to our right, and it turned out that bus 60 had arrived in a parking space further down. We ran. We didn't want to miss this bus as the next one wasn't for hours, and it seemed that half of Skopje was waiting for this bus (which it probably was, as we were to find out later...)
There was almost a riot getting onto the bus. Dan and I made a beeline for the middle door entrance as many others were, and squeezed our way on - managing to secure the window standing space. Within a few seconds the bus was rammed, and we realised we hadn't booped our ticket as there wasn't one in the middle as we had assumed. Oh well, if an inspector tried to get on, he'd never get past the first 3 people!
The next hour passed very slowly and sweatily. The bus stalled multiple times. Barely anyone got off. When someone did want to get off, the driver never opened the door. We literally crawled through the streets of the city - I thought we would speed up once we were out onto the open roads! But no. We came to a grinding halt.
The bus journey is usually around 30 odd minutes. An hour later, and we were only half way there. We could see the neverending line of cars ahead of us. Occasionally, the driver would open the door to let people out if they were getting sick of being on the bus.
Eventually I got sick of being on the bus, and felt like I wasn't too far off fainting, so Dan and I hopped off the bus near Lake Treska and a town called Shishevo. I didn't have internet but my GPS was working on google maps so I had a rough idea where we were. We powerwalked past all the cars (and buses) ahead of us. I joked that the bus just up ahead was the 10.30am bus that we had missed. It probably was, actually.
Looking at the line of cars ahead, it was clear that on the bus we would have NEVER made it to Matka, or if we did, it would have been about 4pm. And we had a train to catch late that night. We walked for a little while along the rows of cars (watching as one tried to go up the wrong side of the road, to be shouted at by a policeman). We wandered through Shishevo a little, and the decided to go back to the lake we had seen previously to sit down, regroup, and figure out how the hell we were going to get back to Skopje.
We grabbed a super cheap icecream and wandered down a path towards the cemented Lake Treska. We sat here for a while, gathering our wits and attracting ants with our icecream sticks. There were a lot of bugs, most of which were crawling on me, including some cute little caterpillars. Some people were splashing in the lake, although it didn't look too appealing to me, to be honest, it had collected a lot of rubbish. The plan then was to do a lap around the lake, then just walk back in the direction we came until we bit a bus stop.
Nothing interesting to say about the walk around the lake, so we hit the hot and dusty road. Taxi drivesr honked and stopped to see if we wanted a ride. No thanks! We'll figure this out ourselves. We knew if we kept going we would eventually hit a bus stop. Up ahead, we spotted quite a large group of people and we stopped near a bus with a hand drawn 60 on it. It was off so we kept walking. As we crossed the street, the bus fired into life and it pulled up near us. I ran to the open day, shouted "Skopje?", while he waved his hands frantically (which we took to mean yes) and we grabbed a seat. And so we were on the bus back.
All we could do was laugh. What a debacle! As we drove back we noticed that the police had blocked off all the streets leading onto this one street, and were making people turn back the way they had come. I'm not surprised, it was entirely gridlocked earlier in the day. We were thankful we were on the bus, with a nice breeze, hadn't gotten stuck or trapped anywhere, and even though the object of the day had become a failure, it had turned into a rather hilarious story.
Basically, that the entire population of Skopje goes to Lake Matka on the May Day public holiday.
By returning to the city, this meant we had another opportunity to find some more statues and have a bit more of a look around. We got ourselves another ice cream near the Old Railway Station, which has been preserved as a reminder of the 1963 earth quake that devastated the city, before going back to Kaj Seradot for dinner.
So as you may know, I google the best places to eat in every city we visit, and make a bit of a list of places to try that are affordable and full of local cuisine. We had eaten at Kaj Seradot the day before, and when we had returned to our apartment, I decided to google it. Turns out, it was at the top of my to-eat list! So we went back there of course, and it again was delicious. At first there wasn't a table for us, but she had us sit upstairs until an outside table came free, which didn't take very long. This time both Dan and I got the sharska burger each, and we definitely got the bread with cheese this time! Accompanying it was a very cheap 1L bottle of white wine. The whole thing was coming to maximum €10 when I impulse suggested we get a shot of raki.
Upon delivering it to our table, she also delivered an even bigger shot (in a small glass you'd use for water) - she had given us an extra shot from her! We had said we were return customers, and when we said "This meal was delicious," her response was, "I know!" She knew what she had going for her.
At one point, we were mildly inebriated and Dan went to the bathroom - knocking the airconditioning unit of the wall in the process. The stairs to the toilet were complicated - a bit like a ship stair case, very narrow and steep.
As we stood up to leave, we heard a hello from behind us, and there was a gentleman who had been on our walking tour the day before. We said hello, and then decided to stay for an extra beer and a chat! Eduardo was from Brazil and also on an extended travel, so we had a lot to talk about.
Once we had finished our beer, we realised the time was a little later than we had hoped. We started power walking, but soon my bladder started making itself known. Both of us dived into an Irish pub, relieved ourselves, hoping not to be noticed. Success! And then we raced on back to our accommodation. We grabbed our belongings and got to the train station about 20 minutes early, unloading our bags from our shoudlers.
The time for the train to arrive came and went. The crowd on the platform grew and grew, and eventually about half an hour later a train arrived. There was some confusion finding our carriage and our bunk room, as the man did not speak much English at all, but he waved us into the bunk with the corresponding numbers on our tickets. He came and went a few times, delivering a pillow, and then a sheet, and motioning to us to put these on the bunk. Our bunks 65 and 66 were supposed to be the top bunk of 3 bunks on each side (something I wasn't overly happy about) but the inspector seemed to be suggesting we had the whole compartment to ourselves.
We started putting our sheets and blankets on the bottom bunk each, and when he returned he didn't say we were doing anything wrong, as so we decided it was so. He looked at our tickets (and took them away), saying "Ah, touristy tickets!" which I think is why we had the full 6 bed compartment to ourselves.
It was all far too confusing for almost midnight and a few beers, wine, and rakia deep. The train started off. Then stopped. Then reversed. Then went forward. Then backwards. This went on for a full half an hour - I seriously have no idea what was happening - but eventually the train pulled away for the last time and we were on our way.
We were so tired, but in a short while it would be the border crossing from Macedonia to Serbia, so we had to stay awake. Passport control was definitely interesting...
Our train stopped. On hopped a lady, who came along and asked if we had anything to declare (in Macedonian first, but then changed to English), any cigarettes, alcohol. No, we replied, and she continued along the carriage.
A few minutes later, a man appeared at the door, wearing a uniform. "Do you have anything to declare?" he asked, to which we looked puzzled, as we had just had this questioning, and then he continued to ask us if we had any Macedonian money on us.
"Yes, a little," we replied, confused.
"It's illegal to take Macedonian money out of the country," he responded.
Huh?
I wasn't sure what was going on, it was about 1am at this point, and I was smelling a little bit of bullshit. I said, "A lady has just come through here asking us all these same questions," to try to throw him off a little.
"She is the passport controller, I am the financial controller," he replied.
Right.
This went backwards and forwards for a few minutes. We assured him we weren't aware it was illegal, and I asked him to show us some documentation stating it was illegal (which he of course did not produce). He then asked to see the money we had, both euros and Macedonian money.
Dan opened his wallet, and took out a few notes (not all of them), and it came to about €20 total in both the currencies. We saw his eyes fall in disappointment, and he said "well, if you can change it in Serbia, then you can keep it." And walked away.
After the fact, when I had wifi again, I looked up whether Macedonian money is illegal to take out of the country. It is not. It is true that we are actually unable to exchange this currency (thankfully we only have about €14 worth), but it is not illegal. I still believe he was just a scammer trying to get our money, but probably didn't think we had enough to be worth it.
We breathed a sigh of relief, and wondered what the Serbian border crossing was going to be like. Much simpler, thankfully, a simple "Do you have anything to declare?", the answer being no, and we were through.
Time to try to go to sleep. By now it was well after 1am - we were supposed to be arriving in Belgrade at 8.11am but the train was between half an hour and an hour late, so we had a little bit of extra time to try to sleep in the morning. I tucked myself in best I could and, alternating between overheating and freezing, I tried to sleep.
The rest can be for the next post.
Til next time,
xx
Today the intention was to visit Lake Matka as it was supposed to be beautiful. This did not happen. Sorry for ruining the story line this early in, but we never, ever made it to Lake Matka. We came reasonably close, but not close enough. How did this happen? You need to know the date for this story. May 1. First of May. May Day. Public holiday.
We arrived at the bus station just after 11am (going to the wrong bus station first) and saw a fair few people milling about. Each bus park had some numbers above, and we found the one with 60 as that was the one that was supposed to take us directly to Matka. A crowd was starting to gather - and we knew that the next bus wasn't supposed to leave until 12.10pm (about an hour away).
As it got closer to the time, some groups of people started crowding nearing the front and side of the bus in the 60 parking lot. The crowd grew bigger, and started to squish closer together. I chatted briefly with a girl from Sweden behind us, who said we needed to buy a travel card - which Dan did while I held our place in the line.
At about 12.05, there was a massive flurry of movement to our right, and it turned out that bus 60 had arrived in a parking space further down. We ran. We didn't want to miss this bus as the next one wasn't for hours, and it seemed that half of Skopje was waiting for this bus (which it probably was, as we were to find out later...)
There was almost a riot getting onto the bus. Dan and I made a beeline for the middle door entrance as many others were, and squeezed our way on - managing to secure the window standing space. Within a few seconds the bus was rammed, and we realised we hadn't booped our ticket as there wasn't one in the middle as we had assumed. Oh well, if an inspector tried to get on, he'd never get past the first 3 people!
The next hour passed very slowly and sweatily. The bus stalled multiple times. Barely anyone got off. When someone did want to get off, the driver never opened the door. We literally crawled through the streets of the city - I thought we would speed up once we were out onto the open roads! But no. We came to a grinding halt.
The bus journey is usually around 30 odd minutes. An hour later, and we were only half way there. We could see the neverending line of cars ahead of us. Occasionally, the driver would open the door to let people out if they were getting sick of being on the bus.
Eventually I got sick of being on the bus, and felt like I wasn't too far off fainting, so Dan and I hopped off the bus near Lake Treska and a town called Shishevo. I didn't have internet but my GPS was working on google maps so I had a rough idea where we were. We powerwalked past all the cars (and buses) ahead of us. I joked that the bus just up ahead was the 10.30am bus that we had missed. It probably was, actually.
Looking at the line of cars ahead, it was clear that on the bus we would have NEVER made it to Matka, or if we did, it would have been about 4pm. And we had a train to catch late that night. We walked for a little while along the rows of cars (watching as one tried to go up the wrong side of the road, to be shouted at by a policeman). We wandered through Shishevo a little, and the decided to go back to the lake we had seen previously to sit down, regroup, and figure out how the hell we were going to get back to Skopje.
We grabbed a super cheap icecream and wandered down a path towards the cemented Lake Treska. We sat here for a while, gathering our wits and attracting ants with our icecream sticks. There were a lot of bugs, most of which were crawling on me, including some cute little caterpillars. Some people were splashing in the lake, although it didn't look too appealing to me, to be honest, it had collected a lot of rubbish. The plan then was to do a lap around the lake, then just walk back in the direction we came until we bit a bus stop.
Nothing interesting to say about the walk around the lake, so we hit the hot and dusty road. Taxi drivesr honked and stopped to see if we wanted a ride. No thanks! We'll figure this out ourselves. We knew if we kept going we would eventually hit a bus stop. Up ahead, we spotted quite a large group of people and we stopped near a bus with a hand drawn 60 on it. It was off so we kept walking. As we crossed the street, the bus fired into life and it pulled up near us. I ran to the open day, shouted "Skopje?", while he waved his hands frantically (which we took to mean yes) and we grabbed a seat. And so we were on the bus back.
All we could do was laugh. What a debacle! As we drove back we noticed that the police had blocked off all the streets leading onto this one street, and were making people turn back the way they had come. I'm not surprised, it was entirely gridlocked earlier in the day. We were thankful we were on the bus, with a nice breeze, hadn't gotten stuck or trapped anywhere, and even though the object of the day had become a failure, it had turned into a rather hilarious story.
Basically, that the entire population of Skopje goes to Lake Matka on the May Day public holiday.
By returning to the city, this meant we had another opportunity to find some more statues and have a bit more of a look around. We got ourselves another ice cream near the Old Railway Station, which has been preserved as a reminder of the 1963 earth quake that devastated the city, before going back to Kaj Seradot for dinner.
So as you may know, I google the best places to eat in every city we visit, and make a bit of a list of places to try that are affordable and full of local cuisine. We had eaten at Kaj Seradot the day before, and when we had returned to our apartment, I decided to google it. Turns out, it was at the top of my to-eat list! So we went back there of course, and it again was delicious. At first there wasn't a table for us, but she had us sit upstairs until an outside table came free, which didn't take very long. This time both Dan and I got the sharska burger each, and we definitely got the bread with cheese this time! Accompanying it was a very cheap 1L bottle of white wine. The whole thing was coming to maximum €10 when I impulse suggested we get a shot of raki.
Upon delivering it to our table, she also delivered an even bigger shot (in a small glass you'd use for water) - she had given us an extra shot from her! We had said we were return customers, and when we said "This meal was delicious," her response was, "I know!" She knew what she had going for her.
At one point, we were mildly inebriated and Dan went to the bathroom - knocking the airconditioning unit of the wall in the process. The stairs to the toilet were complicated - a bit like a ship stair case, very narrow and steep.
As we stood up to leave, we heard a hello from behind us, and there was a gentleman who had been on our walking tour the day before. We said hello, and then decided to stay for an extra beer and a chat! Eduardo was from Brazil and also on an extended travel, so we had a lot to talk about.
Once we had finished our beer, we realised the time was a little later than we had hoped. We started power walking, but soon my bladder started making itself known. Both of us dived into an Irish pub, relieved ourselves, hoping not to be noticed. Success! And then we raced on back to our accommodation. We grabbed our belongings and got to the train station about 20 minutes early, unloading our bags from our shoudlers.
The time for the train to arrive came and went. The crowd on the platform grew and grew, and eventually about half an hour later a train arrived. There was some confusion finding our carriage and our bunk room, as the man did not speak much English at all, but he waved us into the bunk with the corresponding numbers on our tickets. He came and went a few times, delivering a pillow, and then a sheet, and motioning to us to put these on the bunk. Our bunks 65 and 66 were supposed to be the top bunk of 3 bunks on each side (something I wasn't overly happy about) but the inspector seemed to be suggesting we had the whole compartment to ourselves.
We started putting our sheets and blankets on the bottom bunk each, and when he returned he didn't say we were doing anything wrong, as so we decided it was so. He looked at our tickets (and took them away), saying "Ah, touristy tickets!" which I think is why we had the full 6 bed compartment to ourselves.
It was all far too confusing for almost midnight and a few beers, wine, and rakia deep. The train started off. Then stopped. Then reversed. Then went forward. Then backwards. This went on for a full half an hour - I seriously have no idea what was happening - but eventually the train pulled away for the last time and we were on our way.
We were so tired, but in a short while it would be the border crossing from Macedonia to Serbia, so we had to stay awake. Passport control was definitely interesting...
Our train stopped. On hopped a lady, who came along and asked if we had anything to declare (in Macedonian first, but then changed to English), any cigarettes, alcohol. No, we replied, and she continued along the carriage.
A few minutes later, a man appeared at the door, wearing a uniform. "Do you have anything to declare?" he asked, to which we looked puzzled, as we had just had this questioning, and then he continued to ask us if we had any Macedonian money on us.
"Yes, a little," we replied, confused.
"It's illegal to take Macedonian money out of the country," he responded.
Huh?
I wasn't sure what was going on, it was about 1am at this point, and I was smelling a little bit of bullshit. I said, "A lady has just come through here asking us all these same questions," to try to throw him off a little.
"She is the passport controller, I am the financial controller," he replied.
Right.
This went backwards and forwards for a few minutes. We assured him we weren't aware it was illegal, and I asked him to show us some documentation stating it was illegal (which he of course did not produce). He then asked to see the money we had, both euros and Macedonian money.
Dan opened his wallet, and took out a few notes (not all of them), and it came to about €20 total in both the currencies. We saw his eyes fall in disappointment, and he said "well, if you can change it in Serbia, then you can keep it." And walked away.
After the fact, when I had wifi again, I looked up whether Macedonian money is illegal to take out of the country. It is not. It is true that we are actually unable to exchange this currency (thankfully we only have about €14 worth), but it is not illegal. I still believe he was just a scammer trying to get our money, but probably didn't think we had enough to be worth it.
We breathed a sigh of relief, and wondered what the Serbian border crossing was going to be like. Much simpler, thankfully, a simple "Do you have anything to declare?", the answer being no, and we were through.
Time to try to go to sleep. By now it was well after 1am - we were supposed to be arriving in Belgrade at 8.11am but the train was between half an hour and an hour late, so we had a little bit of extra time to try to sleep in the morning. I tucked myself in best I could and, alternating between overheating and freezing, I tried to sleep.
The rest can be for the next post.
Til next time,
xx
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