The Final Countdown. Day 32: Skopje, Macedonia - Belgrade, Serbia

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

The Final Countdown. Day 31: Skopje

Turns out we had been pronouncing Skopje wrong the whole time. At first, we were literally saying "Skop-gee" which in hindsight was a bit dumb as most of these countries have a 'y' sound for their 'j's. After that, we started calling it "Skop-ee-ay". This too wasn't quite right - what we needed was more of a "Shkop-ee-ah".

I had researched and found a walking tour that started at 10am in the main part of the city. We got up nice and early to make ourselves some scrambled eggs and encountered our first problem. We couldn't figure out at all how to make the hot plate work. It was electric, and when we pressed the buttons it would only make an irritating beeping sound, not get hot, and not do anything. While Dan made it beep some more, I took to google to see if it was possible to scramble eggs in the microwave.

My dear friends, the answer is yes, you can scramble eggs in the microwave (you can actually do anything in the microwave) and it surprisingly turns out quite well! This is a new skill I have added to my list of achievements. While there, I wondered if you could cook mushrooms in the microwave, and google provided again.

So I threw the mushrooms into the microwave for a few minutes, and voila, out they popped, soggy but somewhat cook. Success. Next, the beaten eggs into a mug. Into the microwave, 45 seconds, stir, and repeat until cooked. Well, after the second lot of this, I opened the microwave to find a giant mushroom cloud of egg trying to escape out of the top of the mug. I couldn't stop giggling. Turns out the air underneath had pushed the egg mass right up, so after I poked it with a fork it started to deflate. I was able to break it up a bit in the mug and serve. And so we had a tasty hot breakfast, a la the microwave!

But here came our second problem of the morning - the sink. All the night before, the sink would make "glugging" noises when a neighbour would turn on their taps. It was annoying. Anyway, this morning, at one point while Dan was kindly washing the dishes, he opened up the cupboard for the bin and noticed it was flooded. That would explain the glug glug noise.

Obviously this stressed Dan out a bit while he went into damage control, trying to mop up the mess. We got it to an acceptable level (and I tried to un-war-zone the apartment) and messaged the manager to let him know. He said he would fix it while we were out, so that was easy - but meant we had to rush to get to the walking tour.

It took us about 15 minutes to get to the Memorial House of Mother Teresa where the walking tour began, and it was interesting to see how the housing and buildings changed as you got closer to the centre. Less rural, that's for sure!

We found the memorial house pretty easily enough - there was a big statue of Mother Teresa in front of it, and in front of that was a man wearing a lanyard. This must be our guide. We were blown away by his greeting and his energy - Miha (pronounced Mika) was simply bounding with it.

He began the tour. "Wars have been started in 3 minutes. We should be able to have a friendship in 3 hours!" He assured us that being late in the Balkans is fine - if you are in a rush then something has to be wrong! He also apologised for the driving. "Something is wrong with our drivers," he said.

The tour lasted about 3 hours and we covered the breadth and width of Skopje - ancient, middle and current history. He told us that the main street had changed names 6 times in the last 90 years, and of a disabled woman who had lived her entire life never leaving her apartment - but had had to change address 4 times in her life due.

I can't go into the complex history of it all, but essentially Macedonia is currently in battles to have the name Macedonia. It's official name is Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM for short), although internally of course they call it just Macedonia or Republic of Macedonia. Having to drag around "Yugoslavia" all the time must be quite awful! The reason for this has some thing to do with Greece - many Greeks call themselves "Macedonian" referring to the area, not the country, and so Greece want them to change the name to at least North Macedonia. The battle continues.

Skopje is known for one major thing - and unfortunately (for the locals, at least) it overshadows almost any other achievement or fact of importance. Skopje is full of statues. Now, I had known this before I went there, that there were a lot of statues but until you actually experience how many statues there are, you can't quite fathom just how...many...statues...a...city...can...have. Imagine that person who collects cow figurines, for instance, and starts to run out of places to put them... It's pretty incredible. As our guide said, we became addicted to making statues!



Project Skopje 2014 has a lot to do with this, and not very many locals are happy about it. I wouldn't have been either. So many millions of euros have been poured into this project, with little to show for it. As different parties come into power, Skopje 2014 continues, with further construction and deconstruction of previous construction.

'Skopje is copy/paste,' our guide said. 'Our former mayor would visit a city, and next thing we knew, we had it's major landmark!" There's the famous bull that lives outside of every major stock exchange in the world - except in Skopje, it's outside a shoe shop. Here's the beginning of construction of the Skopje Eye, reminiscent of the London Eye. Oh, and here's our Arch, like the Arc to Triumph, except we haven't won any battles so we'll just put some important pictures on it... and finally,

"Please, please pray for me," Miha said, at which point I thought he was going to go into the spiel about receiving tips as this was a free tour, "please pray. Please pray that our mayor doesn't go to Venice! We'll get rid of the roads and have gondolas everywhere!"

He said that soon, there will be no need to go anywhere else in Europe - all the major landmarks will be right here in Skopje.



At the beginning of the tour, he said that some stray dogs may join us, but they are harmless to humans but will chase cars and bikes. At the beginning of the tour, a groovy little terrier bitser joined us, and would wait just a little way off until we started walking again, trotting to keep up. By the middle of the tour, we had a convoy of 6 dogs ranging in sizes. And the really did attack cars and bikes.

Some of our doggy contingent.

At first this made us laugh a lot - the moment a bike went past, all the dogs would race after it and try to bite the wheels (much to the disgust of the bike owner). A car would go past and they would all race after it and try to grab the wheels, barking furiously. It was all quite funny until one got injured (I think his paw was run over), which put an end to our laughing.

By now, we had seen a multitude of statues, many of which had no real rhyme or reason. "This here, is Chelsea Girl. No one knows why she is here." W arrived in the main square and in front of us stood possibly the most magnificent fountain I have ever seen. It was enormous, and had water cascading from the top of a large bowl, which sat underneath a man on a horse. Underneath the plinth stood another ring of statues, at their base the water was like a de-mister, making a lovely white glow. Around the outside stood lions with jets coming out of their mouths, and more jets were spewing towards the centre. It was magnificent.

It also cost 8.2 million euros. €8.2 million. How many mouths could that feed? How many houses could that build? Obviously our guide was less than impressed by this, and we were rather agape ourselves. The statue is officially called Warrior on a Horse, and it depicts Alexander the Great. It's the tallest Alexander the Great monument in the world. Which cost €8.2 million euros.

Our guide pointed out more and more statues - it became absurd. He pointed to a ring of statues at the top of each building in a row and said that seeing as they are so far away and it's impossible to tell who they are, they are probably the statue maker's hairdresser, maybe the butcher... They really got addicted to making statues.

At one point on the tour, I may have put our photo karma into jeopardy. I'm usually pretty happy to take photos of people, but when I'm trying to take a photo and a phone is shoved in my face with a, "Take photo" and her walking into my way, I get a bit annoyed. I took some shitty photos of her, told her she messed up my photo, hoping she wouldn't talk to me again. I was wrong. At the next stop, she did the same - shoved her photo towards me. I kept telling her she was too close I couldn't fit everything in. In the end I just took some photos and avoided her - she literally worked her way through the whole tour group and by the end there was no one to ask anymore as I think she'd pissed everyone off!

I can't go through everything we saw on the tour, but we also spent some time learning about Mother Teresa who was born into an ethnically Albanian family in Skopje. She is probably Macedonia's biggest...celebrity?...well known person, and so they revere her (which is also understandable, she was remarkable).

At the slightly-after-midway-point, we stopped in a local cafe/restaurant as is quite usual. Next thing we know, Miha was asking us if we drink alcohol, and plops a full shot of rakia down in front of us. Ok! Well, this is apparently happening! Dan and I were sitting with a guy from Bulgaria as well as two who came from England, and we said Nostravia! and tried to down the shot.

Now I've been sick for a while, my voice is all husky, and they say that this stuff cures all ills! I had my shot, shuddered for a while (actually, it wasn't as bad as I expected), while the Brits tried to drink theirs but ultimately had a hard time of it. Miha came around again and asked if anyone wanted a second, I just said ok sure, one for us each! With Dan looking at me like I was nuts. Down the hatch went the second shot, and it was time to make our move up to the fortress.

At the conclusion of the tour, Miha helped take us back to the restaurant where we had the shots saying it was very good and they won't try to overcharge you because you're a tourist. Some other people in the group had said it was good too, and when we arrived about 6 people from the tour were already there! Dan and I took a seat, and one of the dogs sat underneath my legs. He thought Miha was the Alpha Dog and would follow him everywhere!

At the restaurant, called Kaj Seradot, we ordered a feast of  local food. The baked beans, the sharska burger, shopska salad and some bread with cheese. We didn't end up getting the bread with cheese (as we found out later) but the rest was presented on a large platter and it was truly divine. Especially the burger! (it's not an actual burger with bread, it's the patty). We had some beers and the total sum of our meal came to about €10 with tip.

From here, we wandered around the Old Bazaar area for a while. The restaurant is officially in the Old Bazaar, but there are also winding maze-line streets as well, lined with shops, that converge on a giant square. The square was full of stalls, and beyond that was a fruit and veg market. It got really overwhelming, so we were glad to pop back into the maze-like streets over the stalls. We grabbed an icecream (literally 30c per scoop!) and continued wandering, taking photos.

As my cold was getting the better of me, and I'd had a shitty night's sleep due to coughing fits, we went back to the accomm to regroup a bit. I had a nap, and we spent some time working on repacking our luggage - we were already going to be leaving the next day. Now we had a full bag of clean clothes though, it warranted a repack to be more sensible and we could work out what we haven't really been using to put into the more difficult to reach compartments and what we needed easily into the easier to reach compartments.

We ate the other pastry that we had bought the night before and made another salad, topped off with the rest of the wine that we had left over. I had seen pictures of the fountain at night, so we thought it might be nice to see the city at night time so once we were finished eating, we grabbed our camera gear and headed out, back to the city centre along the water front.

The night had cooled off but it was still really lovely and not cold. We stopped periodically to take pictures - I had my tripod with me too, and eventually we reached the square with Warrior on a Horse. As soon as both Dan and I had completed setting up - - - the water and the lighting show stopped. It was 10.30pm. What a waste. We stood there, not sure what to do, looking around for a few minutes, and shooting in the other direction when suddenly, BLUE and WATER - it started again! It must have just come to the end of a cycle.

We spent some time here - there weren't too many people around this late, and got some nice photos before calling it a night. No fly tennis tonight back at the apartment thankfully, so it was easy to settle in to bed.

Til next time,
xx

The Final Countdown. Day 30: Thessaloniki, Greece - Skopje, Macedonia

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