To Greece and Back

I’ll not lie. It was wonderful to get out of Kosovo for the weekend. I left Prizren Thursday morning at 9am on the last bus out to Skopje for the day. The ride was marred only by two things: the fact that I sat behind the driver and the driver smoked a good portion of the way (he did open his window from time to time, though, and I had a good view of the road), and that the entry stamp in my passport for Macedonia was so light I can’t tell where it’s for. Getting out of the Skopje bus station was a bit irritating as well. I don’t like being chased with a, “Hey, Lady…Lady…Lady! Hey, Lady! Taxi! Taxi, Lady!” Fortunately, I saw a taxi with a non-hassling driver at the wheel and he gave me a ride to my chosen hotel, the Hotel 903-ta.

After I dropped my bags and rinsed my face, I was out the door to do some exploring, to see why Macedonia calls to me. I didn’t have a map, I just went where I thought I should go. The first thing I needed to do was eat. I found the downtown area easily enough. Like Reno, there’s a river running through it: the River Vardar. Walking alongside it, I stopped at a café with enclosed outdoor seating (it was raining) and went in through its plastic doors. I picked a table in a corner and started looking at the menu, which was all in Macedonian Cyrillic. I was sounding out the menu categories when the waiter brought me an English menu. I skimmed it and found that there were sandwiches, pizza, ice cream, sweet pancakes, and salty pancakes. I was going in the direction of a sandwich when I thought, you know, I should try something different… So a salty pancake it was. There were salty pancakes with beef salad; cheese; cheese and pork; chicken; chicken and olives; tuna with mayonnaise; mayonnaise and salad; and a whole host of other options. Continuing in my well, I’ll try something I’ve never tried before method of choosing food, I opted for a salty pancake with magdadena, mustard, and black pepper with a peach juice to drink.

What I ate was a crepe with bologna, a few bits of tomato and lettuce, a dash of pepper, and the whole thing was drowning in mustard. Not just swimming, but drowning. My appetite momentarily plummeted then came back more voraciously. The combination of curiosity and raging hunger drove me to dig in. The mustard wasn’t too overpowering (but the cook must have used half a bottle) and the tomatoes offset the greasy chewiness of the lunchmeat just enough to make it edible. I made a good go of it and finished about half. I sat for a few moments, looking at my salty pancake and trying to decide whether or not I had eaten enough to subside me until dinner and if I should eat a bit more, but my ‘bologna reflex’ kicked in and I decided I couldn’t eat another bite. I paid and set off for the Kale Fortress, which is partial ruins of Justinia Prima, the second city of the Byzantium (at least according to the “In Your Pocket” Guide for Skopje). The ruins are on a hill and from the Kale Fortress, there are pretty nice views over Skopje. By this time it had stopped raining so I walked around the grounds a bit (there’s not a lot to walk around) and headed over to the bazaar to explore.

I walked around the bazaar (mostly restaurant and shops selling jewelry) and headed back into the town center. Somehow I ended up at a shopping mall and the first thing that greeted me when I walked in was a Lush. This made me very happy and I bought a few items and poked around a handful of other shops to see if I could find pants (I didn’t have any luck). A bit tired, I headed back to the hotel and laid down for a quick nap before I met my colleague who was staying in the same hotel (we were travelling to the conference together from Skopje) so that we could have dinner.

Deciding on a dinner destination in an unknown place is fraught with issues. I had a truncated “In Your Pocket” Guide for Skopje that had two good-looking possibilities for Macedonian food. We asked at the reception which might be better, but the woman said that neither were in places good for walking. She directed us to another restaurant closer to the hotel. We dutifully went, but the place was booked (however, no one had yet arrived for their reservations and the restaurant was empty). The waiter told us about a ‘restaurant street’ we could check out, but as we were walking along this street, looking for restaurants, we got a bit sketched out by a group of loud men sitting on a terrace drinking. We turned around, made our way back to the main street, hopped in a cab, and asked him to take us to the Beerhouse An.

Unbeknownst to me, Beerhouse An is located in the bazaar area I had been walking around earlier and is not accessible by taxi. The driver parked in the nearest parking lot and walked us to the restaurant. It was very nice of him to do that and I tipped him rather generously (I don’t even know if one usually tips in Macedonia). Beerhouse An is not a beerhouse but, rather, is a really good Macedonian restaurant. For about $30 I ate until I was stuffed. I had salad (tomato, feta, and lettuce), a main dish (mixed meat kabob with a fabulous vegetable stew), dessert (like a crepe with some type of nut butter inside…the waitress tried to explain it but I didn’t understand), wine, and lots of bread. I practically had to roll myself back to the hotel (we walked). The only downside to our meal was that as we were having dessert, the men at the table next to us started smoking cigars. Yuck.

On Friday morning, we cabbed over to the car rental place, rented a car (some kind of Opel), and were on our way out of Skopje heading south to Thessaloniki. Driving through Macedonia was a breeze. The road was great. There wasn’t much traffic. It was raining slightly, but not enough to cause any issues. Crossing into Greece couldn’t have been easier. The main bummer? My entry stamp for Greece is unreadable. The rest of the drive into Thessaloniki was a piece of cake. The only blip came at the end when I couldn’t find the hotel parking lot and I had to maneuver this big, unfamiliar car down a few back streets and between parked cars. Had we been given anything bigger I would have had serious problems squeezing through some incredibly tight areas.

Thessaloniki was, well…it didn’t speak to me the way Skopje did. The hotel was mediocre. There was a lot of construction going on around the hotel which made it difficult to walk. It was crowded and noisy. Thesslaoniki lacks the calm cosmopolitanism of Skopje. However, by Sunday morning, I had warmed up to Thessaloniki quite a bit. Our dinner on Friday night was tourist-trap junk, but our meal Saturday night was lovely. The hotel didn’t deserve its 4-star rating, but my bathroom did have a usable tub (which I used three times). Additionally, the hotel was just around the corner from a Carrefour super market. I went nuts. I bought oatmeal and canned beans and tea and almonds and cereal bars and peanut butter and whole wheat spaghetti and brown rice and floss and a few other luxuries. That alone made the entire trip worthwhile.

I was mortified when I stopped at a small restaurant and ordered a gyro when the man behind the counter not only stuffed my pita with shaved lamb, onions, tomatoes, and parsley but also added mustard, ketchup, and a few bits of fried potatoes. However, this turned out to be really tasty. Additionally, my colleague and I stumbled onto a really great little bakery with out-of-this-world baklava. We even discovered on Saturday night that there were three Starbucks within a 15-minute walk from the hotel. Before leaving on Sunday I treated myself to a soy mocha. Mmm-mmm.

My presentation, the reason I was in Thessaloniki, went well. The people who attended were interested in my subject matter (I was speaking on a photography project I did with students in Japan using mobile phones) and my 45-minute time slot flew by. The conference overall was interesting and I was able to make a few contacts that might come in handy later on.

Sunday morning came far too quickly (Thessaloniki, I hardly knew ye), and we were off in the car again (no squeezing was necessary to get from the parking garage back to the main street) and on our way back to Skopje. The drive back was uneventful, mostly. I overshot the highway that goes to the border. We stopped when we came to a town neither one of us recognized. I dug the map of Greece out of the trunk and asked a tableful of people at a nearby café where we were and how to get going back towards the border. I ended up on a road paralleling the main highway, which turned out to be a nice scenic alternative. Right before we crossed the border, I cut back over to the main road and there was hardly any wait to pass through. Again, my exit stamp for Greece is nearly illegible, but my entry stamp for Macedonia is nice and solid.

About half-way through Macedonia I was pulled over by the cops. I thought it was a random checkpoint (I’ve seen several of these in Kosovo). The police officer didn’t speak any English, but I knew right away what was going on. He motioned for me to get out of the car. I grabbed my jacket (it was chilly and windy), got out, and he took me over to his radar gun and showed me my speed (86 kmph in a 60 kmph zone). He then directed me to two additional officers sitting in a police car. The officer in the driver’s seat said, “Go get your documents.” “Which documents?” I asked. “Your passport and green card.”

I went and grabbed my passport (I didn’t know what a green card was). My colleague wanted to know what was going on, but I wasn’t quite sure yet so I said that I didn’t know. They wanted my passport. I returned to the police car, handed over my passport, and waited for what was coming next: a sermon on driving the speed limit.

“You should drive sixty. It’s for your own safety,” he flipped through my passport and pulled out a clipboard laden with the information of other offenders clipped on it.

“But I was confused. A few signs said sixty, but there were many cars passing me. I thought I was driving too slow,” I was telling him the truth. I had seen the signs for 60 a few miles back, but everyone else was passing me so nonchalantly I thought the signs had been only for a small section of road.

“Well…we can’t pull everyone over. Today is your lucky day,” he smiled.

“Aren’t I fortunate?” I smiled back.

Then the officer in the passenger seat started talking. “We love America, but you must drive the speed limit. You were going too fast. Out of respect for your country, out of respect for you, you should drive the speed limit. The fine is 45 Euros. But, again, out of respect for your country, we will not ask you to pay it this time.” With that, my passport was returned and I was shooed away.

I thanked the officers, including the one who had flagged me over. While I had been speaking with the other two officers, he stood behind me and listened to our exchange (a nice role play for an English for police officers class). With a quick thank you toot of the horn, I pulled back onto the road and we were once again on our way.

We returned to Skopje, dropped off the car, went to the bus station, and I was soon on the bus back to Prizren. I haven’t uploaded my photos yet, but when I do, I’ll post a few. That is, if the power stays on for any reasonable length of time. It’s been out twice already today, once at 8am right before I was going to boil water for coffee to take with me to work, and once at 3:15pm, right after I arrived home. The power also went out last night around 9pm, which was fine because I was tired and needed to go to bed. Ramadan is over and I think the power cuts have begun again.