Our Norwegian Prison -- Skopje, Macedonia

I'm starting this post from the food court of a shopping mall in Skopje, Macedonia. 

My body feels like loads of bricks that have been stuck together with cheese. 

But at least the cheese is Macedonian and delicious. In Macedonia, they don't have proper names for cheese. They have white cheese, yellow cheese, blue cheese. The cheese is made of goat milk, sheep milk and cow milk. 

It can be soft. It can be hard. 

This follows that there are approximately 2 x 3 x 3 varieties of cheese. 

I want to stay in Macedonia long enough to try all the varieties in all the combinations. 

A sublime method of consuming cheese is to bake it in a clay pot. 

I approve of this method. 

We left our hostel at 9:30 yesterday morning. I hadn't slept a wink the night before (which is odd, as I'd slept like a pineapple by Lake Ohrid), so I was bleary eyed and something other than enthusiastic about our trip to Skopje that day. 

At least we'll be with a couchsurfer tonight. We'll have a bed and a shower and maybe even a place to do laundry. It'll be like heaven. I want to wear clean clothes... I've been washing my clothes in buckets with soap since I left Vis... well, except for that one time with Kristina. 

I sniffed my shirt. 

I wouldn't pick me up. I'm such a classy hitchhiker. 

Hostel breakfast wasn't as miserable an affair as it had been in Tirana, as the gorgeous girl on shift asked if I would like fruit instead of bread. 

Little gestures like these mean the world to me. 

I ate a peach, an orange and drank a cup of coffee. 

What were they DOING last night? I looked down from the balcony at the pavement below. From my top bunk on the third floor, it sounded like a drunken stag party had transpired the night before. 

To Skopje today. Skopje. I'm going to hitchhike to the capital of Macedonia. Okay. 

I braided Tessa's hair and she donned her perfectly fabulous hat. Then we said goodbye to the Dutch fellow with the nice handwriting and clunked down the stairs, eyes immediately switching to "Cardboard? Cardboard? Cardboard?" mode. 

"I don't believe there is cardboard in Macedonia. And the only cardboard in Albania is manky." 

These are now my problems. Insufficient/inadequate cardboard. I used to worry about rent and paying my phone bill on time. Now I worry about not finding a nice piece of stiff material on which to write my destination. 

We found a box behind a magazine and cigarette kiosk, and immediately tore off an entire side. 

"We can put a closer city... ummm... Prilep? on the top flap and our destination city... where are we going again?"

"God, I don't know. Skopje?"

"Skopje. Right. We can put Skopje on the big flap. And draw a little arrow in between." 

"It's so nifty!" 

"Look at us making hitchhiking fun." 

We walked another ten minutes to the edge of town and stood behind several flower kiosks. 

It's always disheartening to stand beside places cars stop anyway. 

They look at you. Briefly. The slow down. Your hopes soar. The stop. You put away your thumbs and lower your sign. They get out of the car. Your hopes plummet. They buy flowers. You sigh in disappointment. They leave. 

Damn. 

We waited for ten minutes, cracking jokes and lusting after camper vans before a small black car slammed on its brakes. 

Is he buying flowers? 

He was not buying flowers. 

"Skopje?" Tessa asked through the rolled down passenger window. 

The man mumbled something unintelligible, but didn't seem adverse to our general direction. 

"Okay, guess we're going somewhere," Tessa laughed as she climbed in the front and I sat with my elephant in the back. "Do you speak English?" 

"MacedonianMacedonianMacedonian," our driver replied. 

"That's not English," Tessa (consistently logical) commented. 

"MacedonianMacedonianMacedonian," our driver agreed. 

We sunk into silence. Awkward silence. We looked out the windows at the landscape flashing past to ward of the awkward (or at least pretend it didn't exist. I'm not very good at avoiding awkward silences. I tend to duel the shit out of them, so taking the passive approach makes me uncomfortable. Which is slightly counterproductive). 

Our driver randomly stopped by the side of the road. 

"Skopje," he motioned to a rotund man in a blue shirt and got out of the car. 

I looked at Tessa. 

Tessa looked at me. 

Is this a white chocolate situation?

Our driver reached into the back seat, extracted an alarmingly large wad of money from the seat beside mine and handed it to Blue Shirt Man. 

White chocolate? I tested my telepathic skills with Tessa. 

Tessa and I may very well be united by our irrational love of crunchy peanut butter, bacon and cheese, but our brains have yet to develop a telepathic connection. 

Blue shirt man climbed into the back seat next to me and proceeded to speak (very loudly) in Macedonian. 

"English?" I asked in the least annoying way possible. 

"From?"

"America." 

"Where?"

"Colorado." 

"Oh, Grand Canyon!" 

No. GARARAR. Grand Canyon is in Arizona. 

"Yeah, Grand Canyon!" 

"Tan!" he motioned to my arm. 

"Yes, from autostop," I held up my thumb to demonstrate. 

"How many years?"

"Years?"

"What age?" 

"25." 

"What you do money?"

"Yoga. I teach yoga." 

"Ahhhh....boyfriend?"

"YES," Tessa interjected. "We have boyfriends." 

I love it when Tessa interjects. 

The rest of the ride was full of windows, stilted conversation, misunderstandings and one speeding ticket. 

They did take us out for coffee at a roadside cafe, where Blue Shirt Man asked to have his picture taken with me. 

This. This picture made me feel like it was all going to be okay. Which is why I'm smiling so big. People with unsavory intentions don't want photos with victims. 

Our ride finally dropped us off in Skopje, next to the shopping mall where I now sit.

Stealing internet like a good vagabond.

See? Nifty sign. 

I really don't understand how my legs look so short in this photo. 

"That was the most uncomfortable I've ever felt on a ride," I mentioned as we walked into the mall to find an internet connection.

"Me too," Tessa threw our sign into a garbage bin like the clean kiwi she is. "but they ended up being nice. Just... boys. If they had touched us, I would have been more nervous. But in that situation... what do we do?"

I didn't have a good answer.

I guess this is the risk we run. 

Puzzle solved! Horses make off with all Macedonia's cardboard. 

We rode the escalator up to the food court and found a place next to a maternity store with wifi we could commandeer (I also duel for my wifi).

I contacted our host to tell him we'd arrived and that we weren't sure whether or not we were in the proper place.

We waited.

And waited.

"I'm going to buy peanuts and chocolate," I told Tessa an hour or so later as she browsed the internet on her iPhone.

"Okay."

Contentedly munching our peanuts, I decided to google the dorm of the couchsurfer with whom we'd arranged to stay.

If we find the exact address, maybe we can just meet him there. 

Goce Delcev Dorms, Skopje.

I typed into Google.

This is the first ARTICLE that popped up.

What the f*ck? 

Our host had mentioned in his message that his place was a little old... but this? 

"Umm... Tessa?"

"Yeah?"

"I have some good news and some news."

"Our host isn't real?"

"No, the good news is that he appears to be real and living in Skopje. The bad news is that he lives in a place described as inferior to a Norwegian prison."

"Classic."

I checked couchsurfing again and noticed that our host had finally written me back.

"Where are you girls? You at City Mall?"

Apparently, he hadn't read my last five messages.

After a bit more back and forth, he wrote that he'd just come meet us where we were. With our peanuts and chocolate and adjacent pregnant mannequins.

He arrived half an hour later (three hours after we'd set down our bags in the food court) with an apologetic smile and a very large friend.

"Are you Aimee?"

"Yes! Nico?"

"Yes."

"Are we in the right place?"

"No, but it's okay. Would you like to walk or take a bus?"

"How long is it to your place?"

"Only half an hour."

"We can walk," I swung my bag over my shoulders, refraining from mentioning the fact that the reason we were keen on walking was that we'd already been sitting and waiting for three hours for him to check his messages.

So we walked.

Our host was an amiable engineer who had just graduated university and was (not actively) searching for a job.

The way Balkans view job hunting is the way Spanish people relate with religion. Catholic, non-practicing. 

"I live on the 14th floor," he mentioned fifteen minutes into the walk. "Hopefully the elevator is working," he laughed and I took heart. Of course this was a joke. Even in Norwegian prisons, they wouldn't force prisoners to walk up 14 flights of stairs with 15 kilo bags.

"Yeah, it would be crazy to walk up 14 flights of stairs with these bags."

It wasn't a joke. The elevator wasn't working.

I carried my elephant up 14 flights of stairs.

Our host offered to carry my bag, but I huffed ahead.

I will conquer this staircase. Yes. Yes. Yes. YES. ONLY SEVEN MORE FLIGHTS TO GO. DAMN THIS ELEPHANT. 

Nico took us to the room of an old friend (who'd already gone home for the summer).

We tried not to look as appalled as we felt.

Two coffee cups filled with grounds and mold rested (they probably walked there) next to a jar with two extremely well fermented pickles. The holes in the walls were covered up with wrapping paper and the tile floor was in shambles.

"It's a little old," Nico flashed his apologetic smile again.

"It's fine," I said extra firmly, as if to convince myself that it was fine.

There go all my dreams of washing my clothes. 

"Do you want to go into the city now or do you want to stay here and rest?"

"Let's go out now," I glanced around the room and decided that even though I hadn't slept the night before, rest wasn't an activity I particularly wanted to engage in.

Our host took a shower (Tessa and I gingerly sat on the stained mattress in shock during this time) and then showed us around the city.

He was an excellent guide.

We learned more than I can possibly remember.

So I'll just post pictures and make a random comment or two.

This is the first Christian church I've ever seen that has some mosque-esque shapes involved. 

An enormous earthquake destroyed Skopje in 1963. These little reminders are all over the city center. 

Alexander the Great. Born in Macedonia. Know who else was born in Macedonia? Mother Theresa. Bet you didn't know that. 

Skopje is in the middle of turning itself into a tourist destination. This involves creating an unbelievable amount of monuments to dead people in classical, dead person style. Tessa and I are a little disenchanted/jaded with dead person style and wish that Macedonia would do something new. They have the chance to build monuments to celebrate their history -- we don't understand why they've chosen to make themselves look like every other city in Europe. It's turning into the Sound of Music of musicals -- something that everyone will go see because everyone wants to see what they've seen before. 

These are the two gents responsible for gifting humanity with Cyrillic. I hate them. 

Phillip of Macedon

One of the main walking streets in the old town of Skopje

And then I saw the president of Macedonia

And a lot of Turkish people in funny hats. 

Funny hats, part II

Funny hats, part III

A friend of our host showed us a cheap restaurant wherein we could eat traditional Macedonian meals.

We devoured baked cheese, aubergine and chicken. For two euros each.

Macedonia... I had no idea how scrumptious your cheeses are. Had I known, I would have visited you earlier in my vagabond career. And stayed. 

We were given a tour of a few more of Skopje's gazillion monuments.

I love cities at night.

By the end of the evening, Tessa and I were dead on our feet (but I was still terrified of facing those pickles, so I wasn't clamoring on going home anytime soon). Our hosts were eager to go out and listen to some blues music, but my travel buddy admitted her exhaustion and we agreed to go home.

Time to brave the pickles. Norwegian prison, here we come. 

Tessa went to bed. I stayed on a petrifying balcony and drank homemade rakia until I felt adequately tipsy enough to pass out without noticing the spiders under the desk and the mold on the walls.

We go to Sofia tomorrow.

Perhaps we'll be able to do some laundry.

Maybe sleep in a place that compares more favorable to a Norwegian prison.

Nico is such a nice guy. He gives everything he has, but everything he has is... well... not quite what I expected. I'm grateful for his generosity, but if I had known that these were the conditions of his dorm, I probably would have just found a hostel. 

What can I learn from this? 

God. I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. Life is moving by too quickly for lessons to settle in.