Balkan adventure begins

Trip Start Apr 14, 2006

102

Trip End Jul 2008

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Flag of Macedonia Ohrid, Macedonia
Sunday, August 19, 2007

My two week vacation from the peace corps has finally begun. I've been looking forward to this since my last trip ended in April. Last night I took the night bus from Sofia to Ohrid. Took almost 11 hours. Fortunately I got 2 seats to myself, unfortunately across the aisle from me a man was sporadically throwing up into a plastic bag all night. The border crossing came around 10 pm, took about an hour, pretty painless. Only annoying factor was we had to unload our bags twice for customs, on both sides of the border, fortunately they just peeked in most bags.

Arrived in Ohrid at 4:45 AM local time. was surprised to learn that Macedonia is an hour ahead of Bulgaria. as i was blinking and looking around sleepily I was invited to sit with a group of people outside at a cafe. I hung out with these drunk happy people for about an hour, but refused their beer - it was too early for me, tho late for them

01. swimming in ohrid town

. I did share some of my Bulgarian rakia I brought with me. One girl spoke great English, and with the rest of them I was able to speak Bulgarian with little problems. Bulgarian and Macedonian are rediculously close to eachother, like 2 dialects of the same langauge. an added bonus is that my dialect from Belitsa, which is pretty strong since it developed isolated in the mountains, lies somewhere inbetween Bulgarian and Macedonian.

Around 6 AM i headed down to the center of town and to the lake, about a 20 minute walk. Lake Ohrid is about half the size of Lake Tahoe, so pretty big. Hung out at the port for 2 hours, ate some day old banitsa and even fell asleep for a bit. I didn't think I had a CS or HC host so i found a lady to rent me a private room for 500 MKD (around 8 euro.) I walked around the old town a bit and went for a swim in town. my first impressions of ohrid: really sweet, great old town with cobble stone streets to wander. But it didn't really grab me at first. Maybe because it's so similar to Bulgaria, it's not exciting enough. I can communicate easily and all the houses have the same red tiled roofs as in Bulgaria.

Later that afternoon I met Al and Ben, the two peace corps volunteers who live in Ohrid. It sounds like they're both doing great work - Al has been key in developing Ohrid's tourism, and Ben is doing cross border work among Macedonians, Albanians and Greeks

02.

. Got some of the dirt on Peace Corps Macedonia and on the local government. Unfortunately I learned too late that Al did have a bed for me - 2 guests were no shows, the cardinal sin of hospitalityclub/couchsurfing. so we made plans for me to spend the next night at his apartment. Also I learned to late that it's not the best idea to swim in town, as the water isn't the cleanest. There are some lovely beaches tho a bus ride from town. We spent about 4 hours talking and drinking beer and made plans to meet later that night.

I went home to shower, got a quick dinner (hamburger) and then did some night wandering for about an hour and a half. the old town is very beautiful at night. I met Al and Ben at the pier at 9:30 pm along with Al's HC guest from Germany (not the one that didn't show, a different guy.) We took a 'night cruise' out on Lake Ohrid for 100 MKD, really nice, perfect weather. Then I went out all night, the first half just with Ben and the second with all 4 guys. Ohrid has a good bar scene, especially on weekends, there's a big tourist scene so the bars are packed. I wasn't in bed til 4 AM. i couldn't believe that I had only been in Ohrid one day, it seemed like the longest day of my life (i guess it was almost a 24 hour day,) which is probably why this seems like the longest blog entry of my life as well.