Crossing borders

For the first time since arriving in Macedonia over seven months ago, I got my Peace Corps passport stamped, and headed into Bulgaria for a weekend in Sofia. It was the natural first choice because it's cheap (only about 10 dollars one way via 15 passenger van) and close (from the border town of Delcevo only 2 hrs to Sofia). I went with a good friend and fellow PCV who lives in Delcevo, and we stayed at a hostel called Hostel Mostel that is a short 10 min walk from most of the main sights in Sofia. Naturally, the first thing we did after arriving at the hostel was go here:

We couldn't help it. We were both hungry and wanted some reliable American fast food. Sure, Macedonia has a few McDonalds' and other unpleasantness, but no Subway. Heck, I don't even prefer Subway when I have the choice between that and Quiznos back in the states. But for whatever reason, Subway was the perfect way to start our trip. After that we decided to wander the streets in search of some of the well-known cathedrals and churches scattered around the city center. 

Sveti Georgi Church

Ivan Vasov National Theater

Russian Orthodox church

The colossal Aleksander Nevski cathedral, built as big thank-you to Russia for helping liberate Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in the 19th Century. 

 

As we wandered around, we definitely noticed several similarities and differences between our experiences in towns/cities in Macedonia and Sofia. For differences, we noted that Sofia is not lacking municipal funding for public cleanliness and trash clean-up. A lot of the city streets were completely devoid of trash and even graffiti. Also, we saw roughly 3 stray dogs over the course of 2 full days in the city of 1.2 million. Next, Bulgaria's EU membership creates a whole different range of choices in stores, restaurants, etc. that we haven't seen in places like Skopje. This is not always such a good thing. While seeing Subway for the first time was a welcome sight, it was on its way to the American model of having one every 1-2 city blocks. McDonalds already achieved that in Sofia. Not welcome. I'll take a banichka or pleskavica over that any day. 

Benefits of EU membership. I appreciated it. 

However, the similarities were obvious as well. From the standpoint of language, Bulgarian is the closest to Macedonian of any language in the Balkans. This is result of a lot of shared culture, tradition and history, and I'll spare the lesson on that (and spare myself screwing it up and pissing off either a bunch of Macedonians, Bulgarians, or both). Regardless, the language similarities helped us get by a little easier, but we also found many people in the city spoke English, not unlike Skopje. Our food choices for "Bulgarian cuisine" were basically identical to what we'd normally find in Macedonia. Their version of a shopska salad (probably the most well-known Macedonian salad) just includes some sliced green pepper in addition to everything else. I didn't get to try any Bulgarian rakija, but I do know that it wouldn't be domashna (homemade) due to EU regulations so I don't think I missed much. Then again having homemade alcohol in a big city like Sofia is a recipe for hospitalization or losing a kidney. 

After spending most of Friday walking around, we ran out of things to do and decided to book a day trip for Saturday through our hostel to the famous Rila Monastery in western Bulgaria. We were pretty beat by the evening and planned to just crash at the hostel early so we'd be well-rested for the long car ride to the monastery the next day. Instead, we found ourselves walking into a nightclub with some new friends from the hostel at 11:30pm where we paid the equivalent of $10 for open bar all night. 

The club. What could go wrong with open bar all night and a tour the next morning?

Fortunately, the next day we managed to wake up in time for our tour and we were off on the road to Rila Monastery. It is located in the middle of the highest mountain range of Bulgaria and was built in the 14th Century, named after Sveti Ivan Rilski. Near the monastery, we visited a church and the cave where Sveti Ivan lived in solitude for roughly eight years. 

Ivan's cozy cave dwelling.

Church next to the cave.

After the cave we arrived at the monastery and had a few hours to walk around. Unfortunately, we had no tour guide, so we missed out on some of the historical vignettes. I found out today from the owner of the burek shop in my village that at one point the monastery itself was divided between Bulgaria and Serbia, or at least between the two Orthodox churches. But regardless, it was beautiful and well worth a trip even without a tour guide:

The mountain backdrop was pretty stunning.

Eventually we made our way back on the road to Sofia, but not before a few photo opportunities worth sharing: 

Looking back towards Rila.

We made it back to the hostel and decided, for real this time, that we were going to take it easy for the evening and just go get dinner at a place called the Ale House. All I can say is, go there. The food was great, they have beer taps at your table (refill yourself), and it wasn't overly expensive. For example, my friend got a delicious wild boar for about 10 dollars. 

Good beer. 

On Sunday we were scheduled to take a bus back to Macedonia at around 8pm, so we decided to walk to the bus station in the early afternoon to get our tickets and just take it easy after then. Well, we found there was no bus to Macedonia at 8pm. Somehow the Macedonian bus system managed to screw us over even in Bulgaria! With no other real option, we got bus tickets to Blagoevgrad (the closest major city to the border with Macedonia) and hoped to find a cab driver to take across the border to Delcevo. We found a cab driver, no problem. But he neglected to mention that had no green card to cross the border until we actually got to the border. With no ride on the other side, we were basically going to have to walk 10km to Delcevo and dodge random wild animals and crazy drivers on the main road. But by blind luck, a cab driver was waiting on the Macedonian side of the border after just dropping off someone from Skopje. And the best part is that he recognized me because I had taken a cab with him before in Obleshevo, and he yelled over to us to come with him. So essentially, all it took was for us to cross the border into Macedonia before everything was right with the world again. I don't know what that means or whether it makes any sense, but I definitely have Mite the taxi driver's phone number saved now. 

Home.

Сиромашни луѓе, но богати души (Poor people, but rich souls)

For the past two weekends, I've had a lot of celebrations. First, it was both my host dedo's and host brother's slava (both named Lazar) on April 8th. I was in Skopje the previous day for Peace Corps activities, and arrived home around noon. Around 1pm, guests started arriving, so the rakija, bottles of Krali Marko (King Marko) beer, and seemingly unlimited supply of snacks and desserts arrived with them. At one point there were at least 30 people in the house, maybe more, since the room I was in had about 14.

Yep, we had an indoor oro going on in the house.

It wasn't long before my host brother Laze broke out his accordion and started playing Macedonian folk songs. Given that he's at music school in Austria for the accordion, he's pretty good, and he was joined in by some friends playing the trumpet, eventually leading to a small oro dance circle in the room. By the time things started wrapping up, it was 11:30 and I was exhausted. But it was a lot of fun. It was probably the first time since I arrived here that I've had a chance to hang out with a large group of only Macedonians close to my age, and I made some new friends I'll keep in touch with.

After a holiday-shortened week, I spent the past weekend with my host family and friends celebrating Orthodox Easter. I have to admit I missed out on some of the traditions this year, because at midnight on Easter Sunday, most people go to the main church in town, and do a bunch of things like light candles, circle the church a few times, and crack eggs with friends and strangers. Hardboiled eggs, yes. I missed this particular tradition because I was at packed bar in Kocani and none of my Macedonian friends really wanted to go to the church, and we all saw it as an opportunity to find an open table when everyone left briefly to go to the church. Priorities. I'll just go next year. Regardless, I still did get exposed to a new tradition that night: everyone stays out really late the night before Easter. But it was fun, met several new people, and went home happy after devouring a greasy banichka with урда (a type of cheese) at 3am.

The next morning, I thankfully avoided hearing the screams of the pig that was being slaughtered for our big Easter meal (thank you earplugs), woke up around 11 and walked outside to see people already outside eating and drinking rakija. Here was some of the scene:

Pig.

My host mom Silvana dishing out some egg salad.

Things were pretty relaxed, just sipping rakija and snacking, until we heard music in the distance. At first we thought it was a wedding, but soon we had a band in our backyard with us playing folk music:

The band. We thanked them with lots of rakija and Krali Marko.

Eventually the band left after about 25 minutes, but again, another spontaneously awesome experience. It was hard to top that for the rest of the day, but we did have a pretty epic feast for lunch. That was Easter.

But the holiday weekend wasn't over yet. The next day was also a state holiday, so no one at home had to work, so we (Silvana, Venco, Lazar, dedo, and me) went to Osogovo mountain for a picnic. We lucked out with weather, and after arriving at the мегдан (basically an open field where lots of people park their cars and set up their grills for picnic), several of us embarked on a short hike down the hill to my dedo's old village of Vraninci. It was another highlight of my time here in Macedonia:

Dedo's village of Vraninci, viewed from the мегдан.

Dedo's house.

This was dedo's old room.

My dedo planted this tree about 60 years ago.

It's hard to describe the experience of seeing this village (we even went na gosti briefly to one of the few remaining occupied houses), but it gave me a lot of new perspective about how dedo grew up and the type of life he lived. We even picked up some items that probably belong in some kind of museum, like a 200 year old bowl for scooping flour. Eventually we made our way back to the мегдан and commenced the picnic:

The мегдан.

Another obligatory oro circle...

After making some rounds around the field, talking to family friends and drinking a little rakija, we settled down to our skara and, of course, drank a little more rakija. My host dad Venco and brother Lazar got out their accordions after a little while and naturally an oro circle formed around them. While watching this typical Macedonian tradition, I was sitting with dedo and remarked to me: "Сиромашни луѓе, но богати души." Poor people, but rich souls. After seeing his village and where he is now, along with the other experiences I've had in Macedonia over the last 7 months, I have no reason to disagree with him. Dedo knows best after all.

Biking Osogovo

On the way to the mountains...


On Saturday I had the opportunity to go to Osogovo mountain with some Macedonian friends from Obleshevo and nearby Cheshinovo. When I woke up that morning, I wasn't feeling the best, but I decided I didn't want to pass up the chance to go mountain biking on a beautiful day. They had an extra bike for me, and of course I brought my Peace Corps-issue bike helmet. For non-PCVs, if for some reason I'm caught not wearing a helmet by...I don't know...an undercover agent from the Peace Corps staff, it is grounds for me to be booted out of the country. I'm assuming it's a liability issue, but I know my Macedonian friends got a kick out of it, since no one wears bike helmets here. After all, not wearing car seatbelts in this country is technically illegal, but generally no one wears a seatbelt unless a police checkpoint is coming up on the road.

After loading up on food and beverage in Kocani for our trip, our two-car convoy was off to the mountains.

Arrived.


The first leg of our bike journey was all downhill...so the biggest problem was trying to check our speed so we didn't run into a tree or something. Once we hit the bottom, we reached a creek with a small bridge, and started our uphill climb.

Well it was definitely uphill. The bike I borrowed could not shift gears, and I had to walk it for a while before I was given someone else's (much better) bike and sort of took off ahead of everyone. Even with the nicer bike it was still tough going, and it made me realize that running most mornings on flat terrain doesn't prepare you well for mountain biking. And it didn't help that my lungs were in pain and I was starting to cough some. But there was some nice scenery.

We eventually made our way to the village of Babishte (which apparently means scary grandmother, assuming my Macedonian friends were not joking with me), where we planned to make some skara with sausages and bacon wrapped chicken. Yum.

Here's the village.


After my friends talked to a villager about where we could make a fire for our grill, we set things up and passed around a water bottle of rakija.

Eventually we got the grill going and had a nice time chatting. Two of the people in the group had lived in the US for a period of time so it was interesting to hear their perspective about which places they liked best (or didn't like at all). By the time we finished eating and cleaning up, it was about 4:15 so we needed to start heading back before we lost daylight. At some point on the return trip, my body decided it had enough, and my lungs felt like they were on fire. Yet I still attempted the uphill portions and would stop whenever the pain was too much. By the time I made it back to where our cars were parked, I was pretty exhausted, and I started to get really cold. A few minutes later the rest of my friends arrived. I probably should have said I wanted to go home at this point, because I was not feeling right, but I nevertheless agreed to go grab one beer at the shop next to our cars.

Pretty soon after we sat down, I was shivering...and it was 70 degrees out. Things got worse from there as I started feeling light-headed, but we stopped at a pharmacy on the way back in Kocani for some meds, where I managed to tell the pharmacist my 'white graves' are hurting instead of my lungs (I said бели гробови instead of бели дробови). I blame it on the light-headedness. By the time I made it home, my shivering had turned into overheating, and I was running about a 103F fever. My host family took care of me though, and I definitely needed it because I was kind of a wreck. Living with a family definitely has its positives and negatives, but when you're really sick and there's no doctor nearby, it's a definite plus. After a pretty rough night of sleep battling my fever, I woke up feeling better, was able to conclude I probably just have a bad cold and nothing worse. With a few more days of rest, I should be ready for more adventures...

Riking the Mountain

Ever since arriving at site almost 4 months ago, I've always looked at the impressive-looking Plachkovica (Плачковица) mountain south of my village and thought, "Man, when the weather gets nice I really need to find a way to go hiking there".

Plachovica Mountain, viewed from my village. The village of Teranci is at the foothill.


From extensive review on Google Earth, I had determined that there were dirt trails, mostly for donkeys (I think my host family said магарешки патови which is literally donkey roads), somewhere out there. But the main issue was distance, because it is about 5-6km just to reach the beginning of some of these trails. Lacking a bike and any other mode of transport, I would have to rike (run/hike) it. I know, I know...rike isn't that original. But I like it anyway. Interestingly enough, according to Wiktionary, the word 'rike' meant kingdom or dominion in Old English: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rike . The more you know.

Having some beautiful spring weather in abundant supply, I set out on my rike yesterday, heading south along the asphalt road between Obleshevo and Teranci. I frequently run this route in the mornings before I go to work at the municipality, and it is one of my favorites because it is one of the few options for some (albeit minor) elevation gain close to where I live. On this

Some field burning in preparation for the rice planting season.


It took me about 20 minutes to reach Teranci, and then I used my mental Google Earth map to try to find the path up into the mountain. My first attempt was a bit of a failure, but I found a trail of some sort until it dead-ended. Nonetheless, I was just happy to be exploring and discovering new places. Eventually I stopped running once I realized I had no idea where I was going.

My first trail attempt.


After going back the way I came, I managed to stumble upon one of the donkey trails I spied from Google Earth. I was pretty excited about this. Shortly afterward I found something like a fork in the road with multiple trail-like things splitting off, so I decided to go left and see where it took me. It was like Choose-your-own-adventure from back in the day. I think I actually remarked that aloud to myself. Anyway, I was having a blast, doing some legit hiking, enjoying nature, barreling through the brush and getting my legs cut to hell (not that bad though).

This is where I decided to turn around, because I wasn't seeing much of а trail anymore and I probably needed a machete to go further.


Eventually I made my way back to the trailhead and the main donkey road, and then decided to just go straight for a while. I had some pretty awesome views of the Kocani Valley.

Kocani in the distance, with Osogovo Mountain in the background.

This is Teranci, and my village Obleshevo is in the upper right part of the picture.

Looking to the east, towards Zrnovci and Vidovishte.


I continued to wander and I have to admit, it was the most fun I've had in a long time. By no means was this anywhere near the best hiking experience of my life, nor did it have any spectacular views compared to other places I've been, but all the same it made me feel alive, independent, and optimistic. Alive because I've really missed being in nature and taking in the fresh air away from the sounds of tractors, the flour mill next door, or barking stray dogs. Independent because it gave me one of the few (though brief) opportunities I've had in the last 6 months to be self-reliant, something in sharp contrast to the independence I had back in America. And optimistic because, well, when you're out in the middle of nowhere with no one around and endless possibilities as to where to go, anything can happen. I've heard people say (or something similar) that in Peace Corps it can be rare to have 'big' successes, and instead the best you can hope for are small victories. Yesterday was the latter for me, and hopefully more are on the way.

For now, I'm going to enjoy another beautiful spring day and play basketball with some local high school kids. It's funny how that works. I bought a basketball a few weeks ago, and on a few occasions I've shot around at the local primary school by myself. And then all of sudden two days ago I have kids coming by my house to see if I want to play with them. One of them tried to get me to stop to play on my run back from the mountain yesterday, but as I ran by I said, "Сум изморен, но утре!" (I am tired, but tomorrow!). I think the basketball was a good purchase!

More photos from my hike here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150603168659117.383001.525244116&type=1&l=b79e71519c