Hitchhiking XVI (Prištinë - Sofia)

On Monday I had quite an adventure coming up; the plan was to cross three borders, from Kosovo to Serbia, from Serbia to Macedonia, and from Macedonia to Bulgaria, to finally reach Sofia.

I left Florim's place at 8:45 am and walked to the other end of the city for one hour, because I had been too lazy to look for public transport options. 

I walked further than planned, because there was too much urban traffic at the spot I had had in mind, but when I finally was far enough outside, it only took 5 minutes until a van stopped. Besim didn't speak English, but called a friend who spoke German. Said friend told me that Besim, knowing that I wanted to go to Kumanovo (Macedonia) through Serbia  and then continue to Bulgaria, offered to drive me to the border. He repeatedly told me how great my voice sounds, and in the end asked if I also look good - I gm just hung up and smiled at Besim.

When we reached Gjilan, he turned left instead of going through the center, so we took the street that lead around the city and to another border crossing. At first I thought to get off, but then decided it might still be more effective, because he was at least driving me to the border (further North). 

But he didn't. At a junction close to a settlement called Korminjan, about 10 km from the border to Serbia, he signaled me to get out of the car. There was no way of communicating with him, so I just got off, pretty pissed.

But what else could I do but stick up my thumb and hope for the best - two minutes later, an elderly man called Limani pulled over. Later he told me he thought I had a problem with my car because of the warning west - it works!! :D

He spoke Swiss German because he had worked in Switzerland as a real estate agent for many years and spends the winter there. He took me across the border to Serbia (I didn't get a stamp in my passport because Serbia doesn't consider the border a border...), but I misunderstood him when he told me that his village was in between Bujanovac and Presovo. I thought he would use the highway and get off somewhere, but he drove on land roads instead, showing me all the small villages, which are mainly inhabited by Albanians. 

In the end, understanding that I didn't want to take a taxi, even if it's only a Euro, he drove me to a street running parallely to the highway. I felt like its a good idea to try and hitchhike on the highway though, so I climbed over a small fence to reach the highway. 

Of course it was not a good idea. The few cars passing were way too fast to evening think of slowing down, so I climbed back up and returned to the land road. 

Because I was bored, I started walking, occasionally turning around when I heard a car approaching. After not so much time a young guy called Toni offered I take me to "Granica", which I considered to be a town, but later figured out that it means border. Unfortunately he started babbling about him, me, 3 minutes and a Hotel, later extending the whole thing to 10 minutes, and after a conversation that went like "yes, aide" - "no!" - "yes, aide" - "no." - "yes, aide!" - "NO!" - "yes, no problem" - "yes, big problem" - "aide" - "NO! WHAT THE FUCK!", I made him stop the car and got out. I started walking away, but he followed me with the car, shouting "Ok, no problem, aide!", but I just ignored him, an eventually he drove off with screeching wheels. 

After some minutes of walking, Ali, who spoke Swiss German as well, kindly drove me until the start of the higway in Presovo, 5 more kilometers away from the border. 

There I waited for 5 minutes until Shkodran offered to drive me to "Granica" again, so that's when I figured out what it was :D

I crossed both checkpoints on foot, then waited for about 10 minutes until a Serbian couple on their way to Thessaloniki picked me up. They dropped me only a few kilometers later in the outskirts of Kumanovo, on the only road to Kriva Palanka, a city in the Northeast of Macedonia, and eventually to Bulgaria.

After a 10 minutes walk I arrived at why I considered a good spot, but there was hardly any cars, and if there were, they had local license plates. No one driving to Kriva Palanka as it seems!

30 minutes later I gave up and decided to keep walking. It didn't make sense, because there was no major junctions for the next 15 kilometers, but yeah. 

After 20 minutes of walking, I decided to stop again and waited for another half hour. One guy stopped, but didn't speak English, and when I told him I wanted to go to Bulgaria, he shook his head and just drove off. At this point I almost started crying. No matter where he went, the place would've been better than the one I was standing at right now.

Hopeless, I continued walking, this time uphill. And believe it or not: suddenly, a wild bus station appeared! At first I thought it was a Fata Morgana, because nothing was marked on my offline map, but it was real. My excitement reache it's top when I could see a gas station in the distance - I was saved!!

Well, actually I wasn't really, because I had no Macedonian Denars to by a coffee, and the road wasn't highly frequented, so there was literally no car standing at the gas station. Still, the shadow coming from the price column was a relief, and believe it or not, after 30 seconds of standing there, a car stopped.

Dean and Alexander told me they were going to Kriva Palanka, but stopped some kilometers before the town to have a coffee, and told me to continue hitchhiking. Meh.

So I walked until the end of the small settlement, stealing some apples and peaches on the way, because I actually hadn't eaten anything but a "Pop Kek" that I got from Besim, the van driver.

After 15 minutes of waiting, a taxi slowed down. I told the driver that I don't have money (which was true at that moment) and waved him to drive off, but he looked at me with a sad smile and told me to get in. On the way to Kriva Palanka two more persons got in the car. 

When we reached the beginning of the town, I thought of getting off and continue on the road around it, but I thought he might drive me to the end of the town as well, which would be even better. When the two other passengers got off somewhere in the center though, he tried to name me the price of a ride to the border. I repeated that I don't have money. He repeated the price. I repeated that I don't have money. 

He talked to his walkie talkie for some time, while I was looking at the map, trying to figure out what to do. Then he signaled me that he would pay for the ride to the border. Now I felt really bad -he probably thought that I couldn't afford the ride, and didn't understand that I just didn't have cash on me.

But there was no way to turn away this offer once it was made, so we started driving. I really didn't want to have a coffee, but by now I figured out that people here really want to have a coffee just for the sake of sharing something, so I accepted the invitation. The taxi driver, whose name I forgot twice, was really friendly and tried to tell me stories, even though he didn't speak a word of English.

Finally we reached the border, which I crosse on foot again.

There was only a few trucks around, and exactly one car in line when I reached the other side. None of the trucks was going to Sofia, so I just sat down after the checkpoint and waited.

I got lucky after around 25 minutes; the fourth or fifth car coming through stopped. Elena from Romania and Esmerald from Albania, who had met in Italy and got married a month ago, were on their way back to Romania from a visit at Esmerald's family in Albania. They communicate in Italian with each other, and we had lots of fun, mostly because of Esmerald's literal translations into English.

They dropped me at the brink of Sofia when the sun had already set. 

I walked to a tram station for around 15 minutes, where I realized that it wasn't actually 7 pm as I had thought, but an hour later. Time zones, duh!!

Kitschy Skopje

In Skopje, I possibly surfed with the best guy to stay with in this hard-to-understand city: Rubin, with 21 years, has been involved in so many protest, actions and projects, that I feel like you could already write a book about his legacy :D 

On my first evening I got to meet his crazy friends, whom he all seems to have met through his political activities. The following day, he showed me all around town, not letting a single governmental building unnoticed, recounting the occasion on which he had been protesting in front of it. The highlight of all anecdotes for me was the fact that the walls of most offial buildings in Skopje look solid, but actually aren't. When you knock on them with your fingers, you can hear they're paper-thin. Rubin found out when they were throwing eggs against it - how else?

I learned that most of what I saw in Skopje's city center is actually not older than 3 to 5 years. The floor of the main square had been paved only weeks before. Now look at the pictures:

I think I've never seen a place with so many random statues. Some were nice. But most were just...random. The worst of all though, was the water fountains on the main square, that make you feel like you're in a mix of Las Vegas and Disneyland of Antiquities.

Nothing seems to fit together in this city, until you get out of this oddly renovated city center and reach the old bazaar, the actual core of the city. Cobbled streets make you feel normal again, and the little shops look like any other old market in the Balkans.

We stumbled across a little passage, that Rubin didn't know yet. My trained eyes spotted the Star of David above the arched entrance - a silent reminder of the once vibrant Jewish community in Skopje.

After a really great lunch in a place called "Squeeze me" (because they also make awesome juices - I had the "Flu killer"), and after an even greater Peanut Butter Cake and a round of mini pool (which I won, yay!)...

...I could convice Rubin to visit the Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia, which, to our both relief, also had an exhibition on Jewish history in Macedonia in general. It was free of charge, and even though the reasing order was a bit confusing, it contained detailed and well-presented information.

Downstairs they had an exhibition of paintings drawn by pupils aged 12 to 16 about the Holocaust. I personally find it a bit sick to make children paint on this topic, but some of the pictures were really breathtaking.

Lake Ohrid

The weather was cloudy and rainy during my stay at Lake Ohrid, but I was also still feeling a bit weak, so it was okay that I couldn't go swimming. There was also various hiking trails around, but i preferred to play safe and spend a relaxed day in Ohrid city.

Lazy as I am (meaning: I don't want to look up bus schedules), I just hitchhiked the few kilometers from Lagadin to the city center. From there I went through the touristic pedestrian walk first, then continued uphill to see some pretty old monasteries/churches/religious buildings.

I also enjoyed the view from the top of a big castle, after I had taken a wrong turn and walked around it for what felt like half an hour. 

Just when I had finished my tour and returned to the pedestrian lane, it started raining - perfect timing. I found myself a table with a view over the now I invitingly grey water, had a late lunch, and wrote you guys some postcards.

It hadn't stopped raining when I decided it's time to go home, but I knew that the busses to the south were way to infrequent for me, so I just walked until the end of the city and hoped that people would feel bad for me again.

It worked after ten minutes; three guys driving around and getting high gave me a lift, just after a bus had passed me. Of course we were faster, because the bus stopped several times. Soooo I was faster than the bus ;)

Hitchhiking XV (Lagadin - Skopje)

My stay at lake Ohrid was so relaxing (I had the hostel all for myself <3) that I struggled to get my things together and leave for Skopje. Instead I spent the morning hours reading on the lovely porch of IKAR's hut, where I was staying, enjoying the suntans casually peeking through the cloudy sky.

Then it started drizzling and I figured it was probably time to leave. When I finally had all my things together, it was raining properly, but there was no point in waiting for it to stop, so I just hoped for the bonus I people feeling bad for seeing me standing in the rain with my ladybug poncho.

After less than 10 minutes a tiny car packed with cartons of fresh fruit stopped, and father and son both got out into the rain to make some space on the backseat. We arrived in Ohrid so quickly that I didn't even get to ask for their names, but the driver insisted on giving me some apples for the way - they were picked in St. Naum, a village just at the border, the day before.

They dropped me in the city center, so I had to walk for 2 kilometers until I reached the beginning of the highway. The rain had stopped completely for the whole time of walking, so I even found myself some cardboard and painted a "SK" on it. 

I waited on the highway for around 10 minutes, until Mičko stopped. He had a license plate from Skopje but was only going to visit the orchard he inherited from his parents and see how far the apples had grown. A few kilometers were better than nothing and I was hoping for a gas station on the way, so I hopped in. 

Milčo happened to have two daughters in my age, who both study in Skopje. When we reached the beautiful orchard and took shelter under a small hut in the middle of all the trees (rain had started again), he told me that he doesn't make any profit with his apples, but continues the work for his parents' sake. He comes and visits almost every day from Ohrid, just to see and enjoy the atmosphere. His daughters though, he told me, don't even want to see it, let alone help and pick the apples. I said that they're still young and will sure learn to appreciate this amazing refuge close to the city - just as I learned to miss the tranquility of my parents' garden.

The rain was getting heavier and heavier, and Milčo, imagining one of his daughters in this situation, wouldn't let me standing in the rain. No matter how many times I said that I would be totally fine, that I had my poncho, and that I probably wouldn't be standing in the rain for a long time, he insisted on driving me to the next gas station. That was after I got enough apples, plums and grapes to eat for the next three days :)

After I had placed my bags and the three kilos of fruit under the shelter of the gas station, I put my poncho back on and walked into the rain towards the highway. I could've waited for cars that were fueling up, but there was no cars when I arrived, so I thought I'd rather try and catch one from the street. 

My right arm got soaking wet of course, but after not more than 20 minutes a car slowed down, and Slatki offered to take me to Gostivar, half way to Skopje. It turned out that he spoke Swiss German, which is funny enough on its own, but imagine a Macedonian speaking it :D Slatki had been working as a construction worker in Zurich long enough to buy a house in Gostivar. I was surprised to hear that he was still working in construction though, because he looked like over 70 to me, and hardly could hide my disbelief when he told me he was only 54. 

He convinced me to have a coffee break - I had "Boza", an Albanian drink that tasted like fermented fruit and bread. Definitely something you would call "interesting". Afterwards he, like Milčo, insisted on driving me to the next gas station after Gostivar instead of just dropping me wherever it was most suitable for him.

This huge detour for him definitely saved me from waiting a long time - I caught the very first car that entered the gas station. Mone was driving to the Western part of Skopje, while I had to go to the Eastern part, but called his wife and son several times to make sure that I would find the place. In the end he even dropped me at the bus station even though it wasn't raining anymore. 

And this is how I got to Skopje :)

Hitchhiking XIV (Shkodra - Lagadin)

Right until I went to sleep the day before yesterday, I didn't really know where I should go next:  Kosovo or lake Ohrid in Macedonia? Finally I decided for the latter, because the weather is supposed to get worse in a few days, so I'll hopefully be able to enjoy the sun while swimming in Ohrid.

Some stupid dogs and a very confused rooster kept me awake half of the night, so I didn't really want to get up and only actually left the hostel around 10 am. Even for hitchhiking that's quite late, especially considering that I would have to get through the center of Tirana, the capital, somehow (there's no road around it, yet) and then cross a rather unpopular border crossing.

But anyway, no risk no fun! :D

After I had found the bus station in the center of Shkodra, I asked a girl wether there was actually busses to the Rozafa castle, which marks the end of the city. She was super helpful and told me where to get off a hundred times, but I went to the final stop anyway :D

From there I walked a couple of hundred meters, got out my warning west, and waited for 10 minutes until Uilson picked me up. Of course he spoke Italian, like almost everyone does here, but well.. I didn't. 

He dropped me in the center of Lezhë, where he asked a friend working in a shop to help with translating. Said friend spoke excellent English and has had an Austrian girlfriend, whom he met in Greece, for 3 years. He explained that Uilson had to turn right here, but that the city wasn't big and I could easily walk to the other end of it.

That's exactly what I did, and after I had enjoyed my cheese burek that I had brought from the free breakfast at the hostel, I decided it's time to stop and wait for cars.

After 10 minutes a minibus going to Tirana stopped and, lazy, I asked how much the ride would be. The driver signaled me a 3 with his fingers and the young guy sitting next to him said it was 300 (a bit more than 2€). I said that I don't have 300 Lek (which I actually thought was true), and then waved them to continue, saying that I was hitchhiking anyway. There was an argument going back and forth between the young guy and the driver, then the guy said: "Come in, free of charge, you're hitchhiking!"

Okay then :) 

The guy's name was Emigen, and he made the drive a very short one, because  he instantly recognized my Deathly Hallows-tattoo and therefore was a really cool person. He grew up in Greece, but returned to Albania to study, and is now looking for a steady job as a hip hop-dancer. Also, if you're looking for a sugar boy, I think he would be quite worth it (fb: Emigen Cenaj) :D

He had told me that he actually no money and was living from one show to the next, but when we got off the bus in Tirana, I saw him paying much more than  seemed reasonable. He paid for me, and would accept "only love" as repayment. I wasn't sure if that was an invitation, but I had to move on anyway :D

The highway around the city still wasn't finished when I arrived, so I started walking. The ice cream on the way put a huge smile on my face, and I even got to take a selfie in front of some important guy on a horse.

After 40 minutes, I reached the highway out of the city. Imagine having to walk through Vienna or Berlin just like that!

There I stood at a bus stup for 15 minutes, which felt like much longer for some reason. But then a tiny car with already 4 persons in it stopped, my backpack was somehow maneuvered in between the driver and his wife, and I squeezed onto one of the backseats. The guy next to me spoke some bits of English, and the driver tried with some Italian, but most of the time everyone was listening to some very beautiful acoustic songs in Albanian. We had a coffee break (I had tea, because my throat didn't feel too well), and then continued on the road to Korçë. 

We were stopped by the police at least three times, but either seatbelts are not mandatory in Macedonia (I was the only one using it) or the driver was really good friends with all of them (he seemed to know everyone, maybe he was a policeman himself?).

They dropped me in Pogradec, the last Albanian town before the border, in the very south of lake Ohrid.

The street I was heading to, according to my map the main street around the lake, was completely abandoned. I wasn't allowed to use the toilet in a café because I wasn't a customer. My mood dropped a bit, after all it was almost 5 already and I hadn't actually booked a bed.

I started walking on the abandoned road ("alley" would be more suitable), but after some cars had passed me, Agim pulled over. He only had to go to a village closeby, but kindly drove me the extra 3 km to the border, after failing to convince me to stay on the Albanian side for the night.

I crossed the Albanian border by foot and already wanted to ask one of the cars waiting in line, but then remembered that it would probably be better to walk to the Macedonian one and wait after it.

Everyone seemed to be grumpy at the Macedonian checkpoint, and I really had to pee, so I felt like everything was happening unbelievable slow. At least 6 cars passed me, because they were either completely full or just ignorants. I was really impatient in this case, because everyone would have to pass the place I wanted to go to. Waiting can be really frustrating in situations like these.

Anyway, the car that actually had arrived at the Albanian border the same time that I had, finally slowed down for me. Bork and Silvana were of course going to Ohrid, and insisted on dropping me ff right in front of the door of the hostel.

Now the final risk: would they have a bed available? I rang the bell. Nothing happened for a moment, then Jonny opened the door. 

"Hey, do you happen to have a bed available?"

- "Yes, we do, we're completely empty. You can have your own room!"

Sounds like Christmas to me guys!!