(written 15/12/2006 in Sydney, Australia)
We had a bit of a drive across no-man's-land to the border crossing
into Macedonia, where we found a long queue. Plenty of locals trying to get in, amongst our obvious foreigners. As our first real border crossing, it was interesting to see just how seriously the non-EU countries were trying to keep EU people out. I would have expected the other way around, but this was a little surprising.
When it was our turn, we faced off the menacing-looking border guards and presented what we thought were enough documents. A lot of gesticulating later, we got the feeling that something was missing. They were happy enough with us (after working out that my wife wasn't French, that's why she has a UK passport), but the little blue car from France was more of a challenge. We knew that outside of the EU most car rental agencies don't ensure you, but we had specifically chosen a Citroën because all the countries we wanted to visit were listed as covered for insurance purposes.
The piece of magic required turned out to be a "green card" hidden underneath the top-level papers by the Citroën girl. Upon presenting this, the tone of the guards changed amazingly. One wandered over and wanted to shake my hand - it turns out he loves Sydney! Knowing it at least to visit, he became my best friend for about fifteen minutes, taking my passport for a while as I trudged across the border on foot to get myself a Visa (Liz, having an EU passport, didn't need one).
The visa process was a little strange - I had to swap some Euros for Macedonian money, some of which was kept for a visa and the rest returned to me as change. Minus a tidy profit, no doubt, but the value of new currencies always takes a while to understand.
Receipt in hand, I crossed back into no-man's-land to find my new best mate. True to his word, he'd organised everything for me and it was back in our car, on our way. Waved into a new country by the border guard - not bad!
For a while on the road nothing looked too different. Lots of pretty crappy cars. Our first town -
Bitola (where we much later learned Liz's beautician hails from) - consisted of crazy old communist apartment blocks, swarmed around by ancient vehicles of all types, still running. Old tractors, communist-era cars, and trucks which seemed like they would live forever - in truck terms they already had.
But overall, especially outside the cities, there were far less people around the place. About an hour along markedly less-well-repaired roads through beautiful forests brought us to the town of
Ohrid, on Lake Ohrid. World Heritage-listed, and one of Wollongong's sister cities, this place had been on our list ever since first planning an Eastern Europe trip, and it didn't disappoint.
Well, the only blight on the way in was some local kids with a big rope across the road attempting to extract money from foreign-plated cars. Not quite knowing what to do, we stopped safely, before continuing on with no protestation. Handing them raw cash isn't going to solve any problems.
The road ended at a promenade, where plenty of other people, Macedonians and tourists alike had parked and wandered along the beautiful lake's banks. Oh, and beautiful it certainly was. Stretching all the way to the next country, Albania, mountains were around all sides other than ours, where instead we had this gorgeous little township of Ohrid.
We parked the car, and set off wandering into the old town looking for the rooms recommended by Lonely Planet, Lucija's. The description does it justice - "balconies overlook the lake, and the patio is right on the water for a swim". Truly one of the great accommodation finds of the trip, we grabbed a top-floor room in this huge empty-nester's house. She showed us around between cooking a meal for her remaining family.
After moving the car, we, however, set off for some food of our own. We'd spotted a little pizza place where we settled in with a couple of local beers and pizza for the price of about a pizza back in Greece. We could tell we were going to like Eastern Europe!
The next stop, a supermarket, was also crazy cheap, so we grabbed some dinner items and other supplies that would last us for many further countries.
The afternoon was spent relaxing on our balcony overlooking (and right on) the lake. Being a Eastern European country originally under the influence of the Orthodox church (rather than the Roman like some others), everything in Macedonia is written in
Cyrillic. Purely to get around on our own, I invested a bit of time on our way here to learn it a bit. It's amazing to see the words take shape in front of you once you learn the characters - like being a kid again. We also tried our phrasebook a bit around the place but didn't have too much success to start with.
We didn't feel much like a big dinner after our big lunch, and since it was getting cold we lazed inside watching English-language TV for while before bed.