(written 15/12/2006 in Sydney, Australia)
We woke early to sound of bells, and enjoyed a great breakfast on balcony overlooking the lake. What we didn't have however was coffee, so we wandered off into town in search of some.
Through the cobbled and mostly run-down (despite being the most popular tourist destination in the country) old town, we saw the 900-year old plane tree, which over it's life has housed both a café and barber shop, but now just sits in the middle of a square looking rather important.
Some of the houses looked so amazingly decrepit that it was always a surprise to see that people were managing to live in them. We bought some apples from Macedonian man in the markets, asking him in German where to get some coffee from. He directed us to a great little place a couple of streets away where we struggled with the phrasebook to order coffee, but the result was up to standard and about 80 cents!
Off again through the mostly charming old streets, we were accosted by Stefan, a vendor of Turkish-style coffee pots. In German he explained that his name was on the bottom, and hence we deduced he had made them. My day-two Cyrillic managed to confirm the word Stefan, so we were happy overall with the discussion. Enough so that we decided to buy one of his little pots, for the sum total of about $3.
Other important purchases needed to be made and proved new sources of language barriers - me some socks and the both of us some more supermarket stocks. Most important was more of the tasty wine
T'Ga Za Jug. We'd grabbed and enjoyed this the day before based purely on the name (how can you go wrong with Chug a Jug?) and wanted plenty more to travel around with. Still couldn't get over the price barrier, but when people earn so little then the prices have to reflect that. It was interesting that all brands were local, almost nothing imported as to do so would be way too expensive. The products were just as good, but the remnant of communism that was the home-grown products gave the place a very unique feel.
Most excitedly, we found ourselves an internet café (hence the other post on this date), where they even allowed us to plug the laptop! Joy was us, and uploading we went.
Lunch was back on our balcony, where we caught up on emails and blogs we had sucked from the internet as fast as possible.
Boringly, it was back to the tried-and-true pizzeria for dinner.