(written 15/12/2006 in Sydney, Australia)
We had a very forgettable breakfast at the hostel (included in the price, but down in the dungeon - actually, can't really recommend
any of the Macedonian food we had, but it's hard to top Greece, Italy and indeed what was to come).
We walked back into market area in the centre of town to soak up a bit more of the unique atmosphere, buying some fruit on the basis that it's hard to get that wrong. A bit down the road we stopped and had some great coffees in a Turkish-style café, where the look the young waiter gave us could genuinely been because he hadn't given it to many foreigners before.
As with all countries we visit, we went looking for magnet. However here, unlike any other city we have ever visted, there was not even one touristy shop to be found. We went into the information place again where the rather useless girl redeemed herself by pointing us to a tiny little stall hidden on the other side of the bridge - the one and only tourist shop in Skopje, the capital of this country. There we procured a bit of woodwork for gifts and a rather bland looking magnet.
You can smell the oncoming capitalism in the air, but it has a way to go.
Making the best of how cheap the place was, we jumped into an everything shop (we might call them a two dollar shop) and found ourselves some toothbrushes.
An option was to visit the Turkish baths, but they weren't open yet, and so we contented ourselves observing the crumbling buildings for a while before deciding it was time to leave.
Avoiding the urchins on the way out of town, we headed south along the tollway we had come in on, before turning east towards Bulgaria. Along the way through Stip and Strumica we drove through plenty of open farmland, where the primary form of transport was horses and carts. Best way to get around when you aren't in a hurry, and this part of the world sure isn't. We stopped to make cup of tea by the roadside, where it rained a bit, before stopping in the last town before the border to change our money into yet another strange pile of notes and coins.
Another new country awaited, so we drove on
to the Bulgarian border at Zlatarevo.