A stark contrast


Thessaloniki :: Greece

Wow. The EU does seem to work.

Places: Bitola, Niki, Florina & Thessaloniki.

Coolest thing I did: Joined the locals in Florina by sitting in a cafe and watching market day go by.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Greeks actually use the term FYROM for the country directly to their north, which they pronounce "Fi-rom".

International relations in the Balkans can make for some interesting journeys over borders between neighbours who hate each other (bearing in mind every country has been at war with every other country it borders down here). My trip from Orhid to Thessaloniki is 180km as the crow flies or 200 ish km by road. I took a minibus from Orhid to Bitola, took a 5 euro taxi ride to the border at Niki, walked over the border (despite being questioned over both my Bulgarian & Turkish stamps in my passport), hitchhiked to the nearest town, Florina (thank God I got picked up by a helpful Austrian Jehovahs Witness and his 2 young kids, thanks Christan, you're a dude) and then took a bus to Thessaloniki. Round trip time? 9 hours.

However, as a side bonus I did get to wait in Florina on market day. Despite having very similar attitudes to their neighbours in the North about how laid back to live life, it's immediately obvious there is a whole lot more money around if you are Greek rather than a FYROMian. I managed to be there on market day and the whole town seemed to be out. It's home to a rather large university so many of the cafes were filled with students who probably should have been in class. I have to say something else too, there is something in the water here. There is something abnormal about all these skinny girls with huge breasts. They are all either on track for massive weight gain or lower back problems in later life.

You would have to be pretty generous to call Thessaloniki pretty. Most of the waterfront has been converted into Greece's second largest industrial port and only Athens (if memory serves me) has a more hotch potch collection of high rise spreading back to the horizon. At least it's not as polluted.

However, it has a cafe scene that would put anything else I've seen, including Rome, to shame. There are rows of ultra hip cafes and bars that must have employed many, many interior designers. It seems to be the done thing to get very, VERY dressed up and sip either one cocktail or an iced coffee for a very long time. And with the prices most of these places charge for a drink, I'm not surprised. The other option of drinking 80 euro cent Amstels from the kebab shop on the square has been far more appealing to me. It seems here that the best thing to spend money on here is to be seen, and that isn't cheap. They probably aren't too keen on all these grotty looking backpackers sitting on their ruins drinking out of the can.

I'm finding my dealings with the young Greeks my own age and under a bit harder than I thought. Sydney has a huge Greek community, and like most immigrant groups to Australia, are as open minded as anyone else. Even in former Yugoslav war zones I've found people weary of politics and unchecked nationalism, in places where wars were fought over these things in my lifetime. However, all the students I've met here have been blatantly anti American, anit Turkish and uphold the FYROMians are after all their land. No debate, all these things are taken as fact. If theres nothing that gets me riled it's people who won't defend their shaky positions with some kind of logic. I haven't met even a representative number of locals, but students are usually open to debate or friendly conversation. This perplexes me a little.

So, things have been a little easier on me here. The fact there have been tourists here for hundreds of years means I'm not having much trouble with getting around or finding things. I did love the challenge of the Bosnias, S &Ms and Macedonias of the world, but sometimes you need a break. With the Middle East coming up in less than 2 weeks, I need to get my head together a bit. After a break here, I'm off to some old famous Greek things tomorrow.

The good, the bad and the ugly


Orhid :: Macedonia

After she bled on me, I decided to take the room.

Places: Belgrade, Skopje & Orhid

Coolest thing I did: Talked to the locals about things. Everyone here knows someone from Australia.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Sociologists belived the Macedonians were ethnic Bulgarians as late as the 1930s.

After the Romanian visa debacle I decided to use the return ticket I had to Belgrade (for some reason a return to Budapest was cheaper than one way) and overnight there before heading south to Macedonia. I have to admit, I was not prepared for Macedonia. One of my oldest friends (since 5th grade) is from Macedonia and I had a rosy picture of the place because I knew someone from there. This may have meant I was not prepared for a country that just dosent get a whole lot of tourists. As a result, I got knocked for six a bit on my arrival here.

Just to get a point across before I start, I'm going to call the country Macedonia, even though it's real name is the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". The Greeks wouldn't recognise the country unless they changed the name from "Macedonia". Despite this, the locals (the FYROMians I guess) quite cheekily call it Macedonia anyway. So will I.

So, I learnt from that tome of unchecked facts, the Lonely Planet that I could get a visa from the border. What they didn't mention was you had to pay 900 Macedonian denars for it, despite the fact you can't exchange MKDs outside the country. Hrmmm. As I had only Yugoslav dinars (which they don't take) I had to dig through my bag for any left over currency. I finally found 10 pounds in my shorts, which they took at a kind of unfair exchange rate. Want to make yourself unpopular with a bus full of people? Try holding the bus up for half an hour at the border. Ooops. I did, however, get much better treatment when I told the border guards I was going to stop in Macedonia, not just jet through to Greece. So the lessons are always have Euros handy and always flatter the country you are about to enter. Shave too, something I hadn't done in about 2 weeks.

Skopje (or C-K-O-square with no bottom-J-E as it's known to the Serbs and FYROMians) is possibly the most arse slappingly hideous "city" I've ever seen. I usually try to find the bright side of any place, but Skopje is a hole, pure and simple. There was an earthquake in the 1960s and all the aid money went to building the worst space age grey concrete monstrosities that the products of communist architecture school can produce. Grey concrete goes stained and ugly very quickly, and without money to keep up all these blights on the landscape, the place is stupendifyingly (is that a word) ugly. Somehow, they have managed to combine impracticality and hideousness in each one. Add to this that most of the rest of the city isn't high rise, it looks like a failed architectual grave yard.

Cheap accomadation isn't around. Not that many people visit the place, for obvious reasons, so there are only hotels that charge a small fortune to anyone unfortunate enough to get stuck there. I also got stung slightly by the taxi mafia. Skopje has no public transport that goes anywhere useful, so I was accosted by a young bloke who spoke good English and offered to take me to the hostel. He told me it was 6km away and would do it for 1000MKD (about 14 Euros). I looked on my LP map and saw it was about 1km, but those maps quite often have a warped sense of scale. I worked him down to 600MKD (10 euros), even though I didn't really want a ride. When he got to the hostel (which was full anyway) I handed him a 1000 note and he said he wanted 6 of those. I told him we agreed on 600 and he told me his English wasn't so good. I got out of the taxi and told him we should go into the hostel and have the owner adjudicate. I was pretty sure he would chase this bloke off for trying to change me 100 euros for a ride that did turn out to be about 1km. I was by this time pretty riled, so exited the taxi and removed my baggage. He asked me if I had a problem I wanted sorted out. Now, I'm not a real big guy, but he was a runt so I mentioned to him his mother was of ill repute. Then I told him if he wanted any money at all he would have to produce my 400 change before I would hand him over the 1000. He did this and drove off yelling possible unice things to me in Macedonian.

At least the hostel owner was willing to call his mate who had a hotel in town that was a mere 25 euros a night. His mate came and got me, which I suspected meant I was being as fleeced as I thought I was. Putting all this in context, I wanted nothing but to be out of Skopje, never to return. I was of half a mind to go right to Greece.

So, Saturday night in Skopje is kind of a mess. There's one row of cafes where everyone hangs out. The street is supposed to be pedestrianised, however new paving is being put down so young blokes speed through in their ancient Yugos and do burnouts in the dust. All cars here must play Beyonce and JayZ at top volume by law.

My arrival to Orhid almost killed Macedonia for good for me. When I got off the bus, and old lady and an old man were both arguing to try and get me to stay at their place, Croatia style. Though I saved YB from this, in these situations I like to get the two parties to auction off their wares. It never got to this. The old bloke got angry and backhanded the old woman over the face with his signet ring. This opened up a huge gash on her face and I had to look on in horror as the blood started rushing out of their face. Though I helped her clean up and went with her (I didn't like the idea of giving money to this woman hitting monster), I was secretly thinking "get me out of this lunatic asylum". She turned out to be very nice, cooking me breakfast, giving me tourist advice and telling me about her sister in Melbourne.

Orhid isn't Skopje. It's been one of the highlights of my whole journey. It's a crystal clear lake with a whole lot of history. It was the place where disciples of Sts Cyrill and Methodius set up show to teach people the Cyrillic alphabet. The two brothers from Thessaloniki were charged by the church of Constantinople to convert the Slavs to Christianity before those pesky Catholics did it. So Cyrill, being a bright spark, invented a new alphabet to write the Slavic language in to teach it to the new Slav priests. So it's his fault this place is spelled C-X-P-backwards N-little house on all the bus timetables. There are a whole lot of Orthadox churches, as a result, sitting quite photogenically over the lake on cliffs and stuff. All very nice.

The other old site is the castle of Simon, who was the Tsar of the Bulgarians at around 900ish AD. Bulgarians you say? Yeah, Macedonia was the centre of the first Bulgarian empire, and the castle he ruled from at Orhid is being restored now. Now, this is a bit of a sticking point. When the Russians decided to liberate the Bulgarians from Turkish rule in 1878, they forced the Turks to give the Bulgarians 60% of the Balkan peninsula as their new homeland, including Macedonia. This was the extent of the land holdings of the Bulgarians at their peak. This rankled the Western European powers (England, France, et al), who made the Bulgarians give Macedonia back to the Turks. All land claims and two wars have been fought over this ruling. Neither side is happy, and I can see it flaring up again in the future. Add to this the scientists of the early 20th century went around saying the Macedonians were Bulgarians under another name. Eeeks. Let's just say Balkan politics can be best explained that everyone thinks everyone else is in their land.

However, at every turn I have been reminded that what politicans say does not always reflect the will of the people. Most people I meet have been more willing to talk about their relations in Australia, which everyone seems to have. It appears most of them are ecconomic migrants from the former Yugoslavia. I also met one bloke who was perplexed as to why the Australian government wouldn't give him a tourist visa to visit his family. I told him I was perplexed about the same thing. It helped keep me out of Romania. Stupid Xenophobic government.

So my breakneck course in Balkan politics and history ends here. Tomorrow I'm going out of my way to avoid going back to Skopje by crossing into Greece the hard way.