Travel

The politely intoxicated Serbain metalheads from last night were friendly in the morning and didn’t take issue with my clumsy, sleepless wandering in and out of the hostel room. Getting back to the airport was relatively simple and my bag arrived as planned.

Things got a little crazy after that though.

I’d planned to take a regularly scheduled busline from Sofia to Skopje as soon as I had my bag. This adds five hours to my journey over flying directly to Skopje, but saves me hundreds of dollars in airfare. The one international airport in Skopje has some of the highest fees in Europe and airlines charge hair-rising tariffs to take you there. Once you arrive, you find there’s no public transportation from the airport to the city: only usuriously priced taxis (and that’s if you speak Macedonian—if you speak no Macedonian you might as well just write ‘Bankomat’ on a piece of paper and hang it around your neck so they can withdraw all the money you have).

This annoys me enough that I go the indirect route through Bulgaria. I’ve recommended it to other travellers to Macedonia as well. Now though, I’ll add the caveat that there’s the outside chance you’ll have to do some real legwork to make the circuitous route.

When I got to the central bus station, I found they’d moved the office of the company I was looking for. There are more than a hundred companies, so it took awhile to find mine again. I stumbled on their new office only to see traffic jam of harried-looking people forming out the door. Not a ‘line,’ mind you. Balkan people don’t do ‘lines.’ I’ve dealt with this before, so I knew the drill. I wormed and carefully elbowed and inched my way forward through the shuffle while the sole, stressed out counter lady called out destinations she wanted to see first.

By the time I made it to the front of the crowd, I’d figured out that my bus was cancelled for the day. A minor catastrophe, since somebody was planning to wait for me to pick me up at the Skopje bus station, but two lucky breaks prevented it from turning into a major one. First, there was another (apparently hastily arranged) bus leaving a little later. Second, my American phone and calling plan work in Europe this time around, so even though I haven’t gotten myself a temporary Macedonian SIM card yet, I could still contact my host and let him know I was going to be late. Add in the fortunate coincidence that, while standard Bulgarian is hard for me to understand, Sofia street dialect is much closer to standard Macedonian and people switch to it readily here, and I was able to negotiate my way out of the fix.

Now as long as there isn’t some major international incident at the border or the mountain road doesn’t suddenly disintegrate due to contractor corruption piled on Communist-quality public works, I should make it to Skopje tonight.

(as it turned out, there was in fact one more kink to work through: the bus company had sold four more tickets than there were seats on the bus. Departure was delayed fourty-five minutes while the unlucky leftovers fought it out with the bus driver and saleswoman from the office)

All ended well, however, as a friend of a friend met me at the train station and with startling generosity got me situated with a place to stay in Macedonia. Now for a desperately needed shower.

I’m being flown to the US for a week to attend the Open Houses of two universities that are competing to recruit me to their graduate programs. It’s a very unfamiliar feeling, playing the role of the careful judge rather than the anxious contestant, and I’m probably not going to experience it again for many years to come, so I’m planning to savor it.

In the meantime, here is something utterly unrelated to the Balkans, but strong and beautiful:

A month without a post! Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

I’ve been out of Macedonia for most of the time I’ve been silent. After giving a presentation on language contact and Balkan languages at the American Center, I took a bus to Sofia on Christmas Eve. I thought I was being clever. I planned to fly out of Sofia on Christmas Day (less expensive than flying out of Skopje) and get to Los Angeles during the eye of the holiday travel storm. As an added bonus, I would be leaving Bulgaria on what was just a normal workday. The Orthodox Church still uses the Gregorian calendar to number the holidays. I figured that Bulgaria, as an Orthodox country, must certainly celebrate Christmas on January 7th like Macedonia and Serbia. Stress-free, crowd-free Christmas travel once I’m in the air and out of the sphere of Orthodoxy, but still non-Christmas ability able to get food and go out to a bar the night before. I was feeling smug about all that tasty cake I’d be having and eating at the same time.

Wrong.

The first warning sign was that the bus from Skopje to Sofia stopped at the Bulgarian border and just sat there. I figured there was simply some sort of hold-up with the border guards. That’s not unusual. But a half-hour became an hour and I finally introduced myself to the other obvious American on the bus out of boredom. He was braver than me in just going right up to the driver and asking what we were waiting around for (shame on me, he didn’t even speak Macedonian!), so I found out it was because the Bulgarian bus driver coming from the other direction wanted us all to switch buses. The Macedonian driver would then drive back to Skopje and the Bulgarian driver to Sofia, so he could be with his family for Christmas.

“But, wait, Christmas isn’t for another elven days, right?” I thought. Silly me.

When we got to Bulgaria, the other American came along with me to the hostel I’d booked beforehand, to see whether he wanted to stay too. The city was weirdly empty. Like… it was Christmas Eve. “Orthodox!” I kept saying. “You’re all Orthodox! You guys don’t do Catholic Christmas! Every Macedonian has gone out of his way to mention to me that you guys don’t do Catholic Christmas! This lack of crowds is just a coincidence!”

When I got to the hostel, it was decent, clean, and empty. The other American decided on somewhere else. I had the bunk beds all to myself. Lucky me, but that raised the question of why I was the only person in the hostel.

Given that I hadn’t eaten since early morning, I was now feeling a little panicky about my odds of getting any food for the night, so I rushed out and started looking for a restaurant. Any restaurant. Wouldn’t you know it but everything was closed. Even McDonald’s. When on earth would you close a McDonald’s?

Well, Christmas Eve. Duh.

Some time in the last few decades, Bulgaria switched the date Christmas was celebrated to bring it in line with Western European countries. Greece did as well. I’d gotten the impression that the Southern Balkans was lockstep behind this alternate Christmas date, but it appears Macedonia and Serbia are just outliers.

I managed to find one little kiosk in a subway station that was in the process of closing and convinced the owner to let me buy a Toblerone bar. I also nabbed the last slice of pizza from another kiosk before the woman shut the window.

So my Christmas Eve was old pizza, Toblerone, and a Swedish horror movie about puppy love between a middle schooler and a vampire. It was a rather jolly evening, as a matter of fact, since I knew I’d be going home the next day to see my friend Cage.

But now you know. Christmas in Macedonia? January 7th. Christmas in Bulgaria? December 25th.