The next morning, we got up very early to catch a six-hour bus ride to the opposite corner of Macedonia, Ohrid. Ohrid is the resort city of Macedonia and lies on one of Macedonia’s only lakes, Lake Ohrid, which just so happens to be UNESCO protected and one of the oldest lakes in the world. I’ve been to Ohrid a few times and loved it every time. It’s absolutely picturesque and has tons of beautiful churches (they say 365 churches- one for every day of the year, but I’ve never counted) and the fortress of Tsar Samoil of Macedonia, dating back to the 10th century.
The bus ride was very long, but also very scenic, and when we arrived in Ohrid, we were picked up by the daughter of the owner of the “hotel” that we were staying at. While there are hotels in Ohrid, most are just private rooms in a home that someone rents out, which was our case. After resting a bit, we walked to the center and did some exploring. We tried to make it to St. Jovan, one of the most beautifully placed churches, but the rain caused us to retreat to our hotel room for a few hours. Seriously, every other time I’ve been in Ohrid, it’s been sunny and beautiful, except for Monday. It did finally clear up, though, and we made our way to St. Jovan. Then we headed uphill…way, way uphill to Tsar Samoil’s fortress to find it closed on Mondays. DAMN!
We grabbed some dinner at a traditional Macedonian restaurant and met up with Ivan, who I worked with at Olive Garden back in the states. Ivan was actually the first Macedonian I met in America. The storey goes that while I was in Macedonia serving, my grandfather was at the Olive Garden near where I grew up and noticed that his server was foreign. He asked her where she was from, and when she told him Macedonia, he told her all about his granddaughter who was currently living there. She then told him that half of the staff there was Macedonian, which he relayed on to me. When I was home for Christmas, my family and I went to this Olive Garden and requested a Macedonian server, who just so happened to be Ivan. When We talked a bit in Macedonian, which completely took him off guard at first. I came home for good, I immediately applied to that Olive Garden and found myself surrounded by “my people”. Ivan has since returned to Macedonia to get married and lives in Ohrid with his fiancée.
We met up with them at a café owned by another fellow Olive Garden employee and had a great night talking and drinking. At the end of the night, we were again refused to pay by Ivan (who hasn’t been able to find work since he got back) and the co-owner of the café. Sensing a pattern of rock star hospitality yet?
We woke on Tuesday intending to go to St. Naum, a little town that’s a 45-minute bus ride away. I’ve been once during the summer and really enjoyed the serene beach, the beautiful church and the exotic peacocks (I swear that all I cam from me and not any tour book!). But, really, if you don’t have an entire day to spend there, it’s not so great. The buses to and from there run every couple of hours, so it’s tough to do it in just a few hours, as we were hoping. Instead, we went up to Tsar Samoil’s fortress and found it open (yay!) and had a great view of all of Ohrid, especially the separation of Old Ohrid and New Ohrid at the old city walls. We then stopped by a photo studio of an older man who has spent his life taking pictures in Macedonia and has had exhibits in Western Europe and the US. Robb and I both spent a long time looking at his pictures and found some great pics to take back with us. He had a lot of great framed pictures, showing a connection between two completely different pictures. They were all very creative. We took an earlier bus to Skopje than we had planned, but it was good timing as we didn’t have much going on and I was a little anxious to get to Skopje. Also, it started to rain just as we were leaving, so it seemed that it was good timing al around. Oh! But one funny story before we left:
Through our travels, we’ve never deluded ourselves that we didn’t look like total foreigners. And let’s face it, in a place like Macedonia, foreign is synonymous with Tourist. Bearing that in mind, we do everything that we can to follow customs and speak the language (me included) whenever possible. Nobody wants a selfish tourist that doesn’t give a damn about the place they’re visiting. So as common courtesy, we do what we can to “when in Rome” whenever possible.
As we enjoyed our lunch, we noticed that there was a table of elderly people near us, and it was obvious that they weren’t native. They were speaking exclusively in English, and going on like a bunch of self absorbed people. Luckily in a tourist mecca like Ohrid, they’re ready for it and a lot of the servers and such speak some English. The obnoxiousness only multiplied as time passed, and when their food was delivered, one of them remarked “I didn’t know it was going to be so big” In regards to their pizzas. Shayne jokingly said to me “It would be funny if they paid in [American] dollars.” As we were getting our stuff together to leave, sure enough, they were throwing twenties around like it was legal tender in the lovely Macedonia. Honestly, sometimes I just don’t know what to say.
I couldn’t believe it. Now, maybe if they tried paying with Euros, I may have understood, being that we were in Eastern Europe. But dollars?!?! That’s the kind of American ignorance that drives me nuts. I hope their server ripped them off for the inconvenience. I’m not a mean or vengeful person, but if you’re going to be that ignorant of other cultures and the basic economic structure of being in another country, then you sort of deserve the bad karma of getting ripped off. A taxi driver then tried to rip us off by charging us an exorbitant amount for the trip to the bus station, but I wouldn’t have it. I understand these things happen in tourist cities, so I try to keep up with what we should be charged rather than what we may be charged. In the end, I paid a few denars more, but it was much better than the taxi driver’s starting point.
