Wednesday was an endurance contest (for me) of meetings. At ten that morning, we were set to meet Dejan, a friend of Shayne’s, for coffee. We sat and talked for a little beyond two hours. They naturally caught up a little about what’s going on with each other, and the conversation turned a little more general. We talked everything from politics to pop culture. Dejan is an interesting character. He seems to have well established opinions about things, yet is open to discussion about almost anything. He is very natural in conversation, and was a load of fun to talk to and hang out with. He informed us (for future trips, this information will be very useful) that there’s a great “underground” club scene for people who want to escape the pop music and fancy fashions. Very good to know.
After meeting with Dejan, we son had a lunch date with Michael. He’s another Peace Corps person from Shayne’s group. We met up at a restaurant that’s popular with the foreigners, boasting a huge menu and a seemingly endless supply of waitresses in very tight, very small uniforms. Ugh. Michael is… a politician. He was very energetic and pleasant and polite. While Shayne and him had plenty of things to catch up on, I found myself a little disinterested in the conversation. There were a few times where we engaged in political conversations, and as much as I knew he was presenting an opposing view, he did it n a way that made my feel like he wasn’t disagreeing with me. Michael is obviously a good guy, and I’m sure that if I were to spend more than a fleeting lunch date getting to know him, I’d really like him.
Tummies full, Shayne and I headed out to find MASSO. MASSO is the organization that I had set out to find and do a story on for my paper. It’s the only openly gay organization in the country, and I was determined to break my teeth as an international news correspondent covering the LGBT issues in
Macedonia by doing a story on them. After some crazy confusion about where the place was (addresses in Skopje – not so good,) we decided to just call the office and have someone come down to show us where to go. We spent a couple of hours talking to the staff there (regrettably, the president could not be there), while I jotted down some furious notes in my notebook (interrupting the continuity of this, our travel memoirs). MASSO is a young organization, and it is obvious that different people hold different opinions as to what is the most important things that they need to be doing for the GLBT community in Macedonia. Igor, who lived in Chicago for five years, and is openly gay had a very different idea than most as to what needs to be focused on in order for gays to be treated equally in Macedonia. He’s surely influenced by the way that things are in the west, and seems frustrated that here, things are so much worse.
Not done yet! After MASSO, we had a meeting with Victoria. Victoria is one of the girls that participated in Camp GLOW, something Shayne organized as a PC volunteer. She’s college aged and obviously very intelligent. We went to a café called New Age, the closest that you can probably find to a hippy hang out in a place like Skopje. Regrettably I was insanely tired, and so I didn’t participate nearly as much as I would have liked to in the conversation, but from time to time I did drop a gem about politics or how things are in America. One interesting side effect of speaking a language that is not your primary language is that you’re going to eventually say something wrong. It’s inevitable. During our conversation when Victoria was talking about school, she said (in English) “the teachers need to molest us more”. This error is very forgivable considering she’s studying many languages and in most of them saying that would be grammatically correct.
We (me being exhausted and grumpy) headed back to Rachel’s place to die. Shayne and I were feeling very funky, and I knew I would feel much better after just doing nothing for a while, allowing my head to reset. Soon after hitting the couch, Rachel got back from doing Rachel things, and we decided on dinner. Shayne and I ran out for food, stopping at the veggie stand she grew to love when in Skopje. A minor running in with a diminutive Roma kid later and we were bus bound to eats at our crash pad.
We left Rachel’s early on Thursday, checked our bag at the bus station and bought our tickets for the trip back to Kocani. From there, we had a few hours to kill around town. We first headed toward BROZ CAFÉ, the remarkably copyright infringing coffee shop that is the nearest to some American espresso that you can find in the entire country. We had some drinks and chatted a little with the staff (and I might have bought some goodies there too), and then we were off to do some photography about town. Shayne got some good shots of a church that she hadn’t previously gotten, and I got some good graffiti (my favorite: *in English* FUCK AUTHORITY), finishing with a labor protest that was taking place across the street from the Parliament building in a park.
We headed to the bus station, and hit the internet café for some quick email checking before we hit the road. Finally after grabbing a quick snack and paying to use the public restroom (ugh, Europe), we got on the bus.
The bus… was awful. I can say with a clear conscience that I have not liked a single bus that we have been on since touching down in Sofia nearly two weeks ago. I would gladly take all of the previous hours spent in those buses again, if it meant not having to endure the hell that was our bus ride to Kocani. We were lucky enough during boarding to find two adjacent seats, as the bus was sold out, and filled to capacity. I was ready, as I climbed inside, to elbow some old ladies if that was necessary to sit next to the love of my life. As the bus traveled along its path, it made regular stops to drop off and pick up passengers (note, the dropping off was nothing in comparison to the picking up). Before we left the city limits, there were already people standing in the aisle.
After the second city stop, the nightmare was going full bore, as the 55 person capacity bus was operating almost double that, and due to their frightful fear of a gentle and cool breeze, every window in the bus was locked tight on this 70 plus degree day. Every nerve I possessed was tensed as the bus (which, as you may have guessed, operates much slower when jammed with sweaty flesh) trundled along. I was ready for a full scale freak out.
After what must have been an eternity, the steamy stink of a bus lurched into the station in Kocani, and after briefly contemplating having them take us on to Orizari (a plan hastily abandoned when we saw the sea of new people waiting to fight their way on board), we opted for a nice, small, and thankfully empty taxi as our chariot for the finish line photo.
