Friday was the Day of Souls, meaning no work was to be done (thank goodness we got our laundry done the night before!). Robb and I went for a walk in the village and ended up at my friend, Ats’s hair salon. He’s probably the most well-known hair stylist in Orizari and gets tons of business. He used to have a small studio in one of the rooms of his parents’ house, but not he has a studio about three times the size of that above his garage. It was great to see how successful he’s become. He was even able to squeeze Robb in for a $2 trim. We made plans to go to a local disco that night, but I later had to cancel due to major stomach issues, probably caused by all the overeating I’ve been doing.

We eventually made our way to Kocani to get some stuff done, including figure out how we were going to get to Sofia for our dreaded 6:30 am flight on Monday. To say it was a pain in the ass is an understatement. Here is the list of our options, in order in which they fell through:

1.) Take a 3 pm bus on Saturday to Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria and then transfer onto a bus headed to Sofija, where we’d stay in a hostel and leave early Monday morning for the airport. Total cost: $90-100. CANCELLED due to the fact that the 3 pm bus doesn’t run on Sundays.

2.) Take the midnight bus to Sofija on Saturday night, arrive at 6 am on Sunday, walk around Sofija all day, crash in a hostel on Sunday night and leave early Monday morning for the airport. Total cost: $90-100. CANCELLED due to the fact that when we went to buy the bus tickets on Friday, we found that the midnight bus doesn’t run on Saturdays.

Now, at this point, I was beginning to inwardly freak out and worry about how we were going to get to Sofija. I knew it’d probably have to be a taxi, and I knew it’d be expensive.

3.) While finding all of this out at the travel agency, a guy hanging out there said that he’s driving someone to the airport on Saturday night for €50 and would get us to Sofija around 3 am. To those of you who have never been to Macedonia, this may seem odd that some guy just hanging out at the place would be able to help us, but things always seem to work out like this. We’d crash for the rest of the night/morning at a hostel, walk around Sofija Sunday day, crash again at a hostel and get to the airport early Sunday morning. Total cost: $180-200.

Did I think about all of these costs? Of course not.

4.) This guy also offered to take us by ourselves straight to the airport on Sunday night, arriving around 4 am Monday morning, just in time to check in our flight. Total cost: $100

Now, to the calm and steady eye, it would seem like option #4 was the best, as it would allow us one more day and get us straight to the airport without any fuss in Sofija. Makes sense, right? But to the freaking out Shayne who only head “$100 for a taxi ride” and wasn’t thinking straight in the least, #3 seemed like the best. So, I set out to find hostels for us to stay at, using my limited knowledge of Sofija from the one trip I made there. I started frantically calling these hostels to figure where we’d stay, not even realizing how much extra it’d cost us to stay two nights in Sofija. After finding out that the first-choice hostel was booked and the second choice hostel checking its availability and asking me to call back, calm and relaxed Robb mentioned the fact that while the taxi ride in option #3 was cheaper, we’d be paying much more in the end to stay in Sofija (most hostels cost around €10-15 a night) and that option #4 was really the perfect solution. Thank goodness I hadn’t taken this trip alone and had my reasonable partner with me to actually think things through while I was spazzing out.

With everything figured out, we went to Emilija’s with a new sense of calm. OK, I had a new sense of calm and Robb was as calm as he was before because he was never freaking out in the first place. We planned to spend the night there in order to spend some quality time with Emilija and her family, which of course we did. After a lovely dinner and fantastic cake, we all headed out to a café and took in the Kocani weekend night life. Once again, money was not allowed to be spend on our side and we headed back to sleep at Emilija’s, where, under our extreme protest, they gave us their huge bed while Emilija slept with their daughter and her husband slept with her son.

We woke Saturday morning and enjoyed some рибанки (fried bread similar to French Toast, but eaten with cheese instead of syrup or jam) and headed back to Orizari with plans to see Emilija and Co. on Sunday. My host mother let us know that she heard from Bage, who arrived safely in New Jersey after a 12-hour flight from Milan, where she said she threw up “100 times”. Poor thing. I know she’ll be fine once she gets used to everything, but I’m sure the first few weeks will be tough. I can’t wait to get back home where I can call her regularly and make sure she’s doing ok. I am her older sister, after all. We spent the rest of Saturday just chilling with the family and watched a movie. Eventually RObb and I made it out to Kocani for some major blog posting, followed by dinner at my second favorite restaurant in Kocani, El Pida. I made a pretty good recommendation to Robb to try the Greek Patty, which is basically a burger with cheese inside, and he seemed to like it. We headed to a cafe for a quick pick-me-up and then made it an early night and headed home.