Sunday started off with a breakfast of biscuits and milk. Sounds weird, huh? Well imagine taking some graham crackers and breaking them up into a cereal bowl, then adding warm milk… warm ‘whole’ milk. Suffice to say, the concoction was very sweet and heavy, but as they say… when in Rome.
We had to go to Kocani to take care of some last minute things in preparation for our flight home. We had to change some money in order to pay the taxi driver, and buy some food for the flight (snacks and things). Despite the fact that nearly everything was closed, we eventually found a place to change some money (coincidentally the place we originally found our mystery cab driver that would take us to Sofia Airport). Money changed, we bought snacks and began our whirlwind tour of goodbyes.
We first hit Vilma’s for an early afternoon visit of conversation and cake. It was Kristijan’s birthday Saturday, and there was a ton of cake left over… it was delightful. We sat and talked for a while, and eventually had to give our sorrowful farewells to the Vilma crew (sans Kristijan who had been awake into the wee hours of the morning, and was unwakable).
For the remainder of the afternoon, we had a date with Emilija and her family to head up to a little resort hotel in the mountains. The place was gorgeous, overlooking a lake that was wedged between some beautiful mountains. As seems to be the routine here in Macedonia, an obscene amount of food was ordered, and Emilija’s husband (via cellular phone) began recruiting some of their friends to join our party.
Eventually, having been the subject of near two weeks of nonstop hospitality that was borderline harassment (for artistic effect, I never actually felt harassed), I had reached my limit of trying to fit into the customs of being a guest in Macedonia… so Shayne and I went down to the lake to “take pictures”, when really I just went down there to be away from everyone. It wasn’t long after we returned to the party that we left. I claimed to be tired when people asked if I was OK, and we were on our winding way back down the mountainside, into the lovely city of Kocani once more. Along this beautiful ride, Emilija surprised us both with parting gifts (not like on Price is Right or anything… just gifts for us because we were going home). She gave Shayne a very nice brown leather purse, and for me, a small zippered leather bag (too big to be a “ballers wallet” but still looking suspiciously like one, leading me to believe that Macedonians must think we’re just hung with money in America… in reality it’s probably not for that purpose at all, but more likely to hold small documents and things for travel.) As soon as we got back to the host family house, I threw my wallet, passport, money and coins into the little love pouch, and added it to my messenger bag. Perfect!
Going back a little, we said our even more tearful goodbyes to Emilija and her family, and made our way home. We got back to the house around six o’clock and spent the rest of the night chillin there, spending quality time before our inevitable (however late) departure.
As if it weren’t enough that they gave us free room and board and the promise to come and go as we please for two weeks with no real obligation to spend time with them, as well as tons of free food and drink, Shayne’s host family loaded us up with gifts as a farewell for our journey home. Unless I am forgetting something, we made it out of there with a jar of Ivar, two bottles of Rakia (spelling?) (One of them for Dave), two bags of coffee for making Turkish coffee, a bean salad that is intended to be eaten while drinking their moonshine, and some perfume for Shayne. As Shayne and I have stated before, the hospitality and good will do, and will always, go unmatched.
The taxi driver (who ended up being Emilija’s neighbor… small world), who we suspected was not an actual taxi driver (just some dude doing runs to Bulgaria for money), showed up in true Macedonian style, over an hour late. He was a really nice guy however, and we couldn’t stay mad at him for long. He also promised that we would still arrive at the airport at the designated time of 4am (we were leaving Orizari at 11:30pm and going to Sofia – a drive that is supposed to take 4 hours – plus, there was a time zone change that was against our favor, plus there was the ambiguous border crossing situation, which delayed our bus into Macedonia for almost two hours.)
Anyway, I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
We had our most tearful goodbyes of all as we were loading the Taxi with all of our gear in the driveway of the host family’s house. There were plenty of “have a safe trip” and “come back soon” and any other salutations that would seem appropriate for a Macedonian family to wish upon their adopted international family members as they were departing for parts unknown (well, unknown to them at least).
Shockingly true to his word, the taxi driver delivered us safely to the airport in Sofia, Bulgaria at 3:34am (26 minutes prior to the zero hour that was calculated using a 10:30 departure time). The dude not only knew precisely where he was going, but also how to grease a wheel or two at the border exchange, where we fell under suspicion for not registering with the police that we were staying in Macedonia within the three day period that they require (we didn’t register at all, registering with the police is a loser move). As the topping on the cake, he even went to get us a luggage cart while we were unloading the bags from the back of his car. What a good guy!
