April: The curious city of Pristina and the fantastic trip through Macedonia and Greece

It's been 3 months ago since I posted something new on my blog. That's quite a long time, so now I have lots and lots to tell, but I'll try to keep it short.

Since the weather was getting better it was time to explore Macedonia a bit more. I tried to go somewhere every weekend.

Pristina, Kosovo

Like this I went to Pristina with Ondrej. This interesting city is much more interesting if you get to know some locals and know some places. We didn't, we just walked around. But it was kind of fascinating to walk in a messy city with a lot of sand a not a single tree.

Mother Theresa

Bill Clinton, the 'hero' of Kosovo...

In front of NEWBORN, the sign of Kosovo Independence

A trip through Macedonia and Greece

In the end of April friends from Poland came. We travelled through Macedonia, a small bit of Albania and the north of Greece. It was definitely one of the best trips in my life. We had so much fun, met many nice people, saw beautiful places and nature and besides that the weather was great. 

We spent some time in Skopje, where we enjoyed the city, the weather, the food from the market, lake Matka and the New Age bar. And of course we enjoyed some homemade rakija (some of us in particular :P).

Stara Charsija (Old turkish part of the city, my favourite)

After that we went to Struga (on the Ohrid lake in the south) where we stayed at Aga and Marta's place (EVS volunteers). It was a nice and relaxing place. We ate a lot of food (traveling makes you hungry!) and were just in time for the opening party of a new bar (free drinks!!). And in the night we all took over Aga's big bed.

On the first day we traveled around the Ohrid lake, it was very beautiful there. We also crossed one of the weirdest borders we'd ever seen (part of the lake is in Albania). It looked quite destroyed and the name sign of the country was full of bullet holes. And when I gave my passport to the douane, he opened it and let a gigantic BURB in it... nice!

 

Pogradec, Albania

Border Albania - Macedonia

Albania

The next day we wanted to go to Ohrid for a few hours, to leave from there to Thessaloniki. That didn't really work, we made it only to Bitola, another city in Macedonia. It surprised me how nice this city looks, especially in comparing to Skopje, which looks totally different. 

While searching for a place to sleep (calling EVS volunteers in Bitola and finding couchsurfers) Magda en Jurek managed to walk into some of their polish friends. What a coincidence! I mean, Macedonia is not THAT big but finding each other in a internet cafe somewehere in Bitola... And one of them I also know, because she is doing EVS in another city in Macedonia. So Poland seems also smaller than you would think :-P And the couchsurfer we found, turned out to be the mentor of the EVS people in Bitola, and through him we found a place to sleep at Ewa's place.

The day after we left to Greece, but instead of going to Thessaloniki, we decided to go to a place called Drama. A place with beautiful parks. We stayed at 2 very nice and hospitable people and had a great relaxt time there, which was not bad after all the traveling. We went to the sea, went swimming, exchanged music and youtube movies, played funny games and drank lots of nice frappe what I still can't manage to drink in 1 hour instead of 5 minutes.

The sea at Kavala, Greece

And before I knew it the trip was over, I had to go to Belgrade for my EVS mid-term training...

Me and Jarmo took a train to Serbia, while Jurek and Magda liked to stay a bit longer in Thessaloniki. The view from the train was beautiful, Macedonia is very sparsely inhabited and there is a lot of green and a lot of mountains. Sounds like the opposite of The Netherlands, doesn't it? :-) Although a lot of people tell me not to take the train, I liked it very much. We met a very nice girl there and I even managed to sleep for 8 hours!