My first week in Macedonia
As soon as I arrived here I've been introduced to all the people and the representative paces around. Right after
beeing picked up at the Skopje bus station by Patricia (current MC VP PD) and
Ravin (MC VP X elect) I've been taken to the place where I was going to live for the next three months. This place was the MC apartment / office which was very close to the bus station so it took us less than 10 minutes to get there. The apartment consists of one big living room, witch is used as an office for the MC, three rooms and dependencies. At that moment in the apartment were living Patricia who is from Canada,
Ravin from India, Goran a trainee from Croatia plus me, so together we were forming an truly international flat as Patricia likes to call it.
Right afterwards
Ravin offered showing me the surroundings. Cause it was already a while then since I had everything else to eat than sandwiches we went to a place that turned out to be one of the most important in the town and that was a small shop on a street near by where for 120
denars, witch is about 2 euro, so around 7
ron you would get one big plate of french fries with a roasted burger and two eggs, a pancake prepared in a Macedonian way and a bottle of Coke,
Fanta and Sprite. That pace is very nice because for the money you pay it gives you literally difficulties in eating everything that you get so it is very handy when you are hungry.
The next place we went to was the
AIESEC Skopje office. For that we went to the University, the pace were are most of the faculties in Skopje witch is about 10 - 15 minutes far from the apartment. What I liked about this office is that it is situated right at the entrance of the economics faculty, in front of the main stairs so there is no way to enter and miss it. In the office I had the opportunity to met some of the LC members, EB members and even a part of the MC members.
Because we had no Internet in the apartment and it took a while singe we got it I could not really do much so I, together with
Ravin had time to visit some new places in the city. In one of the days we went to Cale, a very nice old fortress witch is right in the city. Another place we saw was the Turkish
Bazar, an area in the old side of the city. This side is both very old and very different of the rest of Skopje. Here we had some of the Macedonian dishes, most of witch have their roots in the Turkish kitchen and Macedonian (yet Turkish) coffee.
If it is to speak about cultural shock as I now that some of the people who are reading this are either present or organizing a seminar on this theme, I can't say I had it. The country and the people are not very different from Romania and I had been helped by the people around me not to integrate well to. The only thing I can really say that I am "shocked" of would be the language where the differences begin from the alphabet, Cyrillic.
Till next time,
titel
Travelling to Macedonia.
As some of you know I planned of coming to Macedonia hitch hiking. So having that in mind I left
Sibiu on the 5th at 1 AM. the driver that tool me from there was coming from Austria and later on he told me that he used to work as an
mercenar, he was in the French Legion and even fight in
Iugoslavia during the war. By 5 I was in Bucharest, after making a short trip to
Sinaia first... In Bucharest I took the first tram to go to the
exit to
Giurgiu. Because I was badly informed by somebody I found in the streets at that time I ended up moving in circle for about an hour or more. Eventually I've got to the right exit where I also found quite easily a car to
Giurgiu. In the car the driver that worked in a company producing electrical fences told me that he is going to the border where they had some work to take some tools. He drooped me off in a road cross and showed me the direction to the border.
The problem was there was a very deep fog and you could not see a thing so I didn't realise that there were actually 3 km to get there. I eventually got in the Customs area at the Romanian border and after speaking with some people from there and positioning in the right place, I've started speaking with the Romanian drivers. The only problem was that through the customs the trucks were very slow, about 5 an hour and it was also weekend so there were no many cars and everything moved sower than usually, that is why there were actually not many people to talk to. What hurt me the most was that I've been refused by a guy from
Sibiu who told me that he hasn't got enough space in the truck because he had an refrigerator, or at least this was the excuse he used.
After informing myself on the phone about the trains I could take I found that I've already lost one but that there was one at 15:30 o'clock (it was about 13:30 at that moment already). I started walking to the
Giurgiu city center and meet driver that used to take people from the border to the city. This driver turned out to be very angry when I told him I don't want to pay 200.000 lei (20
ron) for the 3 km to the city. I eventually hitch hiked a car that got me to the railway station for free. There I had to wait a while and took a personal train to the railway border were I had to manage to get in the train that I was told that goes to Sofia.
There I found out that they didn't actually sell tickets in the weekend, that the train I was trying to take didn't go in Sofia during the weekend and that usually you could not get in the trains that go in Bulgaria there. I found again somebody kind enough to inform me about how the things work there, you find them everywhere :), and after negotiating with the Romanian border police they let me take this train for one station, till the city of
Russe in Bulgaria without a both way ticket as they were actually supposed to (for FREE). In the train I had to give 100.000 lei to the Romanian ticket checker and 100.000 to the Bulgarian one and in less than half an hour I was in Bulgaria.
Here I found out that I only have a train to Sofia, the capital, after about 8 hours so I started walking around the city because I also needed
Bulgadian currency to pay for the train. The city was very nice,
realy I was surprised, who said that Bulgaria is worse than Romania, I don't know... anyway the only problem was that they didn't have any change office open in the weekend. No change office no
Bulgaia Money, no
Bulgaia Money no train ticket, no train ticket no Sofia... After walking for about two hours with all the luggage
wich was a bag not a back pack (by the way I'm never in my life going to do that again) I found one and managed to find my way back.
I arrived in Sofia at 6 in the morning and I found that
thre was no direct train to Skopje, Macedonia and I
eventualy found an bus I could take at 9. After walking a bit
arround the railway station in Sofia I took the bus and at
arround 3 o'clock
romanian time, 2 o'clock
macedonian time I was here...
From here on I'll tell you in the next post because I think this is already too long,
So, keep in touch,
titel
