Tom's Travels: Skopje Day 1-5

15 - 20 September 2013

Day -1: Lame bus ride
I'm still sitting at the bus stop in Kotor, waiting for the bus to take me to Skopje (pronounced skop-ye), the capital on Macedonia. The bus was 30 minutes late but that didn't bother me too much because I had stuff to keep my entertained. When the bus rocked up, it was mostly empty so I thought it was going to be a good ride but oh how I was wrong. At the next stop the bus almost completely filled up with the only free seat being the half a seat that wasn't covered by a super fat lady's fat rolls.

My seat buddy was an old guy that smelt a bit and wasn't afraid to push me out the way when he wanted more of the crap-all room that there was. It was a fairly sleepless ride thanks to being so cramped so I just watched episodes of The Wire. The other bummer was the fact that every other person on the bus was a smoker so the bus was engulfed in smoke every time we stopped and one guy couldn't wait until the next stop so he lit up on the bus. I'm not a smoker so you can imagine how I felt...

On a more positive note, the bus driver was really smooth. We drove through Albania where they didn't care too much about our passports, it was only the countries around it that actually checked. I did set foot on Albanian soil but it was a bus stop in the middle of nowhere so I don't have much of an opinion.

Day 1: Arriving in Skopje
I was experiencing an organisation fail when I rocked up in Skopje. I didn't have any money pre-exchanged, didn't know what the exchange rate was and didn't have a map or any hostel details. I walked outside the bus station and must've had my deer in the headlights face on because a taxi driver pounced on me. He said he'll take me to a really good hostel and I was sceptical because hey, that's what they all say right? Still, I didn't have many options and I was understandably tired after the 13hr bus ride so I jumped in with him.

Awesome hostel
He took me to HiSkopje and it turns out he was right, it was a great hostel. In fact, it was one of the best I'd stayed in so far because it was clean, very new, had great internet and had a full kitchen with (only travellers will get excited over this stuff) multiple pans, something to stir with, cutlery, clean plates, oil and stuff to wash up with. Anyway, after checking in the first mission was to sleep so I had a snooze before going for a walk around the neighbourhood and getting supplies from the shop.

Day 2: Gym
I found out there was a cheap gym nearby, 100 denar which is just over $2 AUD, so I ventured out to find the place and although there was a bit of poking around and climbing stairs in multiple buildings, I did find it in the end. It was a well equipped gym and it's not like I ever go to the gym at home but it still felt good.

Burger fail
After the gym I had the munchies and I found a burger place that looked great but the whole menu was in the Cyrillic alphabet so I couldn't even try to make some words out and with that I chickened out.

Main square
I kept walking and found myself in the main square where there are A LOT of statues. Seriously, there are so many! One of the bigger and better ones is a typical dude on a horse statue with a fountain and light show at the base. The stone bridge, that is listed as tourist attraction, isn't really anything special and other than that, I went for a wander through the new and surprisingly posh shopping centre where I found a patch for my bag.

Day 2: Bike hire fail
The hostel hired out bikes and the city would be a good one to ride around so I hired one for the day but it had a bent pedal which is hugely annoying to ride on. I bent it straight but as soon as I put some force on it, it bent again so I had to take it back and proceed on foot.

Millennium Cross
The nearby hill has a big metal cross on the top, called the Millennium Cross, and it's one of those things that I had to go see. The walk up took me through some great walking trails in the forest and part way up, when I wasn't sure which way to go I ran into an old local guy who gave me directions that were something like "go 200m down this track where you'll see some steps and a path going up the hill". I followed the instructions but the path was crazy steep and if I'm honest, there wasn't really a path because I was blazing my own trail through the bushes. There's not much to do at the top so I took in the views, took the obligatory photos and headed back down. The walk down, which I logged, was much nicer and I even spotted the place that the old guy was talking about *rolls eyes*.

Day 3: Organising stuff
Today was a day to get organised so I looked up flights for future destinations and booked a bus to Lake Ohrid, my next stop. I also hit the gym again and cooked an awesome dinner with meat patties from the butcher.

English lads
I met a group of English lads who were over for a holiday. I joined them in the backyard for some drinks before heading into town where we had some more beers and talked crap at a pub while enjoying a nice view of the castle walls.

Fun fact: it's talk like a pirate day today :D

Day 4: Off to Ohrid
The only note worthy thing of the morning happened during my walk to the bus station. I saw at least two cars chirp their tyres right in front of cop cars and they didn't even care, what a place!

Thoughts on Skopje:

The city is part ghetto and definitely fits my preconceived stereotypical view of eastern Europe but the other parts, including the main square, are quite new, modern and well maintained.
There don't seem to be many road rules
Their currency is strange because they have notes that are a smaller denomination than some coins
It's really cheap
They're pouring lots of money in and in a few years, I think it'll be really popular
I'd stop here again if I was coming back through (and I was and did)