It’s been a busy week since I wrote last! Trip to Macedonia, lots to stuff to do at work (yes, work is now officially busy!!), friends coming this weekend to visit me. I can’t believe I only have four weeks left! Yikes! So much still to do…
As I wrote about last time, I had a hard time figuring out how to make the relatively short trek to Macedonia. But things worked out great. Plus, I had a traveling companion in the person of my fellow intern, Anya. She is originally from Kazakhstan, grew up in Novosibirsk, Russia, and came to the States seven years ago. She and I have ‘clicked’ because of the Russian connection, and she jumped at the chance to go to Macedonia with me. So, through the Embassy, we were able to be connected with a taxi driver who would take us to the Albania-Macedonia border of Qafe Thane. From there, my friends agreed to pick us on the Macedonia side. We knew prior to the trip that our taxi driver, Imer Rrustaj**, doesn’t speak English, so we figured it would be an exciting ride J. For a $140 round trip, it was a real deal compared with other options, but very expensive by Albanian standards – a furgon (mini-bus) could have taken us to a city close by for a fraction of that cost, but it would have taken longer, and we would have had to communicate to someone there that we wanted to be taken to the border… too complicated and iffy for our taste, especially for the return trip on Sunday evening.
**Just a quick note on Albanian pronunciation for any language buffs: Albanian has a single “r” and a double “rr,” and they’re pronounced differently. If the “r” is single, it is pronounced about the same as an American “r” – that is to say, not rolled as in Russian, Spanish or Swedish, or “gargled” as in French. The other, the double “rr,” is rolled. I have a hard time with using the American “r” believe it or not – it just sounds unnatural!! So I roll all of my “r”s. J This has led to Albanian friends making fun of me – I got an email the other day from a girl I’d met – she wrote, “Dear Sarrah Chrristina…” J
So our driver, Imer, picked us up at the Embassy housing compound, where Anya lives, at 8:00 on Saturday morning. I had walked over from my place with my backpack – a couple of miles. He was right on time, as were we, and we set off, after a “quick” coffee break on the road just south of Tirana. BTW there is no such thing as getting “coffee to go” here… Imer had asked us if we were interested in getting coffee in the ubiquitously international word, “caffe?” Anya answered “Po” (yes); I answered “Jo” (no) – pronounced “Yo.” Not that I wanted to deprive the others of coffee, but I’d already had my instant Nescafe first thing in the morning and was anxious to get going. However, Imer somehow communicated that it was two against one J, so we stopped. We sat down at an outside table at the roadside café; after an espresso for Imer and a cappuccino for Anya, half an hour later we got on the road again! I wish I’d gotten a picture of Imer and his yellow Mercedes taxi. Great guy. It was true that he spoke not a word of English. Or any other language that Anya and I can communicate in. So I, with my little Albanian mini-dictionary and phrasebook, became the communicator. It was very funny. Lots of misunderstandings, laughing, pointing and gesturing. Since we were taking the windy road back down to Elbasan (which I was familiar with from the trip to Greece), Anya was concerned about getting car sick. She wanted to sit in the back, and I was more than willing to sit in the front to get another good view. In spite of Imer’s expert (and, may I say, careful) driving, Anya got sick (not quite to the point of losing her cappuccino, thankfully). My dictionary surprisingly had all of the right words, so I was able to communicate to Imer to take the curves a bit more gently, and so for the rest of the trip (there and back) Imer would often laugh and say, “Avash, avash!” which we took to mean, “slowly, slowly,” and we often repeated it ourselves!
We actually made the trip in good time, got to the border at 10:30, marched up to the front of the queue (bypassing the queue of cars), and presented our American passports, which were quickly scanned. Albanians are much more thoroughly scrutinized. After a less than quarter mile walk, the Macedonian side was similarly speedy, and we ended up in Macedonia with over an hour to spare before my friends picked us up. Conveniently, there was a café right there so we plopped ourselves down and shared a plate of grilled chicken filet and fresh veggies (as always, this consists of tomatoes, cucumbers, light green peppers, onions, olives – I love it!). Upon examining the menu, we quickly discovered that the Macedonian language (which uses the Cyrillic alphabet) was quite easily navigable for us, unlike Albanian! During our brief time there, we were able to understand a lot and communicate fairly easily by using Russian.
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| Approaching Macedonian border... |
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| Being viewed with suspicion? :-) |
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| Yummy lunch |
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| Meet Anya! |
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| Macedonian flag |
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