A Hakobus to Puke

Albania

Benjami and Thomasji came exploding from Lauren’s apartment building like processed cheese from an over-microwaved pizza pop. They were late for their bus to Albania, and it was the only one that day. Half figure skating, half snowshoeing, they traversed the Macedonian parking lot that had called home for the past twelve hours. With Lauren negotiating the fare, they hopped acrobatically with their backpacks and guitar into a passing taxi and were ferried off to the station. Queen Lauren virtuously purchased a bus ticket for her unscrupulous freeloader of a guest (Thomas), as neither he nor Ben had any money. “What losers”, she most certainly must have thought, as they rode off in the empty bus, already lulled to sleep by the mechanical songs of the disgruntled engine.

The frigid pass between Macedonia and Albania in February.

Meet Mr. Coffee and Ms. Cigarette, my two most
commonly photographed subjects.

Before entering Albania, we had a 3-hour stopover in a border town called Stugart. I tried for each one of those hours to find a decent toilet into which I could conduct business. As they might say in India: “not possible”. The toilets in India, if you’d call them that, were pretty bad. Still, I don’t remember a single time over the course of five months when I gazed down at one in horror and chickened out. This is exactly what happened to me in this small Macedonian border town. The only one in town I could find was disgusting, below zero centigrade, waterless, soapless, and toilet-paperless. Eventually, in our desperation, Ben and I bought some Kleenex and used the seatless women’s toilet at the bus station. It’s true that nearly all the staff and customers laughed at us, but it was a small price to pay for the prevention of a chocolate avalanche that was about to unfold in our pants. We spent our last few cents on a bag of pretzels for breakfast before being lectured for not visiting the oldest lake in Europe (which we had apparently just passed in the bus) by a man with about a 100001 business cards (I should start a collection).

I'd tell you where this bus is going, but
I'd rather show you instead.

The first thing I noticed about Albania was that there was much less snow. The second thing I noticed was that nearly everyone I saw from the bus window was standing around with garden hoses watering the pavement. Then I noticed the abundance of short, bald, Albanian men smoking cigarettes and chewing with their mouths open. They were either completely covered in denim, or wearing jeans and leather jackets. Finally, I noticed that both the language and the currency had yet again changed. It was our third country in three days.

Rumour has it (in other words: "I can’t be bothered to validate the following claim") that Albania is the poorest country in Europe. The Reds (Stalinist) kept the country quite isolated until they lost power in the early 1990s. Driving through the countryside, I felt as if we were in India again. Houses are crowned with water tanks, ditches are filled with garbage, the roads are in terrible condition, and the people look poor. I learned later that 98% of households don’t have any kind of wastewater treatment facility. For every old, ramshackle building there is a skeleton of something either unfinished or abandoned. We drove by a legitimate garbage dump located in the meridian of the national highway. There is rubble everywhere.

I smoked a cigarette, and so did Ben. We were trying to stop, but we’d somehow been given three free packs, from three different people, in the last four days.

Ben and I, sitting on our bags in a crowded Tirana bus.

 We arrived in the capital, Tirana, in the dark, around 4 hours later than intended. Tirana is a whole different story from the rest of Albania: it is a modern, hip, well-lit metropolis, complete with crosswalks and BMWs. We heard from someone that all the money poured into the country thanks to philanthropic EU policies stays in Tirana. Then again, we hear a lot of things.

We met our Couchsurfing hostess, Sabine, in front of a grocery store. I had never actually spoken to her before, but had instead been arranged to stay with her by the guy who had initially agreed to host us, who had recently moved to Nicaragua on a whim. Sabine, a very friendly, very busy, down to earth graduate student, is his ex-roommate. She was our first encounter with a true, dedicated Couchsurfer. Even as we were walking in the door, two other guests were putting on their bags and getting ready to leave. The apartment was hospitable, clean, comfortable, and warm (and everything else that the rest of Albania didn’t seem to be).

Ingrid from Tirana.

That night, we went to a Couchsurfer get-together at a backpacker hostel. We sat around, talking, drinking, and meeting people from all over the world. We met Ingrid, who brought us to the bus (there isn’t a single bus station in the nation’s capital; buses are simply scattered around the city in an arbitrary manner and you’re meant to “just know” when/if they leave) the next morning, and to the market for poor people like Ben. He bought a $10 pair of used leather shoes. She then called her friend who drove to find us so that he could give Ben a used coat (which was great in retrospect, because his Nepalese raincoat has since dismantled itself spontaneously).

And that was it- we entered, crossed, and left Albania in less than 24 hours.

Rundown

Language: Albanian

People met: Sabine, Ingrid, Couchsurfers

New beers tried: Korca and Tirana

How they say cheers: Guhzewar

$ spent: 36

# of rides: Zero - We were told hitchhiking in Albania was dangerous?

Distance traveled: 214 km + bus detours

What you might find in my pocket: a Hakobus ticket, a passport with American money, Greek matches, obsidian,
a spork, an inspirational dog tag,  a broken watch, tylenol, an Indian jeans button, a guitar plectrum from Turkey,
a broken LPIRG badge, miscellaneous unspendable coins, and an Indian passport photo.

9 Macedonian Lives

Grease to Macaronia

The heading of each page in my notebook is the city that we are trying to reach that day, or the place that we’re visiting if we’ve decided to take a break from traveling (e.g. Istanbul, Paris, Venice, etc). On 8 February 2012 I wrote “Bitola, Macedonia” with a question mark. We had spent three days in Thessaloniki, Greece, and with each day the weather conditions in the Balkans were getting progressively worse. Even in Greece, many people (well, at least the ones with jobs) weren’t going to work. Nobody even knew if the roads we needed to bring us North into the mountains were operational.

Originally, we had intended to hitchhike all the way to the capital, Skopje, where we had a CouchSurfing host arranged. The day before leaving, upon realizing that it would be near impossible to make it in light (or dark) of an impending blizzard of doom, I made a frantic full-blown attempt to find a couch for us to crash upon in a more proximal location. I sent a couch request too all but one of the 21 CouchSurfers listed as available in Bitola. The gentleman I skipped had a great reply rate, though indicated that his preferred gender was female (alas, I fear that neither I nor Ben fall under this category), and that his interests were limited only to sports, women, and erotica. His profile picture gave me the impression that he might only know how to take us on a sightseeing tour of the local weightlifting facilities. I’ll sleep in the snow thanks. Someone needs to buy this guy a subscription to Lavalife and get him a mail-order bride.

Thankfully, one person replied. I read first in anticipation and then in mounting despair as I learned that she didn’t actually live in Bitola any longer, and that she had moved back to the United States. Our only hope was the email address of her ex-roommate Lauren, who she indicated might be willing to put us up. As it turns out, Lauren was more than willing to grant our requested asylum, and we left Greece.

Macedonian beer.

We were hitchhiking. For most of the day I wasn’t sure that we were going to make it. You can interpret this in two ways and not be wrong. First, I was quite sure that we weren’t going to make it to Bitola, seeing as I didn’t even really know how far away it was or even how to get there. Second, I wasn’t even sure that we were going to make it anywhere (past the ditch). This became a real concern especially by about three or four in the afternoon. We spent a good part of the day standing in 50 km/hr winds in the middle of nowhere, with what felt like hours (ten or fifteen minutes) between passing cars and only the following landmarks to orient ourselves: snow bank; distant nuclear power plant; snow bank exhibit ‘b’; large empty field; the North Star (just kidding - the snow filled the sky like dove droppings in a lightning storm).

It took nine rides and the same number of hours to make our way from Thessaloniki in Greece to Bitola in Macedonia. Stefanos, our Greko-Canuck CouchSurfing host in Thessaloniki, was kind enough to drive us to the outskirts of the city, where we walked through a toll both and waited with our thumbs in the air and our frowns in our pockets. We waited at least an hour before being picked up by a bald, 35-or-so-year-old-man who was going to Athens but was able to drive us 5 km to the turnoff (leaving us even more stranded than before). Before he gave us a lift, we watched hundreds of cars drive slowly by. Almost every person stared at us with their mouths hanging open, drooling unapologetically all over their dashboards and steering wheels in sheer disbelief.

Over the course of the day, we slowly consolidated our understanding of each of the three main hand signals drivers give us as they decide blow us off and accelerate past: 1) Pointing down at passenger seat means “I’ve got shit in here, like my coat, so there’s clearly no room for you”; 2) Wagging one finger: “No, but please put down your thumbs now and pretend that you don’t need a ride so that I can stop feeling guilty for the 2.7 seconds that it takes me to pass you”; 3) Spreading fingers and waving palms up and down as if pretending to be an illiterate, overenthusiastic koala bear: “What in God’s name is wrong with you absolutely psychotic morons. You don’t actually think I’m going to pick you up? You’re standing alone in a blizzard. There is no chance that there is even one single sliver of sanity in either of your heads, so why would I risk my own life by stopping for you SCHIZOPHRENIC LUNATICS”. Occasionally we get 4) Pointing at crotch, which we have interpreted to mean: “only for oral”, but we’re not 100 percent on this one yet.

Face Book (a.k.a. Perry Niclc).

Our second ride was from a guy our age who insisted that we add him on facebook, but who’s identity I cannot confirm. I think his name is Perry Niclc, or Perry Nick, or maybe his name is actually “Face Book”, because he also wrote that in my book (admittedly, the chances of this are quite low, as I probably would have remembered if he had introduced himself as Mr. Book). I liked him right away because he didn’t look at us as if we were serial killers, so I decided to spare his life and not eat his liver.

Perry was a student, admittedly a little bit shy, who brought us 80 km in the direction of Macaronia. Although he didn’t have much to say, he was a very friendly young man who didn’t seem to show any discomfort when he finally broke the silence: “Maybe you would like to smoke a little joint?” While he was rolling it, I was painting yellow an already wet snowbank that was at least as deep as the bottom of my bum cheeks (any more snow and the operation would have been a logistical nightmare). Of course, none of us did any drugs, because this is a public blog and anybody could be reading it. I stick to beer, coffee, cigarettes, chocolates, heroin, kryptonite, and maple syrup (though there’s a premium on the latter in Europe). Nothing else.

When he dropped us we gave him a sticker of Ganesha (the remover of obstacles) to provide him with good luck in his fourth year atmospheric pollution final that afternoon. We added one point to the “open-minded youth” category of people most likely to pick us up. “Horrified parents” were in a close second.

As it turns out, there aren’t so many horrified parents or open-minded youth driving around the middle of nowhere in the middle of a blizzard on a Wednesday afternoon between Greece and Macedonia (who woulda thunk it?). There are police though, and when they stopped to [try and] speak with us I thought that we were for sure doing something illegal. I was so relieved that we were about to get arrested and obliged into their nice warm car and brought to a cozy indoor prison cell that I almost cried when they left us with nothing more than a few words of wisdom: “Please try not to get hit by a car”. Fortunately we soon received three different rides in quick succession: The first by a couple of guys in a pick-up truck with an elevated back seat that forced us to reorient our neck positioning and tense up at each bump in the road so as to avoid bashing our neck bones into the roof; A really nice, really normal guy about our age traveling home from a day on the ski slopes; 3) A classy old man in a fancy new car with nothing to say - he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt his neo-classical opera-jazz world fusion beats.

An old mosque, built on a church, in Macedonia.

Now the old guy truly dropped us in the middle of nowhere (we thought we were in the middle before, but it must have just been the outskirts of nowhere). It was so cold, windy, and snowy that it didn’t take long for us to start losing spirit. Just as we were about to go apeshit like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, we turned around and saw an angel floating towards us through the snow. The angel was wearing a large backpack and a goofy smile. The angel was a Danish hippy, hitchhiking and CouchSurfing, as we were, in the exact opposite direction (away from winter - how sensible) towards India. It was refreshing to meet him, if only briefly, and we were almost immediately picked up after changing our hitchhiking technique by watching his style from the opposite side of the road. He was the first tourist we met in Greece. What are the chances?

The couple that picked us up wasn’t anything to write home about. They recommended that we go to the bus station in a nearby village and use it to get to the next town, where we would at that point be able to find a bus (probably) to our final destination for the day. They dropped us at the bus station and it took us about two hours and a dozen conversations with the melancholy bus ticket seller to establish that that next bus would maybe leave at 5 o’clock, if it arrived, and that there would certainly not be a bus from Florina to Bitola that night. It was 2 o’clock.

Left-to-Right: Lauren, Ben, West Virginia, NYC.

We were left with a single, desperate option: try and hike back to the highway, regardless of how long it might take, and hitchhike to the border and beyond. So we ordered a cappuccino, and I filled mine with just a touch more sugar than the largest possible amount that it could chemically (or physically?) dissolve. The calories were much needed. We first walked down the wrong road for about half an hour. We then retraced our steps and walked down the correct road for about half an hour. Near the end of the road, we were picked up by a man (with his son) who must have been one of the most generous I’ve ever met. It turns out that this [correct] road was blocked by snow from the highway, and that we were more-or-less completely fucked. He showed us his home (where he was headed) at the end of the road, and proceeded to turn around and drive us 50 km out of his way to get us to the border. I was speechless the entire way, unsure if it was really happening or if I was unconscious in a snowy ditch, dreaming my final dream. When we left the car, he would accept no form of payment apart from stickers of Hindu deities. They left us, and drove the 50 km back to their home.

Our ninth ride of the day was a breeze. We scored another quiet n’ classy old man listening to alternative world music. He left us in downtown Bitola, and we found a café with wireless, which we used to make contact with Lauren. She found us there, despite our trying to trick her by telling her the wrong name of the place, and brought us to her Peace Corps funded apartment, where we unpacked, breathed a sigh of relief, and marveled at how lucky we had been.

West Virginia with a doll she
made out of used underwear.

We only spent one night in the Former Yugoslavic Republic Of Macedonia. It was very beautiful, very snowy, very cheap, and from what I could tell, quite old fashioned (there were lots of beautiful old stone buildings, things built by the Germans during WWI, the water from the tap is brown at first, and you aren’t allowed to put toilet paper in the toilet). One major difference I noticed between Macedonia and other countries was that in FYROM they have not yet discovered swinging doors. We inevitably aggravated a great deal of people as we traipsed obnoxiously around town, leaving doors hanging open, and thus warm rooms exposed to the merciless outdoors.

Lauren, who was off work due to the weather, was a great host and showed us around her little corner of Macedonia. We had Turkish food, hung out with Americans (Connecticut, New York, West Virginia), and ate brownies. Lauren’s Peace Corps friends were interesting and unlike anyone I’d met traveling for a long time. New York was strongly opposed to alternative music and what she called “hipsters”, but made up for it by buying all our drinks at an old-style tavern. West Virginia was my favourite Macedonian. She was full of energy and had her house decorated with little artful decorations that she had created. The American Peace Corps girls were all warm hearted, friendly, and full of things to say, which made it easy for me to work on my listening skills.

I think the only Macedonian cultural experiences I really had were the local raki, which must have been at least 80 % alcohol content, and an Australian tourist with FYROM heritage.

Rundown

Language: Macedonian
People met: Lauren, NYer, West Virginian, Macedo-Australian
New beers tried: Ckoncko
How they say cheers: jivali (to life)/nazdrovia (to health)
$ spent: 17
# of rides: 9
Distance traveled: 215 km
Other useful expressions: eemafreme (there is time); moje peevo (get me beer)

Istanbul

Getting off the plane that brought us from New Delhi to Istanbul was like being hit unsuspectingly in the side of the head by a stray snowball during an Eskimo gang war. I’d lived the majority of the last month and a half in the South of India, sporting only a swimsuit and retreating each day to the shade of a juice shack as afternoon temperatures forced anyone with more than a 6-day vacation off the beach (i.e. anyone without strict tan-development deadlines). We’d anticipated a bit of a shock, so we spent our last two days in India scouring New Delhi for clothing warmer than our complete 2011 collection of Indian backpacker apparel (no socks with Birkenstocks, men’s lungi skirts, and fake Ray Bans).

Ben, my brother and co-nomad, in his corporeal freezing prevention
gear, having just gotten off the airplane in Istanbul. 

Our flight had been delayed by six hours due to the fact that we had chosen to arrive on the coldest day Istanbul had seen in 33 years. Our baggage was further delayed because dozens of flights had been canceled, and the airport was in turmoil, complete with les femmes sans luggage crying violently at each dispensing belt (personally, I am much more attracted to women without baggage). By the time we left the airport, took three forms of public transportation, ate ice cream to help with the NHWAP (Northern Hemispheric Winter Adaptation Program), and inhaled about 400 snowflakes, it was dark. When we arrived late to meet Sertac and Yavuz at the Kartal train station at 18:30, it was not our fault. I will go on record to place blame on the considerate conductor who opened every door on the train at least five times per station, permitting no straggler to be left behind (despite the cold and the fact that there wasn’t room on the train for them anways).

I didn’t know I was going to be meeting Yavuz that night. In fact, I didn’t even know that he existed until our warm embrace at the cold Kartal Station. In India I’d met hundreds of people, and had grown quite accustomed to the different types of first impressions. Sometimes you’ll really like someone right away, but after an hour or a day you can’t stand them. Sometimes you’ll find that this reaction occurs in reverse. Another time of first interaction, “friend-at-first-sight” is when you start high and you stay there. Yavuz was one of those people who I didn’t really pay much attention to until I found myself all of a sudden very drawn to his peaceful, whole-grained demeanor, which reminded me of my dad’s. He is the kind of person who never interrupts, is very appreciative, always listens, and actually cares (instead of pretending to, as I often find myself doing). He’s the type of person who will give you a pencil if you ask only to borrow it.

Like Starbucks in Vancouver, you'll find at least 4
of these on every city block downtown.

Our hosts walked us through the streets of Istanbul, past bakeries, Turkish sweet shops, and small cafés to Sertac's apartment. We arrived home (so nice to say) to find that his mother Anna had prepared for us an incredible Turkish dinner (lucky for us, she runs a restaurant). After filling ourselves with succulent non-Indian foods without fears of acquiring a bowel-unleashing, vomit-inducing, tissue-devouring, tropical parasite that renders you infertile, I had a 6-month all-time greatest shower. Admittedly, my bathing standards have fallen quite a ways below par, as I tend to find myself content with anything that exceeds manually sloshing buckets of freezing cold (and often smelly) water over my head in a mosquito-ridden bathroom shared with an international crew of motherless hippies who were never taught proper hygiene. That night the boys brought us for a long, frigid walk through the Asian side of Istanbul, which we wrapped up with proper European beer, hookah, chess, backgammon, and a yellow bus ride.

Our first proper day in Istanbul began with a meal that was possibly the best breakfast I’d ever had. After fried sausage-egg omelet, three varieties of [good] olives, two kinds of [really good] cheese, fresh bread, thin-waisted Turkish tea, Turkish coffee, pistachio salami, cherry tomatoes in oil, sliced tomatoes, nutella, butter, honey, cheese spread, tahini desserts, hazelnut spread, and blackberry jam, we all met to spend the day with Sertac's cousin Marve. With a personality that reminded me somewhat of Yavuz, Marve was not only lots of fun to hang out with, but also very beautiful. While very quiet, I have a very vivid memory of hearing her laugh behind me after finding that I was wearing her purse on the dark and snowy deck of a ferry.

The trio did a famous job of showing us Istanbul. I won’t even pretend to be cultured enough to remember the names of most of the places we visited. We skipped out on going into the Hagia Sofia, as it was a little pricey for our meager wallets. We visited mosques, ate real donairs, went to an underground palace built by the Romans (where I picked Medusa’s nose), ate real baklava (which tasted like duck meat - I think I’ll stick to fake Canadian baklava for now), went for 70 centiliters of Turkish beer (Efes), and visited a beautiful train station built by the Germans during WWI. The highlight of the day was the Kebab (2 m long) and Raki experience at dinner - I’ve never been so overwhelmed by a meal.

Ben, Marve, and Yavuz (left to right) receiving oral stimulation from a Doner.

Now most Turkish men are big. They’re not fat, and they’re not necessarily tall, but they’ve got firm, round bellies, thick necks, and solid builds. This is probably a manifestation of all the bread and animal flesh in their diet. The kebab was on a 2+ m slab of bread, was skewered with the largest sword I’d ever seen, and was topped with chicken wings, ribs, breaded beef rolls, and, to be fair, some tomato. All this was a bit much for little old me, coming from India, which isn’t exactly known for vast amounts of meat consumption. What’s more, I was a nearly faithful vegetarian for nearly six years before coming to India, apart from the occasional fish and a chicken wing while intoxicated that made me vomit (admittedly, cause and effect concerning this relationship is poorly established).

Serdar

We spent our last day in Istanbul sleeping in, having a breakfast nearly identical to the day before (it was at this point that I learned that they eat the same breakfast every day, and that it wasn’t, as I had conceitedly assumed, a special meal for the noble Canadian guests), and playing guitar hero rock band (or whatever it’s called) at a local arcade with Sertac's cousin Serdar. Serdar is a nifty dude who has lived and worked in Vancouver, smokes chocolate tobacco from a trendy wooden pipe, drives a beamer, and sings a mean Spice Girls.

Turkish coffee and choco coffee beans.

We also drank Turkish coffee, which Sertac tells me ensures a bond of friendship for 40 years before you need to have another one. I personally prefer to see my friends on a more regular basis, but I suppose if you do things his way you can have a lot more friends. It is also possible to predict your future by reading the dregs of your upturned and cooled down coffee mug. As it turns out, I was so excited to learn my future that I completely forgot to look until long after we had left the café. Living contentedly in the grinds of Ben’s cup was a kangaroo, which we interpreted as a sign that he shouldn’t go back to school next year, but should instead go work a menial labor job in Australia so as to continue traveling and thus avert a four year cold war with responsibility.

I’ve met many people on my travels that have had a lasting impression on my life. However, for logistical reasons, there are only a handful of these individuals who I know I will see again in the future. Sertac, my first ever couchsurfing host, is one of these people. When surfing, you nearly always need to send a request to wherever it is that you’re going. Though Sertac invited Ben and I to his house, as he saw that we were coming to Istanbul. He is a 20 year old who is a hard-working University student. He’s a big guy with a big smile, and I found that the size of his body was quite strongly correlated with the size of his heart. He spent 3 days doing nothing apart from spending time with us. He made us all of our meals, he brought us all over town, and he tried to make us feel as welcome as possible. Thinking back on it, I don’t think there are too many people who I could handle being around for 3 days straight, but with Sertac it wasn’t anything but a pleasure. He is so full of positive energy that it rubs off on you and leaves you inspired for when you’re on your own again. He gave us so much, including a bag of cereal for the road the day that we left (and he even tried to make us take a carton of milk), and he expects nothing in return. He looked after me when I was feeling sick from the cold weather. It may sound like I’m writing a testimonial, but I don’t know how else to express the way that Sertac, who walks like a penguin on ice, and who I taught to pinky swear, experiences life and interacts with those around him. In some ways he reminds me of my super-happy, extra-enthusiastic, always-positive friend Drew from back home.

STATS

Language: Turkish

People met: Sertac, Yavuz, Marve, Serdar, Anna, Sertac's father

New beers tried: Efes

How they say cheers: Sherifé

$ spent in Istanbul: $145 over three days (including Turkish visa)

# of rides: 1 (Serdar)

Distance traveled: Just around the city