Riding the Cobblestone highway

Returning home last week, slightly nauseous from riding on the upper level of the ~40 year old double-decker bus with no A/C and a bone-jarring ride from the 15-mile cobblestone road that happens to be the main artery to Strumica, I realized that I had not updated my ol' blog in a while.  I guess I'm due.

It's been a busy month, by far my busiest time here thus far.  Briefly, April 1st I joined the crazy trail-running club for another run through the mountains, but we were hit by a freak cold front half way through our trek and had to book it back down the hills so we didn't freeze our asses off.  A few days after that I took an assortment of buses, taxis and combis (vans) across the country to make it to beautiful Lake Ohrid for some required PC training.  The next weekend was Easter (according to the Orthodox calendar), so we had a 4 day weekend and I made a trip with my counterpart and his wife to the Bulgarian border.  Finally the weekend after that I took an old, and by old I mean OLD, train from Skopje, Macedonia to Belgrade, Serbia.  It may be only 277 miles from Skopje to Belgrade, but the train takes ~9 hours, luckily it rumbles all night so I slept, read and relaxed in my empty car.

As for Belgrade itself, what an unexpected awesome city.  I know it's not at the top of most people's travel  lists, but it's a great place.  Very bohemian with many pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and lots of history, both old and not so old.  As the one-time capital of Yugoslavia and the current capital of Serbia, it receives more than it's fair share of government investment, so it's also a manicured, well-kept place.  While there I re-decided to run the Belgrade Marathon.  By 're-decided' I mean that I had registered to run it when it was scheduled for a Saturday morning, but 2 weeks before the race the organizers decided to bump it to Sunday.  Because this would, theoretically, interfere with my Saturday happy-time and Sunday travel plans, I had planned to skip it.  Well,.... following Saturday night's, booze-induced logic and bravado, I was convinced to "give it a shot".  Woe to whoever had to run downwind from me, I'm certain I reeked like a brewery, although maybe not too bad because I also noticed that in my dehydrated state I was not sweating nearly as profusely as the other runners/normal humans.  Luckily my kidneys and I survived the run, but I learned a valuable lesson on how not to prep for a marathon.

In other events, I moved to a new home at the end of April.  It's an apartment in an old Yugoslav-era housing block, but to me it's the Taj Mahal.  It has this amazing machine that washes my clothes.  The joy of not having to wash my clothes by hand any longer cannot be undersold.  Five months of doing that was 5 months too long, I'm not sure I could have toughed it out for 2 years.  Of course it's not perfect, I have no Internet access and no water in my kitchen, but no worries.  It's funny how the PC is supposed to be about increasing the capacity of locals, but instead it's increasing my own capacity for patience.  Whereas in America I'd be pitching a fit if my kitchen had no water, here it ain't nothin' but a thing.  No water, no worries.

On the work front things have been hectic as well.  May 31st marks the application deadline for some EU development funds so we are feverishly putting together 4 project applications.  Beyond the byzantine bureaucracy that is the EU and all of the paperwork that that entails, we have also had to travel to the capital Skopje and to various places in Greece for partner meetings.  I'm holding my fingers and crossing my breath that at least 2 of our projects get approved.

I guess that's about all from Macedonia for now.  Next month is going to be quite busy as well.  The first weekend of June I'm joining some other PCVs to visit Mavrovo Nat'l Park, then the next weekend a friend and I are paying a visit to Sofia, BG (I hear tales of Starbucks there), immediately after that I have to head to the lakeside town of Struga for a week of training, and finally at the end of June I'm making a trip to Salzburg, Austria.
Needless to say hopefully my next post will include better photos and maybe juicy gossip and such..,

Beautiful Lake Ohrid

Orthodox Easter tradition. Everyone gathers outside the church at midnight (then we crack each other's eggs)

Sweet mural art around Belgrade

St. Michael's Cathedral, Belgrade

the Kalemegdan (old Belgrade fortress, built ~535)

buildings hit by the NATO bombings in 1999, the old Yugoslav Ministry of Defence. They are left as a memorial.

Yep, Belgrade.

The Cathedral of Saint Sava. The largest church in the Balkans, it is big.