Journal / Balkans / 2014-05-04

Customs, Currency and Skopje

We left earlier than originally planned Saturday morning on our way to Skopje, Macedonia. The bus ride was going to be several hours, and given that we were going to have to pass through customs, we wanted to get a head start. I slept through most of the ride, so I’m actually not sure exactly how long the whole process took us, but it seemed like a pretty smooth ride.

Customs was rather uneventful going into Macedonia, although they collected our passports twice — once on the Bulgarian side and once on the Macedonian side. That seemed like a bit overkill, but I wasn’t asking any questions.

The money situation has been a bit difficult to adjust to given that there is going to be a different currency in every country we are visiting in the Balkans. I’m sure I haven’t minimized the expenses thrown on by exchange rates, but it is what it is. I’m sort of just taking things one step at a time. The currency in Macedonia is really weak compared to other countries though, so a few US dollars turned into a couple hundred Macedonian “dollars”. I haven’t had a chance to explore what the actual prices are here yet though, so I’m not quite sure exactly how things relate.

I’m beginning to realize that the hotels we are staying in are top notch. Unless all hotels in Eastern Europe are like this — but I don’t think that’s the case. At any rate, the hotel in Skopje is really nice as well. A few people got really lucky with a huge room at the end of the hall, but even the room I am in is big.

Saturday night, I went to a Catholic mass with a few people at a church a few blocks away from the hotel. The church was obviously not in English, so it was an interesting experience to say the least. It is really cool that I was able to follow the mass despite the language barrier. Interestingly, they skipped over the second reading and homily. From what I understand, most people in the Balkans are some sort of Orthodox, so even for a Saturday evening mass, there weren’t that many people there.

It started raining as we were in mass, and the walk to restaurant we were eating dinner at was rather wet. But we made it, and met up with the rest of our group for a dinner with veal and potatoes. Before the main course, we had some cold appetizers, and after dinner, we had some sort of lightly fried apple desert. Overall, really good stuff.