Sofia, So Good - Day:The Last

"Here is difference between Bulgarian and Russian businessman. When you come to a Bulgarian with a proposal, he will say, 'no, this will not work," and that is the end of it. When you come to the Russian, he will say, 'no, this will not work... for me. I have a friend who might be interested. Here is his information."

Chapter 9 - The Mountain, The Meatballs, The Mushrooms, Farewell

Perfect weather on the final day. Nenko offered to take me to the mountains, and I had to weigh whether or not to accept that offer or take one last day trip to a remote city. I figured having a local guide and experience was probably the most exciting option.

He had some work to do, I had some writing to do, we showered, his mother left to go to her Senior Choir Club, and we were off.  "We will have a nice climb," he said, "and then we will have some delicious meatballs at a special place I know."

We had had some eggs for breakfast, but the promise of these meatballs fired me up for sure. Local guide!

On the way, we passed an apartment building shaped like a snail, and I begged him to stop. He said he had thought it was a pumpkin.

The mountain is called Vitosha and was easily reached. It's apparently a popular place to ski, but we would be hiking. Some time ago, I bought some absurd duck-hunting boots because they were on sale. Some imp of the perverse had me wear them on this trip, and they were at last serving their purpose.

Upward we drove, winding through the stone path, up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen. Hilarious oldies like, "When You're in Love With a Beautiful Woman," and the like crackled on the radio and I sang along and laughed. When you're in a good mood on a nice day, oldies sure make you smile.

Up, up, up, spiraling through a forest of bright yellow and fierce orange. We twisted through a path alternately blinding and shadowed. We passed closed ski lift stations and hillside cafes. "In the season, there are delicious soups here and mountain tea," he said.

We parked. He suggested I not take my camera bag, but... I wanted to. I never hike, so the idea of extra weight was just a concept to me. Why not carry my whole home like the apartment snail?

Sweaters on, we began our climb through stamped-down grasses, using roots and stones as stair steps. The air was pure and cold. It felt good to breathe it. We passed an Austrian, a huge-thighed human billboard for sporting goods.

We forded trickling streams and smelled strange plants, crushing their dried leaves in our fingers. We were soon surrounded by large beds of lava rock and the city became a Georges Braque canvas far below. Smeary and abstract, hazy brown dotted with white.

My pack grew heavy and I thought about being a soldier. I thought about The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. I was tired very quickly, but I kept on. He was some steps ahead of me. Gravel and tall grass. Timber and mud.

"We are halfway to earning our meatballs!" he said. That put some Seattle in my step. I climbed past rocks spray-painted with red arrows. We were going the right way.

He pointed out the highest peak and asked if I wanted to go there. I told him the second or third highest would do just fine, thank you. He asked if I was tired. I said yes. "Thank god!" he said, "I am not alone."

Apparently there is a Bulgarian idiom for being tired that translates as something like, "I am a yellow cheese on a hot day," so he called us the "Yellow Cheese Mountaineers."  I liked that very much.

We stopped talking and concentrated only on putting one foot in front of the other, still sloping upward. I shed my sweater. My body was wet with effort. When we reached the highest point to which we would climb, we looked down and saluted the path we'd taken.

The first steps going down were as beautiful as an affair. You make that turn from the Upward to the Downward, and your soul is a pink piece of lobster flesh sliding out of a hollow claw. I would go on. I would live.

I would be sometimes off balance, and I would take perilous steps, but somehow I kept my feet each time. No stumbles, no twists. Perhaps the great Mammon himself steadied by shoulders. Praise him. Praise Mammon!

Breathless but happy, we wound down down down, until at last we had reached the bottom. We looked back at the peak and saluted a second time. A rare second salute. He asked me if I was ready for those meatballs. I had forgotten them. I was ready for them.

Threw my bags and sweater in an exhausted heap and get in the car. Mad corkscrew back to civilization, The radio crackled and crooned unrecognizably until at last George Michael broke through. "I don't want your freeeeedom," he sang. Lovelove.

At the base, we made a right, went under a bridge, took an exit and arrived at the promised meatball restaurant.

IKEA cafeteria.

I lost it laughing. I hope he wasn't insulted. It was nice inside and they were just fine. What did I expect? Folk dancing? I also had something called Swedish Festival Juice. Don't ask.

On the way home he told me about a farm his father had left him out in Birgas on the Black Sea Coast. They used to grow grapes, but gypsies steal grapes, so you can't make any money, because you do all the work, and when they're ready to sell, "snick snack, they're in a gypsy sack."

So, he switched to wheat, which is harder for the gypsies to fence.

But, not all the grapes were stolen over the years and he had an old family recipe for rakia, a Bulgarian whiskey. It's like grappa. He told me all about how to make it.

We arrived home and just as I took my shoes off, he came into my room with three bottles of rakia and some of those mushrooms from the other day. It was on.

We drank for an hour and ate fresh, cool mushrooms swimming in oil. The combination of flavors with the whiskey was very nice indeed. We sat in his kitchen at a tiny formica table, and as the shadows lengthened, his eyes twinkled with memories of discreditable deeds from his past. Pyramid schemes in Moscow, winning a computer in a physics competition, more about the concrete business.

He spoke well, and it was relaxing to sip at the rakia and listen to experiences so unlike my own. He's his own person, but he was also a charming stereotype of the industrious Eastern European with a million get rich quick schemes.

Also a little like the guy James Bond calls when he's stuck somewhere. "Blast it Moneypenny, the Russians have encrypted these files. Have Q send Nenko to crack them."

Then I dozed.

Woke up with a predictable headache, so I went out in the dark for bottled water. I had a few more Bulgarian lev to get rid of, so I stopped by a little food stand. They had french fries, which seemed like they would soak up the whiskey, but I couldn't make the cashier understand.

I ended up drawing them on a napkin. It made us both laugh.

I ate two and left the rest for the animals.

Went home, packed, set the alarm, and.... that's it. The taxi came and got me. Nenko and I shook hands goodbye. Strangers and then friends. A lot of nice relationships on this trip. A lot of unexpected companionship.

A lovely time in an interesting part of the world.

That's it. I never made any Bulgaria/Bulge Area jokes. I sure meant to. Thanks for reading, fools.

Croatia next time. Or Scotland. Or maybe I'll just sleep like a yellow cheese.  See ya, next blog, scoundrels.

Plovdiv, The City of Cats

"Oblige me! It will be the best bargain he ever made. A pair of church pigeons for a couple of wicked Spanish fowls that eat their own eggs!"

My host here is named Nenko. Very friendly. He made me coffee and french toast for breakfast. He told me about a new kind of concrete he invented and plans he has to get a company to build houseboats with it. In Spain. He's waiting for a patent number to come in from Germany and the construction can begin.

There are concrete block samples in the kitchen. He also designs websites.

"Yesterday was one-hour's work in the mountains cutting the mushrooms. Cut cut cut and that was it. I slept very well after tasting them. Sometimes you get a pain in your stomach or head, but these are not those."

His mother is visiting. Sweet old lady in her late 70s. She wears orange turtlenecks. Tiny, white-haired thing. She asked if I spoke French. Just like the cab driver the other day. I wonder what that's all about. She stirred the mushrooms while I hung my laundry on the clothes line.

I'm really not sure if I've ever done that before. It sure is more efficient than balling them in the window and praying they dry like I did at the start of this trip. Baby steps.

When I was ready to go, Nenko walked me to the Metro station and gave me all the instructions I would need to find my way back. He was very precise with his descriptions.

Here is the mall. It is the first in Sofia, so they call it Mall of Sofia. There are two corridors. One is curved and one is straight. You will need to take the curved one to find the food court.

I'll remember, because it's curved like a belly.

Ok. That is your choice. Whatever works for you. This way, ten minutes slow-walk is the city center, the center of the center, in fact. This way is Metro station, you can see light from here. This way is interesting church, and... do not go the other way.

When we were decently far away, he asked me to turn around and identify the building where his apartment was. It was a test to see if I could make my way home.

The skinny one there?

He grabbed my arms. "You are also skinny if I look at you from the side!" he said. He turned my body, "But this way you are wide. Just like building!"

He let me go. "You are right, that is our building."

We said goodbye and I cut through a high-school playground to get to the Mall. I wanted to see what that food court was all about. It was a grocery store. I bought some yogurt and berries.

Another thimble-thumble of coffee from a girl with a smoky voice, Sofia's Bonnie Tyler, and I got on the subway at the Opalchenska station and glidglided to the bus station. My old friend, the bus station.

Took a minute to find the right counter for Plovdiv, since the spelling in Cyrillic is wildly different. I mean, it's no trick once you get it, but for me it wasn't immediately easy.

I've been doing all right with reading the signs here, but there's definitely a learning curve. Long blocks of text still drown me.

Ripped through a chunk of Middlemarch on the ride over. The contrast between the mannered events in the novel and the wild, industrial background is funny. Reading in a foreign country is like taking two trips at once. Layers of escape. A dream within a dream.

Taxi driver ripped me off when we arrived. I didn't care. He had a trick to make the meter go crazy like a stopwatch or something. I had read about this in a guidebook. I didn't believe it, but it's real.

The trip was supposed to cost $1.50, but when we got there, it cost me $3.25. A big deal for him and mushrooms for me, so I didn't care. In the US, a cab ride like that would have been $10. Only mentioning it because the cliche of taxi drivers being the most corrupt people you will encounter is true.

So true.

Also, Plovdiv is amazing.

When Nenko asked what I was doing today, and I told him Plovdiv, he asked why.

Me: "Well, it is said that one has not seen Bulgaria if one has not seen Plovdiv."

Him: "Someone from Plovdiv told you this, probably."

So, I wondered if it might be hype, but it was not. It's an amazing place and, I am told, the oldest consistently populated city in all of Europe.

Dotted all over with Roman and Greek ruins. An enormous preserved Greek theater. The marble steps have sandal marks in them from centuries of climbing. It's a'swarm with cats. Quiet and still. It looks like they still do concerts there. You can walk all over the darn thing. I stood on the stage and imagined seeing one of my own plays there.

Outside the theater, a cat was the same color as a wall, and I tried to get it to look at me. A local man saw me doing this and made a crazy craw-cao! noise. The cat looked over. I got my shot and thanked him.

I just loved that his face was the same color as the wall.

Happy little ankle-testing ramble through twisting stone streets. Little wonders around every corner and in every alcove. A marvelous old town. Ivy and antiques. Arches and columns. Paintings and singers.

I bought a little sketch of a pig from an artist. I tried on a Bulgarian costume at a Retro Photo booth. The photographers fussed over me and wrapped a red cloth around my waist.

They told me the cats here belong to "everyone and also no one"

A weirdo stamp salesman told me racist jokes about President Obama. A man selling gyros used the word "prince" instead of "friend."

I'd like a donar kebab and a bottled water.

"Yes, my prince, no problem. You want cucumber and spice sauce, my prince?"

A happy day, which also happened to be my birthday. The first I've ever spent alone. Am I lonely? I don't know. This was probably better then forcing fun with too many Uncle Bernies at a wing place, but it's also nice to be with people. I'll be with people when I get back.

I'll be with Uncle Bernie when I get back.

I have a play in production and I've missed a gang of rehearsals since I've been here. Really need to bear down and make it happen when get back. Now that I'm older, it should be a breeze.

When I get older, I will be stronger. They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag.

Made my way to a busy pedestrian center. Half the town is Old Plovdiv and half the town is fancy jeans. There were some nice street murals there and I sat in a park and watched people and cats. This was the first place I've been where they are kind to the animals.

I haven't been able to write about some of the things I've seen in other places. Terrible wounds. Corpses. Flies. May the lord bless and keep all animal rights activists. May the laird bless and keep city animal control services.

Honest cab ride back to the bus station as the sun set. I drank a coffee-flavored cola and watched gypsies pick through the trash. One of them was in wild finery. Tassels, leather bag, enormous mustache. I didn't dare to take his picture lest he place a curse on me.

I couldn't tell if he was real or from an exhibition. He seemed real. Do I wake or sleep?

Easy bus ride back. The moon hung low and strange in the sky. The bus was dark with dim blue safety lights. A man watched a movie about Houdini on his laptop and I read more Middlemarch on my glowing Kindle.

The driver played Meatloaf, Soul Asylum and late 80s ballads.

Metro no problem. Mall open late, so I cut through it. Skinny building still skinny.

Home and sleep. Nenko has offered to take me to the mountains with him. He says there are lizards there if they have not all been eaten by birds. It is tempting, but there is also a city called Veliko Tarnovo. It's the last day, and I must choose wisely.

I will likely have neither opportunity ever again.

The Many Monuments of Macedonia

"I saw a sign in the German airport advertising 'Three White Sausages" for three Euro. I keep forgetting to write about it. I didn't eat them, but they just seemed like ingredients for a meal in a fairy tale or something that would come in handy in a fairy tale or the stars of their own fairy tale."

Chapter 7 - A Macedonian Crash, Monuments for Days, A Secret Canyon, Back to Bulgaria

Nothing happened when Gordon pushed the coffee button, so we just settled in. Folks of many different colors, shapes and genders got on in little towns. Women in head scarves, men with huge domes of curly black hair. Wild Greeks.

The younger men all wear track suits, the older men all wear sport coats  with frayed sleeves. It's like they're in costume. The older ones who wear track suits are the ones to watch out for. Those are the dangerous ones.

Gordon and I parted at the Skopje bus station, which lies (perilously?) underneath the Skopje train station. We traded information and pledged desperately to meet again later that evening at The Macedonian Gate.

Skopje has gone over a recent overhaul. Whoever's in charge (The Mayor? The Reverse Pope?) is treating the place like it's a SimCity. He drags his cursor over the main square and fills the selected area with monuments. He's renamed all the city streets. The maps are all different from one another because of this. Even google maps has many of the street names wrong.

Even google maps!!

So, you have to tell the cab driver the new address but also the old address just in case. Then he takes you somewhere else, but it ends up being right.  Mostly, everyone just heads for landmarks.

"Hello, English? Ok, I'm staying on The 13th of July Street."
This is not in Skopje
"Umm... it used to be called.... Mother Theresa Street?"
Mazza Terrace?
"Errr... Can you take me to Universal Hall?
"Oh, oh, Old Mother Theresa Street. Yesyes."

All countries have their wacky origin stories. In Krakow, it was like, a dragon showed up and made this place his own, you can get that, but Macedonia (which they pronounce with a hard C, like macadamia nut) has the nuttiest of them all.

One day, someone found a giant stone head? And he stabbed it in all the face holes with a trident? And roads came out of the holes? And it was a country. You crazy for this one, mythology. 

The hostel was nice, but it was a shared room. An Aussie (there is always an Aussie) and a German were also in the room. They were pretty loud. I figured out how the curtain in my bunk worked and curled up. Outside, the lobby was playing Michael Jackson pretty loudly. 

I wrote Gordon and told him I couldn't make the Gate. Will we ever meet again? I made a fort out of my bags, buried my head in pillows and slept. It had been a long time. It was 20:00.

Woke up around 3 AM when my roommates came back in roaring. Dozed a little more, then came out to the common room to do some writing. The night shift guy was blasting the Simpsons. Not a lot of peace in these places, but I let it wash over me, and I wrote.

Then I took a long, hot shower and had breakfast. Such a marvelous breakfast! Greek olives and feta cheese. Bread and honey. Hard-boiled eggs. 

Men from another part of the hostel were up by now, and we sat together in silence and ate. By appearances, one of them was either on a hiking trip or working road construction. He knuckled his egg open. It was amazing to see. He probably watched his uncles do it as a boy, and now he does it, It's how you peel an egg here. You tap it with the backs of your first two fingers and it gives way.

I tried it. It hurt. I have small, soft hands. They're good for pushing camera buttons, holding B-cup breasts, and turning book pages, but that's about it. Oh, I'm good at putting cheese puffs in my mouth with them, but only one at a time.

Very filling, interesting breakfast. The salty cheese and sweet honey all went together very pleasingly. Then I got revenge on my roommates by packing up my day bags and putting on my boots while they groaned in their bunks and rubbed their temples. Reap the whirlwind, motherdrinkers!

Out into the Skopje day. Little cats poked around in the marble. Littler cats sniffed in the clover. Made my way to the busy main street (is its name the same?) and headed for the center. Citizens were going to work, taking trams and big, red London-style double-decker buses. Men ate hilarious bread hula hoops while they walked.

Churches and statues. Apartments and laundry. I was using the minaret of a distant mosque to guide myself, but I could never quite reach it. I laughed for several blocks calling it "The Elusive Fievel Mosquewitz."

There was a charming stone bridge. Old and beautiful. There was an enormous column with a rider on horseback above a pillar with spear-wielding warriors. I figured it was Alexander the Great, since he's from here, but a sign near it read: Man on Horse.

You understated for this one, Skopje. This thing was huge and right in the middle of everything. It has to be Alexander.

There were a godzillion stone lions and iron musclemen and bronze shoeshine boys. It was like one of those roadside statuary and fountain salesyards. Fountains depicted horses leaping and fish galloping. Everything you could want. If you wanted everything.

There's a shit ton of construction going on. It's like they're getting ready for the World Cup or something. I'm sure they want to make themselves attractive to some search committee for one of those things. Just you wait. I bet the 2020 Euro Cup has a round in Skopje.

Haha! I just looked it up, and sure enough, they have a bid out to be a host city. Heee! You a good guesser for this one, Simon. So does Sofia, but they're being less obvious about it, I guess. Look, this is who I am. I'm Sofia. Come play here or don't. You'll like it if you do, but I'm not going to draw my eyebrows on and make a big deal out of it.

Short of paying a few bucks to enter some dumbass fortress, I pretty much saw everything I wanted to see. I was full of hard-boiled eggs too, so I didn't really need any food, so... I took a cab to Matka.

Matka is a canyon outside the city, popular for its great beauty. I kept hearing about it. Gordon had been there. I wasn't sure if I'd have time, so I didn't plan for it, but now I wanted to go. Since I got a taxi instead of taking the bus, and since I didn't have any Euro, it ended up being quite expensive. There and back was $40.

Which, you know, really isn't very much at all. I've spent nothing on this trip. It sort of felt good to spend too much on something in a weird way. Maybe I'm homesick for Seattle where you have to spend $40 every couple of hours or you go to jail. 

The trains and buses are all, like $8 a ride. The food is nothing. The rooms are under $20. Before this absurdly-priced cab ride the most I've spent was $30 for an electric kettle I bought online and had shipped home. These things are amazing. Every room has had them, and I'm addicted.

The driver wanted to talk on the way out there, but the only other language he spoke was French, so no dice. He chatted in Macedonian (probably) anyway and sang along to high-treble folk songs on the radio. At one point he stopped for bread and yogurt. 

We got to the canyon and he said he'd wait for me for one hour. I walked into the hills.

The air was clear and cool. It felt so nice to be in the still and the quiet. I think I got a sense of what people do this for. I've never been an outdoors person. I like cities. I like movies. I like a big mess. But after so many days of go go go, this was perfect. I was the only one out there.

I passed an enormous dam, and a sign told me to look out for vultures. Mist clung to the sublime mountain peaks. Still, clear water reflected the sky. I didn't take too many pictures. I just let my thoughts go. I had many revelations. I understand now the cliche of people getting away to clear their heads. I cleared my head in a Macedonian canyon. 

I better call Oprah and tell her. 

I loved being cold up there and being quiet. There was a railing but not much of one. You had to be careful. I liked being careful and cold and quiet. I did make a small video of me singing, though.

Walked back. There was a little hotel built into the rock and I bought a coffee. I met back up with the cab driver and we were off again.

He was super into talking now. He kept stopping and suggesting pictures. His word for this was: "Too!" We would see a mosque, and he would pull over and shout "TOO! TOO!" I took the picture to satisfy him. At a cafe we raced by I saw an old man in a skullcap laughing with a cigarette in his mouth. His friend across the table was laughing as well and they had a silver coffee service between them. We sped by them. No picture. No too. 

The driver really wanted to talk. He tried all the English he knew. 

It went like this: 

You America? America? Yes? Good. America no problem. Good America. Thank you, Clinton. Thank you Tony Blair. Haha, Yes, good good. America. Mike Tyson. Haha. Where you from America? New York? Las Vegas? Washington. Oh! Washington, very good very good. Obama, yes? Obama Clinton thank you. Michael Jordan. Las Vegas. America no problem. Good good in America.

Then he named Drazen Petrovic, a basketball player I remember from the 90s. I was like, "Drazen Petrovic!" and it was ON. It was like we were actually speaking:

Vlade Divac!

Tony Kukoc!!

Peja Stojakovic!!!

I was laughing and so happy. He was swerving all over the road with joy. We'd made a connection. I lost him with the Lithuanian players. He didn't know Sarunas Marciulionis. I used to love that guy,

Then he made a phone call, spoke for a moment and asked me to take the phone. 

It was his son. His son spoke English.

"My father wants to know if you want to go to Neverheardofit Church. He will take you."

Oh, thank you. Your father is very nice. Is it near the city center? Is that where he wants to drop me off?

"No, it is in the mountains. Very far, Very old. The price is $100 American Dollars."

Oh, oh. please tell him I have to go back to Sofia very soon. I cannot go.

"Ok. Ok."

While he told his father no for me, I wondered what $100 would buy. He'd already gotten a year's pay out of me for this cab ride, he was probably dreaming about a boat. America good good!

We said goodbye at a mosque near the fortress and will be in one another's dreams forever. 

Then I walked back to the hostel, packed up, slipped some honey into my pockets and took a cab to the bus station. I was looking to buy some postcards and wandered into the giant hall where they process all the mail. It took a long time to explain why I was there. Nobody spoke English and mentioning Vlade Divac was no help. Eventually, a man with an enormous mustache took me around the corner.

Then I got on the bus and out of Macedonia. Fare thee well, stone head. Fare thee well, canyon of dreams.  I read some simple and devastating short stories by Arthur Schnitzler. I imagined adapting them into plays. As I read, I saw the scenes on stage. I saw people I know playing the parts. I saw the lights and the shadows.

Then I read more Middlemarch (loving it), bought some breadsticks and fed some stray dogs at a road stop and then I was back in Bulgaria.

My host was cooking mushrooms. I shook his hand, went to my room and slept. This morning, there were three little pots of mushrooms cooling on the porch. 

The Statue of Bill Clinton in Kosovo

"The Aussies I'm sharing a room with came in at three AM roaring, so I came out to the common room. It's louder out here. The receptionist is listening to an old Treehouse of Horror. It was frustrating not to find peace, but I heard a witch say she had a boyfriend named 'George Cauldron,' and I laughed and laughed."

Chapter 6 - Delay Leads to Carrots, Gordon, A Statue of Bill Clinton

Woke up early in the Green Room of Nis and caught up on all the US gossip, packed up, cleaned up and took the quiet, winding way to the bus depot. Across the tracks, past the Soviet air force monument, through the deserted shopping district, over the footbridge.

I bought some rolls in paper. One had a raspberry filling, the other had seeds.

For the first time, the Magic Bus Schedule site let me down. The 8am bus to Prishtina didn't leave until 9:30. So I wandered around a little produce market and bought some carrots. They were orange and delicious. Grown from nutrient-rich Serbian soil.

There were still about two hours to kill, so I stopped into a little hamburger joint. I pointed to what looked like a strip steak. There was a window full of dripping meat and a sizzling grill behind it. Sausages, hamburger patties, and stripmeat.

The very tall lady put it back on the grill for me and patted her belly. I patted mine. I arranged my bags and went back to collect it. She stuck it in a roll, and added onions and some sort of white spread. I paid and sat down. There was an ashtray on the table. It's so funny what used to be normal.

I was full from the rolls and carrots but... eating is fun as hell. So, I took a bite. It was... not delicious. I'm still not sure what it was. Liver? There was an "iron" taste, and the meat was sort of... soft... and flaky? I started to make myself sick thinking it was, like, compressed hearts or something. A big slab of organ meat.

I ate half anyway figuring there was enough time to know if I was going to be sick before I got on the bus. It would never do to be sick on the bus. I wrapped the second half very carefully and put in my jacket pocket.

As loathsome as it was, I might want it later. Might get stuck in customs. I thought how dreary that would be, to be in some Customs House prison, sadly chewing on my cold heart sandwich.

Still oceans of time to cross, so I sat in a dark waiting room and read a book called In the Orchard, the Swallows. It was a simple, powerful little novel, and I wept at the end. I sat on an orange bench, alone in a Serbian train station with tears in my eyes over a slim little allegory.

Would I have liked it as much if I hadn't read it on one sitting? Would I have been as affected by it reading it on the balcony at home? On the bus to work? Who knows? Reading is as much about the environment in which you read as it is the text. I love books I read in school, simply because I read them in school, etserbia.

Behind me, an old woman started yelling at her husband and the spell was broken.

It was time now for the bus.

A colorful figure, long of hair and limbs, was asking the driver what time the bus returned to Nis.

Why would anyone want to come back?

My own concern was that Prishtina wasn't the ultimate destination for this bus. It goes to some monastery. An alarmist guide book warned that Prishtina isn't very popular, despite its Bill Clinton statue!!, and sometimes a bus will fly right past it if they don't know anyone on the bus wants to go there.

Fortunately, this dude did, and was sure to be remembered.

I smiled real big and said "Prishtina!" when I got on, and the driver smiled back. A lot of the city names make me think of Sean Connery impressions. "You should see Pushy Galore, Mish Moneypenny. Her body is immaculate, quite prishtine."

The colorful man spoke English and we sat next to one another. His name was Gordon and he came from Berlin. We became fast friends and all thoughts of napping flew away like the leaves.

We were just digging one another's stories and it turned out we were visiting the same places in roughly the same order. He's been all over and told me in Southeast Asia, everyone visits the same four cities and they call it the Pineapple Cake Route. Cute. He also showed me a picture of an enormous mango statue he stood next to in Australia. The world's biggest mango statue!

Very nice bond, the kind you only form when you're travelling alone and meet another solo traveler. We compared notes. He suggests using a couch surfing site instead of the apartment sharing site. He says you meet lots of girls that way. He showed me pictures of girls.

I'm probably too old for that. I thought about the old man I met in Romania, the one in his late 70s who just rides the rails and stays in hostels. His famous line was, "Hostels are perfect to stay in, except for the late-night pillow fights." What will that be like, I wonder, to be too old to be desirable?

I'll tell you in three years. I'll tell you tomorrow.

Oh, how we chatted away the hours and how we laughed. He's a student in Berlin and a passionate atheist and vegetarian. Outside, the hills and farms slid by. Three Serbian cops stopped the bus on a random street and I joked they were looking for laborers for the lumber mill.

"We just need one, and you can go."

Gordon loved this, so I was like. "We also need fifty Euro, and we don't care if each of you pays ten or one person coughs up the fifty, but it's got to be fifty and it's got to be now."

and he was like, "for all three of us. all three of us cops!"

and I was like, "yes, for all three of us. So, let's see, fifty plus fifty plus fifty equals four hundred Euros, so you pay now."

Oh, how we laughed away the hours with our corrupt cop impressions.

There was no trouble, and we moved on past haystacks and lemon trees. The light filtered through the leaves and made little shadows and patterns.

At last we reached the border.

The deal is, Serbia doesn't acknowledge Kosovo as its own country, so their position is when you enter Kosovo, you're really still in Serbia, so there's no need to give you an exit stamp. This can mean difficulty getting back in Serbia later. But why would you want to go back to Nis?

Gordon did. He'd met a girl on a couch, and she was waiting for him. That's why he had engaged the driver so colorfully earlier. He needed to get back. So, there was some concern true love would be spoiled by politics.

There was no trouble, though, and there was no trouble as we rolled through the Kosovoian customs either. He took a picture of their guardhouse and we joked about using that picture to come back and attack it later, and then we were done laughing about cops and guards for the rest of the trip.

He said very sadly he didn't think he would last under torture if "the boys from ISIS stormed the bus." I told him I was sure he would last longer than I would, though I would last longer in the lumber mill. And THEN we were done laughing about cops and guards for the rest of the trip.

The bus climbed hills and sifted through bus-sized villages. Every now and again someone got off. Houses clustered together like sheep in the hills. Mosques dotted the landscapes. A lime-green minaret pricked the sky.

And then we were in Prishtina.

He was told right away there was no bus back to Nis. Whatever else he may have heard wherever else. No bus back to Nis. The guy at the counter could not have been grumpier. The guy at the info counter was like a malevolent Droopy. Just... this place wasn't working out.

Gordon asked if he could hang with me instead and follow me to Skopje. Of course. We bought tickets for a bus leaving in two hours. Figured we could grab some snaps and get out. Snagged a cab. The driver wore a pink sweater and scramblespoke in German. He was from here and had fled to Bavaria during the war, but when it was over he came back to rebuild.

This was a theme. Every single person we met outside of the bus station was earnest and friendly and animated and excited. They love their country and they love visitors and... it was wonderful. We passed a sign that read "American Hospital" and Gordon said he would know where to take me if something happened.

I said it was a good thing he knew where to go, because when I saw the Bill Clinton statue, my heart was sure to stop.

And speaking of hearts... I gave a stray dog my heartsandwich. He fucking loved it.

Everywhere we went, girls stared at Gordon with lust. No joke. It was weird to see their unbroken gazes and invitations. Oh to be young! Men and women in the street walked in pairs holding hands. They were friends. The men hold hands here. It was so human. Girls would look over at Gordon, chatter excitedly in... Albanian? and punch one another in the arm.

"It is my hair," he said, "there are no men here with long hair."

It was true. They all looked like club people. Short hair plastered down or swooping up. Clean shaven. Colorful tight clothing. I said everyone looked European, and Gordon, quite rightly, checked me. "Europe is a big place," he said. He's right.

We ate pizza with hot peppers and black olives. I drank a macchiato. We took pictures of the Bill Clinton statue.

Quick turn around the city center and the Grand Hotel and the Newborn sculpture, and then it was already time to go. If we'd known it was going to be so nice, we would have stayed longer, there are supposed to be some beautiful mosques, but that first impression was so depressing.

So, we headed back, and then we only had fifteen minutes, so we were really booking it, and seeing him in motion excited another cloud of school girls. It was like being on tour with the Beatles. Fortunately, none of them blocked our path. We were at the highway and we had ten minutes.

There was a large muddy field between us and the station. The taxi had skipped it, of course, but we were on foot now. We could see the buses in the distance. Black smoke rising from the exhaust pipes. We had six minutes.

The mud. My lord, the mud. Each step was fuck-fuck-slide, and each racing heartbeat was "godgodgod, godgodgod"

We made it. Boots caked with mud. But... had we made it? The tickets were unreadable, and there was no schedule board at the station. Where was the bus to Skopje?

Two minutes. We ran up and down the lines of buses looking for the word Skopje. But it was just a stop and not a final destination, so it wasn't listed anywhere. Everyone we asked pointed somewhere else. Thirty seconds. I ran back to droopy dog.  "Skopje!?!"

He held up a hand to say, "One minute." He was on his cell phone. Rage. One minute passed, He held up three fingers. Did he mean Stall Three or three more minutes? Rage!

A man took my arm. Skopje?  Yes! Yes, Skopje!
I take you in my car for thirty euro.
Get the fuck off of me.

We ran back outside. A guy at a gyro stand was like, "HUNGRY?  EAT, YOU COME IN!" and we were like, "Skopje?" and a man behind us tried to pull us into his restaurant, "NO, NO, HERE IS BETTER. EAT HERE. YOU COME IN."

We could not have looked less like people who needed a fucking gyro. It was like everyone at that station was determined to be a monster.

There was one empty slot. A mini van pulled into it. Skopje?!

Yes. He needed a break, though, so we would be leaving in half an hour.

Motherf...cool. We're cool. We found the bus. Collapsed inside it on a pile of leather bags.

We thought we'd sleep, but the driver played Toni Braxton's greatest hits at full volume. Then that old electro "Praise You" song, which cracked me up. So funny to speed past churches and mosques and gift shops and machine shops and hear a distorted voice singing, "I've got to praise you like I shouuullllddd."

Driver came back at a stop to tell Gordon to get his bags off the seat. Why? Just to be a Kosovo bus station person. The coffee and pizza and statue people were so nice. What is it about that station? Built on a Serbian burial ground? (probably)

We went through some dark tunnels, and when we emerged we looked to see if there were lights we could turn on next time. There were, and there was also a button with a coffee cup on it. We laughed as only two exhausted boys can.

"Driver!" I whispered, "Driver! I should like some coffee. Driver, can you draw me a little leaf in the foam, Driver? Driver! I take two sugars."

Gordon was rolling and rocking back and forth. We were dying.

Then he reached up and pushed the button.

A Bus to Serbia at Dawn

"Either everyone at the money exchanges, restaurants and taxi stands has been honest or their scams are so conservative as to go unnoticed. A little goes a long way here."

 

Chapter 5 - An Early Bus, A Pause at Customs, Lost in Time, Shutdown, Pizza

If you have the opportunity to see a cloud of birds backlit by the Bulgarian dawn, I suggest taking it.

Quiet little exit from the Mold Dominion. I quite liked the loft and the upstairs sitting area, but the Lovecraftian dripping downstairs and the fact that my wet footprints never dried made me eager to bid these lodgings farewell.

It was early enough to where I could walk to the bus station. It's North of the city, more northern even than the Lion's Bridge, which was as North as I had been previous. I wanted to take the subway, though, to say I'd done it. So, it was a dark little walk past the Soviet monuments to the metro.

It looks like the subway runs 24 hours, which seems unnecessary, but I have no idea what goes on around here at night. With so many early morning plans and buses that can't be missed, I've been careful about not going out and getting trashed. I lost a day in Poland that way.

I bought a ticket from the counter. I was like, "Bus Station" and she was like, "Wha?" and I was like, "Uh, Luh-vuv Most?" and she was like, "Ah, Lavov Most!" and gave me the ticket. When you know the word for bridge and the animal that guards that bridge, you can go anywhere.

It was only one stop away from the bus station.

I made myself laugh on the escalator thinking about repeating the arms flapping trick that helped me find the Bridge of Eagles. "Most? ROAR!"

The subway is fast, clean, and awesome. Even with a change of lines, I made it

There are about forty different bus companies servicing, I guess everywhere. I was looking for something called Niš Express, but after a few conversations with a few dour Angelica Hustons, I discovered they call themselves something else and are in a different rabbit's warren.

They go by the name Muktul over here, which is, like, the name of the chief orc in Serbia. So, I made my way over there, got one of those little plastic dixie cups of coffee and bought a ticket. It was, like, no money. I've spent nothing on this trip.

 A drunk man behind me was buying cigarettes and saying, "Ah ah-ah! Ah ah-ah!" to the cashier. It was some kind of folk rhythm. I think he was trying to say he had been up dancing all night. Found my seat on the bus and settled in.

Time runs so differently when you're where you want to be. The hour leading up to this felt like ten minutes and the three minutes waiting for the driver to turn the ignition felt like twenty minutes. It was sweet to read about the marriageable daughters of Middlemarch in that dark place.

    

Spark spark, vroom vroom,we were off. Then it was hills and tunnels and streams and mountains and endless red-roofed houses.

I packed a bunch of physical books because I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep the Kindle charged, but the Kindle has worked just fine, so next time (Croatia? Latvia? Scotland?) I'll save the weight. Figured I'd start lightening the load and picked up John Wyndham's The Chrysalids. Ripped through 200 pages in no time. Cool old classic sci-fi thing. Absorbing enough to read in that one sitting.

I read it in line for customs at the Serbian border. My passport didn't scan on their machine, and the agent was like, "Si-moon, Si-moon, what will we do with you. What will we do with Si-moon?" but after looking at me and the picture back and forth a dozen times, she stamped it and I was through.

Will that happen again tomorrow in Kosovo and Macedonia? Who can say?

A huge bailiff-looking dude came on and searched the bathroom and luggage compartments to make sure no stowaways had sneaked on.

We passed some closed little restaurants and souvenir stands. Abandoned places are sad. I want every web to be full of flies and all the flies to be happy too.

Suddenly, a sign saying "Skull Tower!" told me we were already in Niš. I thought it was a five-hour trip, but here it was three hours, and here we were. Turns out it's a different time zone, so the arrival time was listed as... who knows? I was here.

Got out, pulled out the instructions to the hostel I'd written down and I was in the streets. Dismal place on a grey day. But they can't help the weather. Twenty minute walk through a shopping district and across some train tracks.

The room was in a cool, colorful building that looks like a set for a children's show inside. Big pink beanbags, orange and yellow stripes on the walls. You can easily imagine a bunch of teenage Australians fucking a bunch of French teachers here.

Everyone would be playing foosball and making tea and writing letters home with their hair pulled back and their tongues sticking out of the corners of their mouths. To show they are concentrating.

I'm pretty much the only one here, though.

The hosts told me the Skull Tower was closed today. That had been the whole reason for coming here. How do you close the Skull Tower? Alas, but when de good load closes a skull tower, he open up a fortress park.

So, I got a map. dumped off my bags, and I was right back out.

Wet little walk around the city. Not much to recommend. Maybe in spring, it's beautiful. There are many parks, and the river is a real river, not like that sad little trickle in Sofia. Broad and strong. Wide and mighty. Hail to thee, Nišava!

In Sofia every park was a skate park, but here they're large, beautifully planned rambles with benches and nooks and hills and statues. Everything was dotted with bright yellow leaves and quite charming.

I made the most of a little kick-around in the main areas and found an enormous old cemetery on the outskirts.

Snails crawled on the crumbling crosses.

Found a cobblestoned street with six restaurants all with those giant green umbrellas and awnings advertising Tuborg and Carlsberg Beer. Those logos and the red Illy coffee signs are as Eastern European as it gets. When I see them back in the states, I am instantly transported back here.

None of these places had food, though. A little purple pizza place serviced all of them, so I went in for a Serbian slice. No English, so lots of pointing.

Cheese slice with ham chunks. The server held up those red and yellow ketchup and mustard containers, and let them hover over my slice. She raised an eyebrow meaning: "Should I squirt?"

"No thanks!" I said. No ketchup or mustard on my pizza, thanks.

The yellow one was mayonnaise, though. They eat mayo on their pizza here. I saw the white squiggles on everyone else's. You Hellman's for this one,Niš.

I half-formed some kind of religious Miracle Whip thing as the reason for it, but abandoned the joke.

Slice was good. Washed it down with another dixie cup of coffee.

There was some sort of student protest in the main square. About two hundred kids. Peaceful. Two bored cops half-watched them. Lots of tv cameras. Not sure what it was about.

In Cluj, Romania, I saw an awesome protest against a gold mine, but this had less interesting signs and less potential for violence, so I left.

A few stray dogs kept that theme going. I wish some giant neutering spray could rain from the sky and end all of us. Wouldn't that be nice? I think it would.

That was it. I had a half-formed idea of taking a nap and maybe having a quick drink somewhere. You know, just one. Just wet my mustache for a few minutes. But... I slept a long time, and now there's no chance I'll see the three fist statues in Bubanj Park.

I'm a little hungry, but I don't think anything's open this late, so I'll get some crusty bread in the morning and take the bus to Priština, Kosovo where they've got lots of food!

Niš gets a C. Look, pal, you want a higher grade, you make sure the Skull Tower never closes. Got me?