Macedonia (April 19-20, 2011

The trip was full of hairpin turns.  I spent 2 1/2 hours with my legs braced so that I wouldn't fall forward or to the sides & holding/bracing Luke, so he didn't fly anywhere.  The minibus driver was a fast driver on not so great roads with hardly any shocks in the car.  It was very hard to take photos.  I pretty much gave up trying, even though the views were amazing.  I didn't realize that there were so many mountains on the eastern side of Albania.  We had traveled down south along the coast before, so I knew that was one long chain of steep mountains.  But I didn't realize that it would be the same going inland.  I have decided that Albania is just a series of mountains with some cities and towns tucked into the valleys and along the coast.  Really.  It's a bunch of mountains.  I can't believe they built roads here.

Near the end of the minibus ride, a few people hanging out in a town.

Notice the hug.  People are more physical here.  More huggy, more kissy.  Even in the streets, even while crossing the streets with traffic coming on, even men with men.  It's kind of nice.  That was one of the differences I noted in Macedonia - I didn't see as much affection between people in the streets.

I suppose I should be more thorough & post the photos of us with the signs of us crossing the border.  This photos was taken inside of Macedonia at a place called St. Naum (or Sveti Naum or Shen Naum, depending on the language you choose).  It is an Orthodox monastery, founded around 900, just over the border in Macedonia.  It was in a beautiful & peaceful location.  As we were taking our walk (5-10 minute walk) between border crossings, the air had a beautiful, fresh smell to it & we could hear what we thought were roosters crowing in the distance.  It later turned out to be peacocks.  30 of them.  The place seemed like more of a peacock sanctuary than a monastery.  Very peaceful.

In this photo are 6 peacocks & 1 peahen.  She was quite the attraction for them.  Luke was impressed with how much the peacocks loved her.  (They kept following her around.)  I've seen peacocks before, but was still amazed by how beautiful they are, especially when they open up their tail like a fan.

It's hard to see, but there is a snow covered mountain in the distance.  The little piece of Macedonia that we saw was mountains bordering on a huge lake (Lake Ohrid, which is shared with Albania).

A monk who has been there for 25 years.  When he got there in '86, there were 2 male peacocks.  They were soon joined by a female, who joined them from the wild.  Now there are 30 of them & they dominate the place.  There is one peacock who attacked a child in the face at some point (jumped at him from a meter or two away), so now they have signs up to warn you about protecting your children.  This monk explained all of this to me and pointed out which peacock was the dangerous one.

This style of church is the exactly the same as the one we saw in Berat, Albania last year. 

Waiting for the bus to take us to Ohrid, an old city on the lake.

The kids looking at minnows in Lake Ohrid.

The next day.  The kids loved seeing the cats everywhere.  Someone (I forget whether it was there or back here in Albania - Macedonia, I think) was laughing at how in America (he had visited there, I think), people sell cats in the store for $500 each, and here, people won't even take them for free.

The kids looking at the castle up on the hill.  We didn't have time to get there.  We did walk through the old city for a couple of hours, but we had a bus to catch at 1:30, and had spent the morning trying to catch fish in a net the kids had bought.  (They were successful at catching & releasing a bunch of minnows.)  The old town  had narrow, stone streets, with old-fashioned, European style houses built close together, sometimes overhanging the streets a bit.  Very charming.  We wished we had more time there.  We thought about extending our trip by a day, and just skipping our trip to northern Albania (planned to start in a couple of days from now), but decided to stick with our original plan.

Nathan found this crown of grape vines in an old ampitheatre.  I'm guessing that someone had put on a Greek play recently & had dropped this, but perhaps someone just made it for fun.  He wore it all afternoon.  This is us on the bus ride out of the city.  I really love his expression in this.

Forgive the vignettes in the next bunch of pictures.  I brought a cheap lens with me for this trip, so I wouldn't risk damaging or losing an expensive lens (plus, it looks less expensive).  I forgot that it's the wrong size lens for my current camera body.  Up until this point, I've been shooting using a cropped portion of my viewfinder & of my CCD.  I was feeling the need to see a wider view in my lens, though, on the ride home, so I shot full frame, which adds a vignette.  Later I can crop out the vignette if I want.

On the ride home, our mini-bus was a little more sturdy and the driver in slightly less of a hurry, so I was able to take some photos, although it was still a challenge.  But at least I didn't have to brace myself, so it was worth a try.  All of these photos are taken while the bus is in motion.  Many photos that I tried to take were totally unusable.  Trees and poles often got in the way.  I think these are worth keeping just to remind us of how mountainous and varied the terrain was.

Hairpin turns that we just went through taken while driving a little higher up the mountain.

These 2 former strangers had a very lively & sometimes heated 3 hour discussion.  The guy on the right reeked of Raki, which the woman didn't hestitate to mention.  The woman was quite the hot ticket - opinionated & very talkative.  The guy on the right gave her a run for her money.  Even if I didn't understand what they were saying all the time (I caught pieces & I asked Genci a bunch of times), I enjoyed listening to the banter.  Quite funny at times.  Albanians do not seem to be afraid to speak their mind to each other.  The Raki guy also like to egg people on (and then wink at Genci).  Entertaining.