Escape from the City...

We decided, that since we're already in the area, we might as well swing by Kosovo, because, Hey, when are we ever going to do that again??

We managed to pass an entire day in Podgorica waiting for the bus, and I will say this much - thank you America for providing toilets at all transportation hubs, because the "piss holes" provided in many of these eastern countries are not so pleasant (read: literally, just a hole in the ground, and often not too clean). We hopped on an overnight bus to Prishtina, Kosovo and were only briefly stopped by UN Border patrol who had us deboard the bus and bring out our lugggage so they could rifle through it (though they never seem to want to search through our backpacks at any of the checkpoints we've been through) and yet they did not stamp our passports!!! (we were very disappointed)

Arriving in Kosovo at 4 am - wow. We met the only other passenger who was a bit out of place, and spent the next 4 hours drinking tea at the cafe until it was a reasonable hour to call the hotel we had found in the guide book. It's not all that kind to show up to a guesthouse with no reservation at 4 am...

We found a room and took a long nap before hitting the town, so to speak. Prishtina is the capital city, and also the headquarters for all of the international organizations - seemingly every other car to pass by was a white Toyota 4Runner with UN painted on the side, or some other accronym for some other org... As it was Sunday, there wasn't really all that much to see or do, but we grabbed a sandwich at a cafe and were surprised to hear so much english being spoken. Just like the white cars, nearly every other person you pass seems to be there for some governmental purpose or other. And fittingly, we spent a good deal of the evening chatting with some Brits at the expat pub.

After Prishtina, we jumped a bus to Skopje, Macedonia - only a few hours away. It was our first experience with the cyrillic alphabet, and surprisingly we didn't have all that much difficulty deciphering street names and such. It was also our first encounter with really good Greek salad: thank God for good feta cheese! Skopje is a rather modern city, and our highlight was tracking down this restaurant celebrating Tito of the former Yugoslavia (picture a cardboard cutout) and former comunist paraphernalia.

In order to escape the super heat, we headed to Lake Ohrid which shares a shore with Albania. The weather was so much better here, and we stayed in a comfy guesthouse in this comfy town, walking everywhere for a day and a half. It was really relaxing to just hang out, eating greek salad (which we will not tire of) and sipping cocas (coca light... soo good!)