Oh Captain, My Captain…

My plan was to head to Thessaloniki after my time in Skopje and then head down the Greek coast to Athens. That’s the route Macedonians recommended. Whatever issues the Greeks and Macedonians share with each other, Thessaloniki (and specifically Halkidiki) is seen as a great escape. But on urging from my cousin Annabel, I decided to venture West to Lake Ohrid. I don’t consider myself an easily influenced person, but this whole trip has been motivated by whims. It’s not hard to change my mind when it was never set firmly in the first place.

The bus took about three hours and pulled into town in time for a late lunch. The short hike from the bus stop to the hotel showed me most of the village center. I passed the open market, packed with vegetables, and the short strip of shops catering to the beach crowd.

Hotel Alexandrija sat just meters from the lake shore, and my room was full of windows looking out over the water. Small boats dotted the horizon as children jumped from the seawall into the shallow water. After a quick lunch of salad and trout (caught in the lake maybe?) I made a quick arc around my corner of the lake, checking out the beaches and planning my attack. It wasn’t quite what I expected. Instead of any sand, the beaches scattered along the shore were full of gravel, or merely slabs of concrete offering some lounge chairs or a flat surface for a towel. And where there weren’t these ‘beaches’, children played on the pedestrian walkway and jumped in and out of the water straight from the walls, or little stone stairways leading down into the clear water. The most inviting spot to me was a short pier that lead to a concrete platform stretching out into the water. It had room for a dozen or so sun bathers and a few kids playing just off its shores. Either from ancient settling, or recent quakes, the platform had cracked and canted in a few places, creating private regions to camp and take in the sun.

I’d been worried about traveling alone. My time in India felt artificial and stifled. But the further I get from that trip, the more I think it was my mode of travel more than my lack of companions that made me uneasy. Too much had been planned out, leaving me too much time to dwell on my solitude. Finding my way on my own, and planning my itinerary as I go takes up enough time and effort to make this whole trip an adventure.

And without a firm timetable set by a travel agent, I was free to wander into the night, taking in sights of lake. I was trying out some long exposures, trying to get some decent photos of lights across the lake when I noticed a girl caught in the frame. I thought she might be interested in seeing the picture. When this type of impulse strikes me, it’s hard for me to resist. I come up with all sorts of reasons not to… dwelling on how awkward it will be, and how unnecessary. But it’s just my fear  keeping me in seclusion. I learned long ago that the shame of letting my fear win out is worse than any awkward memories I’m left with. So I walked over and sat down. Elena is a master’s student in computer science at a university in Skopje. We had a nice amount of things to talk about and ended up at a bar, joined by her friend… a motion graphics animator (I’m so bad with names)… drinking and talking for a few hours. And so my first night in Ohrid, and my first night on my own, ended full of company and liquor.

It was hard to sleep past eight as light crowded my room, so I pulled on some beach clothes and found a nearby omelet. My only goals for the day were to get some swimming in and maybe take a boat ride. I’m not swearing off sand beaches anytime soon, but there was a great security laying out on the hot concrete of the island off the pier. With music and audio books to occupy my mind, it was a couple hours before I got into the water and splashed around. The island was perfectly situated with some nearby shallow areas, and some deeper where the bottom could be neither touched nor seen.

I tricked a pair of sisters into making conversation by asking them to take a picture or two of me. Tanja and Emilija grew up in Kocani on the Eastern end of Macedonia. Tanja was home for the summer from Milan where she works at something (“a nurse, but not a nurse”, she said), and they visited Ohrid to get some sun and water.

After wrapping up on the island, we agreed to meet up later and walk around. We climbed steep steps up into the hills to check out a church, and stopped in to see a quick demonstration of how local paper is handmade. It was kind of like magic when the papier (is that right?) dipped his screen into the milky liquid and sifted out a shallow film of wood pulp. Flipping the screen over onto a cotton rag, the pulp immediately became a thin sheaf of paper. Magic.

The highlight (for me) was taking a small boat ride, just before sunset, out on the lake. Most of the other boats were gone, but we hailed one as it unloaded a group of passengers. I thought there might have been a dispute (in Macedonian) between the girls and the captain over the lateness of the ride, but they settled on a price and we all got in. As we’d waited to board, an older man came up in a small panic. He was holding a large remote control (the kind used for a car or plane) and was pointing out at the waves as he spoke to the captain. Out far from shore, a tiny sailboat bobbed in and out of view. Not only would we see the sunset, but this would be a rescue mission!

I noticed from our time in the water that Tanja was no fan of the waves. She went in up to her waist, but no deeper. I should have realized she wasn’t a fan of boats either. Maybe it would have been okay if we’d left earlier when the water was calm. But as the moon rose in the sky, so too did the waves on the water. We were tossed about like the lost model ship we were sent to save. We never got more than a splash or two, but as we crashed into the waves, the boat leapt up and forced us to hold with both hands onto the metal frame holding up the tarped roof. The model ship never seemed to get close, no matter how far we pushed from shore. When we were finally upon it, I realized it was much bigger than I assumed, and had only looked so small because it was so far away.

Once we’d hoisted it into the boat, and glanced at the setting sun, we all had plenty of time to dwell on how unhappy Tanja looked. My reaction to fear is to burst with laughter. I suspect that made things worse. We asked to be taken back to shore several times, but the captain felt a duty to give us our money’s worth. He did head back, but took the long way and dropped us a kilometer down the coast from where we started. But it was a nice walk back and we were happy to be on dry land.

We spent the rest of the night drinking (maybe just me) and eating and walking around town. In the central square, some sort of beauty pageant was being held and we stopped to watch for a moment. It’s a shame we were all so tired from our travels that we couldn’t stay awake late enough to take in the Ohrid nightlife. We went by a jazz club that was supposed to be hopping, but at 11pm, it was still empty. Elena had told me that the crowds would not come until 1 or 2am.

But my time in Ohrid was the perfect end to my stay in Macedonia. I came to work and did my best. I enjoyed the people and the food and my adventures. The next day I left by bus for Bitola where I caught a cab to Florina, Greece and on to Kastoria.