Skopje

Took a night bus at 20:13 (15 minutes late) from Budva, Montenegro to Skopje, Macedonia. Although it was a long one, the journey was pretty pleasant. We had plenty of food and even some wine from the supermarket - luxury! - and for the last part of the trip we had two seats each which added to the comfort.

We awoke to scenes of Macedonian towns and countryside rolling by. Stray dogs on the streets, old women ın headscarves, men and young boys rattling past on exposed engines and wheels (automobiles completely without shells or framework), snow-topped mountains , litter-drenched rivers. Our bus arrives bearably late at 9am.
We have no arrangements for a place to stay, but we realise we have all day for findıng a place so there is no sense of urgency about it. Ignoring the taxi touts we head in the direction of the centre and even stop for potato bürek with yoghurt and a coffee. At a travel agency at the bus station we discovered this weekend was Catholic Easter weekend. Hopefully this wouldn't mean that everything would be closed all weekend as it was in Split the previous weekend (regular Easter holiday).
After breakfast we continued towards the centre until we came across a sign indicating 'Art Hostel 1km on Tome Arsovski Street'. After getting a little lost we eventually find the place and promptly pay for 2 nights. Great and cosy hostel with very friendly staff.

Today being the 2nd day, Maritza and I went out to explore the city, since we barely left the hostel the previous day. We climbed the shabby fortress, which was half a building site under reconstruction, and took a seat on the fortress walls to get a view of Skopje from a higher angle. We then ambled down into the Old Bazaar. What an amazing place! Alluring sounds and smells were everywhere. Locals playing chess in teahouses, withered old ladies selling spices, endless assortments of absolutely anything available for sale in the stalls- including small, plastic, lip-sticked Batman figurines on motorbikes; raw chicken legs sharing table-tops with mammoth blocks of goat's cheese. Pliers, batterıes, socks and blood pressure measuring instruments. We were constantly amused by the way the market sellers will try to sell you absolutely anything (and would later see so much of this in Turkey, might as well get used to it). We attempted to take a few candid shots in the fruit and vegetable market, much to the annoyance of some local sellers. Then, a loud wailing began from a loudspeaker somewhere, which I soon realised was coming from a minaret across the street (this is also something we would very quickly have to get used to in Turkey).
After a few more tantalising rounds around the bazaar we walked across the stone bridge to the centre of town. What a contrast it was here to the bazaar (bizarre) side of the river. Back to Western civilization and trendy cafe bars. It's amazing how you can get contrasts as large as these over such a small area.

Kotor, Montenegro

We arrived in Montenegro by another bus. For the first time since I'd left Prague, I was experiencing bad weather. Torrents of rain were falling as we entered the bus station at around 7am. We were knackered, and not in the best of moods. We quickly walked in the direction of town to look for a place to stay, when a taxi driver driving past on the other side of the road shouts something at us, and swiftly manoeuvres onto our side of the street. He jumps out, and accosts us in the street: 'Would like a ride? Do you need a place to stay? I can show you a place to stay for a cheap price!'
'No!', we shout at him and dive into a nearby bakery. Great. Shelter from the rain and warmth. We stumble around trying to work out what to do and eat, and we're quickly introduced to the local food on offer by a large friendly man in blue overalls, who recognises us as tourists instantly. He points out bürek (already a favourite) as well as a pretty big selection of other meat/potato/cheese filled pastry delights. The owner shows us to a table and we quickly warm up from the bakery and wait for the rain to pass while we tuck into a cheese bürek each.

We eventually stayed for 3 nights in a pension that was located and recommended us by the people at the tourist information centre. The place was cosy, but a little odd and the bathroom smelled of mould. It felt a little like we were intruding on somebodies home... which in fact we were, for a price.

Kotor is a small town by a lake surrounded by beautiful and huge dark mountains. The water was a brilliant turquoise and was a temporary home for many yachts and ships from all over. In the mountains were a couple of monasteries and other hidden secrets. On our second day there we decided to make the climb and check them out. It seemed not many people were interested in taking the same climb that day, we only passed a couple of people. We got a magnificent view of the surrounding area and got to see the monasteries and some farmhouses way high in the mountains.

After a few days we left, deciding to (unsuccessfully) hitch-hike to another town in Montenegro. We didn't do very well, and didn't get any further than Budva (terrible town), but we did manage to save four puppies that had been left by the side of the road in a cardboard box, much to Maritza's delight.

Showered for the first time in 3 days, and finally arrived in Ljubljana. It was suppose to take us 1 - 1 and a half days to get here, but it took us 2 and a half.

We left Prague around 10am (after an hour or two of rousing Teo out of bed by telephone), and made our steady journey out of the city. We got our first (and my very first) ride out of the city by a chap in a Vodafone-coloured red car who was heading for Ostrava. Our first destination was Brno. All was going well, until the driver stopped at a petrol station to get petrol or refresh himself or whatever, and soon realised he couldn't find his drivers license or wallet. We emptied our things out of his car to help him look, but he never found what he was looking for. We mused that he could have dropped his things as we were putting our gear in the car in Prague. With a pretty grim face he decided he would turn back and left us standing at a petrol station 40km from Prague.
The day continued pretty well, reaching Brno, Bratislava and the edge of Vienna by the evening. It was beginning to get dark and we figured a ride into Vienna city centre at this time wouldn't be any help. We ended up spending a night in my tent in the parking lot by the petrol station. We rolled out our sleeping bags and soon got to sleep on the soft lumpy ground. In the middle of the night though, we both woke up freezing our balls off. Teo fully dressed himself in extra layers in an attempt to reheat his body, while I cocooned myself in my sleeping bag and coiled myself into a foetal position. The cold was coming straight through the ground beneath us and through the thin plastic sheeting of the tent. A polystyrene roll-mat would have been a big help. I'd barely used them before and always found them an unnecessary bulky burden until that night.
After the rough night our spirits were still high for the day ahead, but we were to have hardly any luck that day. From around 9am until 5pm we were practically stood in the same spot. We were too close to Vienna and the majority of the traffic was going towards Bratislava and Budapest.
Much later in the day around 5 a young couple pulled up eating recently-bought ice creams and offered us a lift to Vienna. They was a bit of confusion though and they explained that there wasn't a petrol station in the direction of Graz for another 20km, and so had to drop us in the centre of Vienna.

Next ride:
-Young couple going towards car crash. There was a car crash that had just happened on the road to Graz, so our ride had to pull into a petrol station there. We ended up sleeping at another petrol station somewhere in Austria, this time a little more prepared, but still fucking cold.

Day 3:
-Slovenian girl took us to Slovenj Gradec
-Big Slovenian guy drove us all the way to Ljubljana


Teo in Slovenj Gradec