This morning I said goodbye to Ohrid and Nade and a little bit later to Macedonia. Different people on TripAdvisor had talked about a bus leaving Struga (the village next to Ohrid) at 9:30 and Nade has told me that the bus left at 10 (“new rules, good to know!”) so I went there for 9 o’clock. My ticket said 9:30 indeed but the bus came at 10, so everyone was right in the end. The border control took 40 minutes again (were borders that tedious in Europe before Schengen??) but finally I was in Albania. My first impressions of Albania were the following: The whole country seems to consist…

This morning Nade came to pick me up and show me where to take the bus to the monastery of Svati Naum. Vladimir joined me and finally we took a taxi with two other locals which took us to the place, about 30 minutes further south, still on the lakes shore. The monastery, as majestuous as the others I had seen so far, stood on a rock above the lakes shore, surrounded by a garden full of colorful peacocks and with stunning views over the lake and the mountains surrounding it. The interior of the church was dominated by the typical orthodox fresco paintings which I find much more appealing…

After discussions until almost 3 o’clock the previous night, I woke up without pressure this morning and enjoyed one last breakfast with the nice people at Unity Hostel. Today I would be heading south towards the Ohrid lakes at the Albanian border. Vladimir-Xabier had decided to join me and so we headed off to the bus station to take the 12:30 bus (which eventually would be a different bus at 12:00). One last time I had the chance to observe this weird place before eventually leaving it behind. Something that had caught my attention in the previous days got especially clear again: there is some strange connection between Skopje and…

I had planned to visit the natural site of Matka today but I awoke in pouring rain again, so I used the morning for some work and tax issues I had to do anyway. When the rain eased a little at midday, I decided to go there anyway and went to the bus stop. There I waited for bus number 60 for about 45 minutes. It didn’t come, nor did the rain stop so I changed my plans and went to visit the “Museum of the Macedonian Struggle” instead. My previous Skopje experiences had created pretty high expectations in me and, again, I was not disappointed. The exhibition lives inside…

Today I stood up at 6 (again) to take the bus to Macedonia. This time I permitted myself the “luxury” of going to the train station by taxi instead of crossing the whole city with my backpack again. My intuition to leave Thessaloniki had been exactly right because I awoke in pouring rain and couldn’t really have done anything nice there. Instead, I watched the rain clattering against the windows of the bus that took me straight north – destination: Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. I crossed not only a country border leaving the Schengen area, a language border, an alphabet border, a cultural border, a currency border but also…

Today I left the Holy Rock at 8 to take the train from Kalambaka further north to Thessaloniki in Makedonian Greece. To show my appreciation for this amazing hostal I left something for Kostas, the owner of the place: The train left extremely punctual and also arrived punctual although it went in the wrong direction for about half an hour. It was the only direct train there is – and included one change… It didn’t matter, it’s just difficult to understand. I did the journey with a Korean girl from my hostel who had the same itinerary and we passed through green landscape with snowy mountains to one side and…

So ancient Greek history is one thing and current history is another. Today’s plan was to move on to Kalampaka further north, which is why I woke up at 6 and left the hostel at 7 to take the 8:20 train from the “Larissa” main train station. I got there by metro and this time really found myself in a “not so nice” part of the city. This also applied to the train station itself. Lots of highly armed and shielded policemen protected the entrance and wouldn’t let anyone with a slightly darker skin inside the building. Although this caught my attention, I thought this to be just normal practice…

After having checked all the must-do tourist stuff yesterday, I could be all myself today. Means: doing all the stuff no one normal would ever do. Actually I had been planning to move on today but I had quite a lot of work to do, so I decided to stay one more day in Athens. Also, I had bought some food from a Greek online shop a few weeks ago and put down the Post office as my address so I would be able to pick it up there and provide myself with 2 months worth of breakfast while traveling through the Balkans, where I probably won’t get gluten-free stuff…