Bitola and Ohrid, Macedonia

On my way to Macedonia’s crown jewel, Lake Ohrid, I decided to make a little pit stop in Bitola for a look at the country’s second-largest (though still pretty small) city.  Well, our bus itself took a long pit stop on the way there – there was an accident in front of us on a small road, with not enough room to u-turn.

At least we were stuck in some pleasant scenery.  Being the only non-Macedonian on the bus was a little bit strange at first.  As our bus stood waiting on the road, some of us went in and out to see the accident or just to get some fresh air.  After a long time, a younger looking man, Antonio, struck up a conversation with me, curious as to what I was doing in Macedonia.  He spoke some English – not great, but enough for me to understand kind of what he wanted to say; so we kept our conversation topics pretty basic.  I appreciated the effort but I felt bad that I wasn’t able to reciprocrate in his language (or any of the other ones he speaks better – Albanian and Turkish.  They have to learn a lot of languages in school!  On multiple occasions when he wasn’t certain, he called his girlfriend, who spoke better English and also computer access to Google Translate!  Aww. Continue reading →