Later in the evening, trying to ignore the shrieking kids that repeatedly rang my doorbell and then ran off, I went online and was chatting with Kim, another volunteer who is placed in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. We were talking about how exciting it would be to get everyone back together again for the IST. I started complaining to her of my Sunday schedule; a taxi from Pehcevo to Berovo, a bus from Berovo to Veles, a two-hour wait followed by another bus to Lake Ohrid, then a bus to Struga, and finally a cab to the hotel. (If this means nothing to you, either look at a map of Macedonia, or simply imagine a twelve hour day of cross-country bus travel with no air conditioning, few bathroom stops, 100 degree heat and people frantically slamming your window, if you even have one, shut in order to avoid that "deadly draft".) She suggested that instead of putting myself through all that, I just take a bus Saturday to Skopje and stay with her, and then on Sunday we would go directly on a bus from the capital to Struga. Worked for me! I packed my things that night and left early Saturday, after hurriedly cleaning up my house, and dropping by the post to pay my water bill and check for care packages.
Sunday morning Kim and I ran into two other volunteers, Jessica and Matt in the Skopje station, and we all boarded the bus to Struga together. It was a direct bus, although we did stop several times and once in the mountains beyond Lake Mavrovo, where we asked for a bathroom and were told "Prerodinata" (the nature) by a big fat guy. Spending a week in a decent hotel for once, sleeping in, staying out late, talking with other Americans and being actually excited again for language classes, and going swimming was great. Which is more than I can say for the route I had to take back to Pehcevo! The evening of the 20th, I planned strategy with two volunteers who live within an hour of my region, Jay and Elena, and we decided in the morning we would take a cab to the larger Lake Ohrid station for the 6:30 am bus direct to Kochani (about an hour or so by bus from Pehcevo). I thought man, I lucked out, I am going to have most of my weekend at home.
I arranged that evening for our taxi for the next morning, and although I promised myself I would go to bed early, I sat around talking to the other volunteers and didn't crawl into bed until around 1:30 am. We left at 5:40 sharp in our taxi, soon only to be pulled over by the police where we sat for approximately fifteen minutes on the side of the road while the police confiscated our passports and walked to the other side of the highway. They sat back in their car, they spoke with the taxi driver, they filled out forms, they asked him how much Macedonian we knew, they looked around complacently at the morning sky. We sat, and sat, and sat, starting to get pissed off as the meter continued to run to an outrageous amount.
Finally the police (three of them!) returned to the taxi, stared long and hard at each passport before returning them to us and finally, finally we were on our way again. When we arrived at the station around 6:15 am, the taxi driver ignored the meter and gave us a fair price, so we paid, unloaded our belongings and proceeded to the ticket window. The lady there informed us that the bus had left for Kochani at 6 am. Suppressing our anger, we sat and had coffee and tried not to be too pissed off that we would now be departing at 7:30 am for Veles, a good hour further from home than Kochani would have been. When the bus arrived, Jan and Sunnie were aboard, smirking at us that they had (1) slept in and (2) paid less for their cab just to Struga rather than Ohrid. We all made it together to Veles, and then Jay, Elena and I continued on after waiting only a half hour (instant in this country) to Kochani, at which point we hiked a mile or so with all our luggage to a cafe and ate pizza.
Finally after a couple of hours I caught the next bus to Berovo (Jay lives in Kochani and Elena lives in a village a 5-minute cab ride away). I stumbled off the bus with my backpack, retrieved my suitcase and plastic bag with an unassembled fan from Peace Corps from under the bus, and walked up to the newest and biggest cab I saw. The cab driver didn't say anything when I rolled down my window and let the air blow in my face, although he did eye me rather worriedly, as if I would drop dead of neck disease on the spot. (A common superstition here, that air on your face or a draft anywhere near you will surely send you to the hospital.) He popped in a cassette of rap music and then asked if I would mind if he listened to it louder, to which I replied when I drove -in my former life- the only way I drove was with loud music, especially rap. He grinned and cranked it up, and I sat back and relaxed thinking, I have finally made it through this day. I arrived home only minutes before the twelve-hour mark from when I had departed Hotel Biser in Struga. Exhausted, I ignored the little kids asking to come over and yapping at my heels the second I stepped out of the cab, drug everything upstairs and attempted to assemble my new oscillating fan, which turned out (1) not to be new and (2) to be missing the entire pole that holds the actual fan to the base. Grinning, I checked my e-mail, chatted with my parents online, and then fell into a fifteen-hour sleep without once waking. This is traveling in Macedonia when you have no car. It can be done with planning, but no matter how much you plan, bring along a big old can of flexibility and plan on opening it up. The American view of time being linear is unfamiliar here...here time is circular, and it will always come around again.