Gypsies playing their music at the Zeleni Pazar (Green Market) in Skopje

In the middle of the crammed and busy Green Market (Zeleni Pazar) in Skopje, Macedonia, all of a sudden a gypsy band started playing their hyperactive but great music. We rushed towards them and shot the last minute of their one song performance. Unscheduled, even for the band, was the woman starting to dance.

Food, doctors and porcelain: Plan B

Friday was the big day. Right after posting the entry about food, doctors and porcelain, some friends arranged a meeting with Doctor E. in the Military Hospital of Skopje. In some way or the other, I was put on transport with a belly full of a lot, but convenience. The night before had been horrible. And still, the runs to the toilet had only 10 minutes breaks. In other words: I was feeling GREATly disastrous.

Doctor E. was kind of too busy to be waiting for me when I stumbled into the emergency. It was a busy morning with quite a few traffic accidents, work muck-ups and other results of mishaps. Many people were treated for all of these and I took a number and got in line. Once it was my time, I could get it all out. The story at least. What happened, how it maybe got there and... well, I guess all of us have had the experience so I don't need to go into any further details.

After a few tests (x-ray, blood and urine), the diagnose was very well explained to my by Docter E. while I was having my lunch through an infusion tube. All appeared to be well. No infections. No bacterias (apart from the probiotics) and no illnesses were found. Had some real bad luck with the food.

To top of the service that I got, Doctor E. was kind enough to share quite a few intestine friendly diet specialties and some other gastronomic recommendations. This was possible as somehow the flow of people needing emergency help came to a halt.

Doctor E. thanks for being wonderful.

[Postscript: It's Sunday evening. The main part of the inconvenience is what I left behind. The food is starting to become tasty again.]

Move with a Ficho

Not much to add to what we bumped into today. Enjoy a traditional sight of Macedonia.
Click the photo to find out about some more Macedonian Traffic Situations

The relation between food, a doctor and porcelain

Been having some troubles with my intestines for some time now. Had no idea what it was, so the medical cavalry was called in this Wednesday evening. The three of us, San, our wonderful landlady and me, entered the hospital and after some asking around, I was put on an examination table. It appeared that the big question to be answered was the colour of my processed food. In order to find that out, 'the glove' was deployed. In all the doctor's generousity the result of this little examination was presented a few centimeters from my face, accompanied by the comforting words "Look! Right colour!" Next, the glove was disposed of, and the doctor left the room. I waited, and waited a little more. Was actually kind of interested to know what all this meant and what I needed to do to get rid of my constant feeling of inconvenience in the abdominal area. The more I waited, the more I realized that the lady doctor would not return. So, I left the room to find out that she was finishing her diagnose to our landlady. In Macedonian. San and I had no idea what all this was about. We asked but all we got was the infamous "Nema problem" as well as some smiling comments about the food/water that I've got the get used to. Then we were kindly informed to pay the bill at a certain counter two buildings further.

From an 'apteka' we picked up some Lineks or Linex and headed back for home.

I have no idea about this Linex/Lineks, but I'm getting the feeling that these pills that I'm supposed to take 3 times a day for 6 days, is making my life (and especially nights) a lot more miserable.

Looking forward to having Plan B activated in this case as I'm fed up of being closely attached to the porcelain for such a long time now.

Keep an eye out for the Бурек-eaters

Francesco of the Бурек-eaters dropped me a kind note informing me about a joined group of people's interests in the Balkans. If you're up for some Italian views on the area that Macedonia takes a part of, please do visit their blog at www.myboite.it/burekeaters.

Animals around house

Did some eating the last couple of weeks that was apparently moving too fast for my stomach. In other words: I'm stuck at home in the proximity of 10 meters from the toilet. Maximum. Visited the porcelain already quite a few times today. Brrrr.

In between the porcelain moments, I found some time to capture a few of our neighbors in the back garden.



There are quite a few more neighbors around our house, but so far they've been too shy to show themselves for the camera.

Overtaking a convoy of fuel trucks to Kosovo

Every now and then, before driving into Skopje, you can bump into a long convoy of fuel trucks. Rumour has it that the convoy heads for Kosovo and that it comes from Thessaloníki. There is an odd regularity in which these trucks appear in the streets of Skopje. What this regularity is... nobody I know seems to know. Anyway, in the evening of 14 November the queue of trucks heading west through the Macedonian capital was there again. This time I managed to see the front of it at well - a police car guiding the convoy.

Beautiful sky in a smelly city

Yesterday, when driving back to Skopje, the view on the Vodno mountain and the sunset behind it was magnificent. The sky was very deep blue, the few clouds looked like they were burning. There was a lot of mist hanging really low, giving the mountain and the big cross it bears a little blueish grey colour. The contours of the houses, churches and mosques stand out a little darker in the mist. It was beautiful. And to my terror... I didn't bring my camera to capture all this.

A few moments later, while driving in Skopje's outskirts one source of all this beautiful mist reared its head: it was getting cold and the houses need proper heating, so loads of chunks of everything was burning and smoking their way up in the air. Smelling the night time city up.

Anyway, the most important lesson learned today: Keep having the camera close by from now.

Next big thing: Taksirat

Iggy comes to town. And there's a whole lot more who'll play Skopje in December on the Taksirat. It looks promising if the line up of the festival is as weird as the one from two years ago (first band was German extreme metallers Kreator, then some Serbians who played their pop-rock half naked on stage, followed by the Turkish Eurovision entry of that year and topping of with Bob Marley's supportband the Wailers - completely in line with the Jamaican customs, starting their act about 2 hours later than planned).

Have a look at what's up exactly at the homepage of Taksirat 2006. As far as I can see, there's no real metal on this year (Elvis Jackson comes close). Too bad? Dunno, as...

Iggy comes to town.

Organizing our lives in Skopje

It's been a little while but we were a little busy getting our visa in order. After a week of writing applications, paying different little and bigger bills here and there and showing up for generally extremely nice people, we are now officially settled in Macedonia. As we also have found a roof for ourselves to live under, we can start adjusting it to our needs. As the roof tops a house which architecture was inspired by traditional rural Macedonian houses, the whole thing has a little story to tell. It is all about a smaller base of the house and widening floors on top of this. In fact there's a lot more to it, but that's for another moment to share with you. That's all for now.
Priatno