Part II: Last parts on familiar grounds

Part II:

The day in Belgrade was quite nice, walking around a lot with some people we met in the hostel and seeing some parts I hadn't seen during my previous stops in Belgrade. People in the city shops seem somewhat bedazzled still when they get the question whether they speak English, and after they gladly help you they are almost without exception curious as to where you are from and if this is your first time in Belgrade. It makes you feel quite welcome in such a big and seemingly impersonal city. Not to say that it isn't a nice place though, a walk through the Turkish fortress Kalemegdan and the busy, art-filled streets of the center can be a really pleasant activity. A day at the island in the Sava river, including a swim in the river arm that has been closed off on one side, is something I still remember from my week in Belgrade in 2007 and have very fond memories of. This probably sounds like an advertisement, and actually, it kindof is. I like it, and it is definitely worth to go there for a week or so.

Now, out with all this pretty talking, back to hard reality: hitchhiking from Belgrade to Skopje, capital of the most southern ex-Jugoslavia republic Macedonia, the next day! I don't know if I put it in my first message that specifically, but my planned itinerary definitely did not include Macedonia. After I had heard a very good friend of mine would be there though, I decided to take a little detour. I was a little worried about the way from Skopje to Plovdiv later on but, as you should know by now, everything is possible in the world of hitchhiking. My world at least... :)
So that would be something to care about when the time came, right then I was waiting for a ride near the pay-toll houses on the highway 10km out of Belgrade where a local driver had dropped me, getting slightly desperate. All cars were filled to the brim with people and their belongings. This is the yearly returning phenomenon following the immigration streams into Western Europe: all these people drive home for summer, to Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania etc., taking their entire families with them! No good trying with them obviously, so I focused on the truckers. For some reason, however, they were all taking a rest a couple of kilometers further. In the mean time, a huge thunder storm was getting nearer, and big drops of rain were coming down, changing into one of the most effective out-door showers I ever saw within seconds.
Then, finally, after an hour and a half of standing in the fumes, a Macedonian trucker picked me up, going all the way to his home country. I was really glad to be inside as the thunder storm was actually right above me then. He took me because he wanted someone to keep him awake, which he needed more and more once we approached the Serbian/Macedonian border. As he told me, he had been driving straight from Hamburg with only three hours of sleep in between in Prague. Controls on driving hours are apparently not very strict in the Balkans. And if you do get checked, standard procedure is that you "buy" the officials by giving them some "Suppengeld", hidden in your drivers license.
All in all, I was happy when we made it to the border, as especially the last 30km conversation centered around recounting the number of kilometers we had to go before he could take a rest. At the border I got out as usual, as trucks have to wait even longer than cars, making them very unattractive vehicles to cross borders with, even quiet ones.

Walking across the border as usual, an old man was standing outside his car leaning, with a young man inside, waiting. I greeted the man, and he greeted me, a thing that can pay-off at times. Waiting on the Macedonian side, his car passed me, and apparently the old man convinced the young one to take me! What a simple "dober dan" can't do.
They dropped me in the center, and I went looking for the hostel I had found earlier in Belgrade. I found it, but apparently the woman registering my reservation the previous night had been very busy at that time and hadn't filed me in the system. No problem though, as the kind people there walked me to another hostel just around the corner.
Here, I encountered a nice mix of people, among whom a Macedonian guy who lived around the corner and had hitchhiked several times to Bulgaria from there. "On Monday", he told me, "I'm going to Sofia with my mother and another friend, and we can take you if you like." Now, if everything went this easy I would be in China next week, I thought. We did have to leave at 5 in the morning though, a minor nuisance which on the other hand meant I would be in Sofia very early, giving me plenty of time to hitch to Plovdiv.
After spending a day in Skopje with my friend (the one I was going to meet there) I got back to the hostel in the evening, ready for an early night in anticipation of the ride the next day. Luck, it seems, only goes so far. At 10pm the guy called me, apologizing, explaining that his mother had to take two other people with her so the car would be full. Shitty, but oh well... back to the original plan of getting out of Skopje on my own.
Next morning I enjoyed the extra hours of sleep, getting up at 8:30 and having a tasty breakfast with the yoghurt I had bought in the minimarket the day before. I took the bus to the edge of the city and started hitching (see picture). After 45 min or so, Dragan, a kind Macedonian who had just come back from Iraq where he had worked for an American company, picked me up. "Very hot", was his description of the country, something I had suspected for some time now. On the way to Kumanovo, where he was going, he decided I was hungry and took me for a hamburger and a drink at the local Irish pub with his friends. Everybody seemed to know him in that town, as he couldn't go for 2 minutes without being called for some smalltalk on the street. He left me later on a spot that didn't seem too bad, on the way to the border, with a lot of space for cars to pull over after they had seen me from quite a distance already. It started raining again, however, and I decided to wait it out because the cloud didn't seem that big. After half an hour it was dry again, but traffic on this road was minimal, something particularly unwelcome when trying to find a car that will take you. After waiting less than I had expected I was picked up, luckily, and brought to the last town before the border by a man with whom I had absolutely no language in common, so after exchanging the little pleasantries I had mastered in Macedonian, the ride was quiet. The view from the window made up for it though, as the mountains in the region were quite green, a change from the rest of the Balkans and a forebode of what was to come in Bulgaria. The last bit of 13km to the border I decided to start walking, as it would probably excite more compassion from those few passing drivers. It worked, and after a few hundred meters a taxi driver stopped, taking me up to the border for free as he was picking up a Japanese customer there.
The border of Macedonia and Bulgaria was different from any other borders I had passed so far. It was quite high up in the mountains, so temperatures were comfortable. The traffic, however, was virtually non-existent. The only people there were the standard truck drivers, waiting in line for hours in a row, and not a single engine could be heard. I remember writing in my diary: "alles staat hier stil". Nothing was moving. After walking down a bit and hearing the standard "Mr.! Taxi? Only 50 euros!" I decided I didn't really want to be there, and walked back up, waiting for that one car to pass the border and to take me. It could have been hours, but luckily I was still measuring time in minutes when a Bulgarian couple picked me up. Waving at the taxi drivers, we took off for Sofia. On the way I was treated to pizza and a drink, and in Sofia they agreed to bring me to the start of the Sofia-Plovdiv highway. Passing the hookers on the ringway, I was getting a bit worried about having to hitchhike in the middle of them. This turned out unnecessary, however, as the couple helped me out again. They saw a car from Plovdiv (recognizable by the license plate) at the little bistro at the start of the highway, and asked them if they could take a Dutch hitchhiker. A few seconds later I was on my way, happy to avoid the probably inevitable misunderstandings that would have followed upon hitchhiking between those high-heeled, scarcely clothed women. As I would find out later, friends of my host had waited up to 5 hours at that spot to find a ride. Suffice it to say that I was really happy!

Now in Plovdiv, I'm enjoying good food at my friend's place and a good bed at the place of the couchsurfer that agreed to put up with me. The city is great, the prices are low, and I'm relaxing.
I'm afraid I'll have to upload photos later, as I'm again headed for a meeting, this time with my couchsurfer.
I'll write again when I'm in Turkey, where I plan to go on Thursday. Ciao!

P.S.: pictures are there now :)