At 3:30 in the afternoon I call Genna from our favorite cafe where I have been cutting and pasting away my afternoon. "She'll be here in 20 minutes if you can make it." I pause for a minute, wondering if there is some feasible way that I can not make it. But the ease of using Skopje's Partizanska buses makes for a timely arrival, leaving me with little legitimate excuse to ditch out.
It's a combination of factors that urges my naughty shoulder devil to forsake Genna for this journey to see a pile of rocks on top of a hill in the farmlands outside of Skopje. At the top of the list is UNESCO and hospitality. That's right. We are in a situation in which UNESCO and hospitality have the potential to ruin our lives. First of all, UNESCO, I don't know if you foresaw this when you set about to indulge the great and lesser nations of this world by throwing your clement little labels willy nilly across the globe, but I beg you: STOP!
We have dropped jaws at Agra and Varanasi; we have creeped the rickety tracks of the toy train in Darjeeling; we have been sexually harassed outside the crumbling Red Fort in Delhi and in the Medina of Marrakech. We have intoxicated ourselves in the Alto Douro Wine Region; we have circumnavigated the Monastary of Batalha; we have stalled the car lost in the hilly cultural landscapes of Sintra and we have blistered our heels in the old cities of Salamanca, Cáceres and Merida. And yes, we have also been lectured about missing the great rock-art sites in the Coa Valley, the historic city of Meknes, Santiago de Compostela and Goa. No, we did NOT make it to Granada or Evora or Fez. And damnit, before we make it home there is a damn good chance that Genna and I will not have been to the one and only Macedonian UNESCO heritage site: Ohrid. So, UNESCO, I beg you, end this plague of pride that you, like some depraved ecumenical Santa, have dispersed helter skelter upon this earth. You are killing me.
Secondly, hospitality, is it possible to have too much of it? Since we would be nowhere without our extensive Macedonian network, that's a big round NO. However, it is possible to have too much of it in too short of time: I call it hospitality saturation. They are amazing. Macedonians are so adept at hosting that a 22 year old (featured in Macedonia's newspaper with a subtitle reading They may look small in number, but these hooligans cause a big mess), is able to arise from an all night bender, stumble down the street, take us two bus rides away to his uncle's bakery where we learn to make burek, and manage to hold off chain smoking in front of his father the whole while. Oh yeah, and at any level of intoxication or sleep deprivation the kid can beat me at backgammon while ensuring that I have a Nescafe in one hand and a lemonade in the other.
Their capability to over-indulge me with host offerings is as epic as their ability to commune. On the day of our trip to the largest waterfall in Macedonia our incredible guests manage to get a borrowed car from Skopje to come pick us up from the bus station, serve us a breakfast of yogurt, fresh apricot juice, water, Turkish coffee and fresh homemade pastry before driving us to the border with Bulgaria. Here, while we overcome the difficulties of a lost and stalled vehicle, we purchase a watermelon, a round of beers, and a delicious fruit I've never seen or tasted before in my life. Our return rewards us with 5 kebaps, a Shopska salad and another round of beers. Then, on the way back towards the city we pause for a look at Stip's oldest church and a hike up to the town's viewing point where the pervasively popular cross at the summit signifies our triumph. Anetta then buys us coffee while she waits for our bus to come pick us up and take us back to the waiting arms of Pance's parents who have dinner prepared to be followed by ice cream and coffee. Saturated I say.
So, after a full week or of these types of interactions (pause for more passive Peace Corps Jerry who just gets me drunk and lets me pass out on his couch), I realize that my base saturation level is far askew from my Eastern European counterparts. This, I tell myself, will be my final endured UNESCO moment and from here on out I will make these kindly Macedonians mete out their hospitality in more reasonable doses, like once a day. And so, let the Kokino adventure begin...
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