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<\/a><\/p>\nWe drove around in circles for a bit dropping off people before finally landing at the bus station 45 minutes late. I \u00a0found the bathroom before an ATM and asked the attendant if I could pay in Euro. She stared at me for a second, then fished into her pocket and pulled up a 20 cent coin to show me she’d accept that as payment. Thankfully, I had a matching coin handy!<\/p>\n
I pulled 2000MKD (just shy of 50CAD) out of an ATM and will try to make that last. I should have tried to pull out about 80CAD worth to make sure I have enough for the taxi ride to the airport on Monday. We shall see. Skopje seems quite cheap and I’ll be working, so I might be able to stretch out the denars that I have.<\/p>\n
I took a cab to my apartment (with the driver kindly calling my host to let him know I was running late), where my very gracious host was waiting. My place is lovely\u00a0and has not only a proper desk and chair for work, but a washing machine! I’ve been at a critical point for laundry since I got to Kotor, but I haven’t had anywhere to dry anything and I did not look forward to washing my fleece or jeans by hand. So what a bonus!<\/p>\n
My host took the time to explain the apartment for me, including showing me a few basic groceries he’d bought for me! There’s coffee, milk, cereal, fruit, and a few other things. Fresh milk for my coffee will be a treat! He also helped me orientate myself and told me that a nearby bakery was my best bet for a fast lunch. So once he left, I headed there.<\/p>\n
The bakery was hopping<\/em>. If it had been four months ago, it would have been too much for me. But the lineup was long enough for me to have time to read all the labels and pick out a roasted chicken and cheese sandwich on a croissant that seemed like the most hearty thing there. I pointed to what I wanted and said “chicken croissant,” as that’s what I could read quickly off the label. I added, “Not here,” in Bulgarian (Ne tuk) and the woman held up a bag to make sure she’d understood me that I wanted takeaway. So it does seem that\u00a0Macedonian is similar to Bulgarian.<\/p>\nI then popped into a little grocery store to get a few things I was missing for breakfast and also a small quantity of laundry detergent. I found sachets good for two loads that looked promising and was happy to find Romanian on the back that confirmed I was holding detergent and not fabric softener. Spain is going to be so linguistically easy after this that my brain is going to turn to mush! \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n
I need to wrap my brain around the currency. I basically have to divide by forty, which shouldn’t be too difficult…<\/p>\n
By the time I got in, I conceded that I needed a nap! I put on the laundry, crawled into the rather comfy bed, and was out like the proverbial light. I woke up after about an hour feeling a bit better and actually went to work. It was payday for one of my clients and I got a job in under the wire that was worth a whopping 40CAD for a mere hour of work (I don’t get these often!). So that meant a nice little paycheque came in a few minutes ago, making it a little less scary to look for accommodation in Barcelona. But not by much… I’ll be glad to stop the financial bleed for seven weeks but, really, the last three weeks or so of gallivanting have been incredibly affordable and I have managed to earn decent income to offset the expenditures. I crunched some numbers the other day and was happy with what I saw.\u00a0I’ll share some of those numbers when I get to Spain.<\/p>\n
The plan for the weekend is to work tomorrow and try to get all my projects done so that I can take a three-hour walking tour on Sunday. Worst case scenario, I don’t need to leave till noonish on Monday (flight is at four), so I can keep an early job for the morning. This is the reality of being a digital nomad — balancing work and tourism!<\/p>\n
It’s now 8PM and, of course, I’m not sleepy (which is why I hate napping). I just made a rather good dinner on my single burner hot plate and am thinking of venturing out to the bar around the corner for a nightcap. Oh, wait. My clothes are still\u00a0wet. Scratch that. \ud83d\ude42 So I guess it’ll be a movie and a night in. I might even have a soak in the tub! It feels so nice to be in my own place for a few nights. I had fantastic stays at the hostels, but I’ll probably have to hostel it in Spain, so it’s good to get some solo time in between.<\/p>\n
I don’t think I’m mentally ready for Skopje to be my last stop in the Balkans. What an amazing nearly four months it’s been out here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I went to bed early last night so I’d be up and at ’em this morning, but the bed at the hostel was so hard that\u00a0I only slept fitfully. \ud83d\ude41 That meant that, at least, I was able to get up without an alarm clock and was ready to head out at 7:45, with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[636,1600,1598,1587,1599,1588,3],"tags":[918],"class_list":["post-29322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-ferizaj","category-kosovo","category-macedonia","category-prizren","category-skopje","category-travel","tag-bus-stations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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