Gostivar was the adventure for today! This is a town just about 40 min south of
Tetovo. Since I came to Skopje last night, it was going to be a bus from Skopje this time which is about 1 hour 40min; that includes time to drive through Skopje. Lizzie, Jusin, Cassidy and I loaded the bus at
9:30am and were off to Gostivar. The sad part about today was the weather really took a turn. It was rainy and pretty cold. It got up to about 10 degrees Celsius which is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Our first stop in Gostivar was Obama Cafe! We felt like a bit of a cliche sitting in there having our coffee, but it was a pretty good time!
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| The Orthodox Church Gate |
We then proceeded to the city center. Today was the Fun Run and Harvest Festival so the town was bustling (for a cold rainy day anyway). Once in the center, we went into the Orthodox Church. It was beautiful. The paintings inside are gorgeous along with the chandlers.
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| Standing at the front door looking up |
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| The whole church from across the Center |
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The Harvest festival was moved in doors because of the weather, but we were still able to see some traditional folk dancing and instruments. You will notice that many of the dancers are wearing the Albanian flag. Gostivar is like Tetovo in that it is a very ethically mixed community with ethnic Albanians and ethnic Macedonians.
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| Dancing |
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| The Dancers after the performance |
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| Following the dancers, there were musicians |
After the festival we walked back to the old clock tower in town and the Mosque. I decided to not go into the mosque, you had to take off your shoes and cover your head out of respect, but I decided that I would rather look from outside. The man that took Cassidy and Daniel in was very welcoming and showed them all the parts of the mosque inside. I looked in from the door. I had never seen a mosque before; outside is an area for the worshipers to wash their feet, faces and hands before going inside for prayer, inside it is a large open room with an obvious area that would be considered the front, the carpet is a pattern with rectangles one for each worshiper and the people stand or kneel within their square. It was a really beautiful building. I took pictures of the outside to share.
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| The old Clock Tower |
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| The mosque and grave yard |
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| The mosque from outside with the gate |
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| Another view outside |
At that point we decided we needed some dessert. I had my first Baklava in country! Lizzie, Justin and I shared different types so we knew what there was to offer. It was SO yummy!!! I do have to say though, that mom does a good job at Christmas with our baklava one of the types I had today tasted just the same!! However, maybe I can bring back some varieties that we haven't had before!
We headed back to the bus station, where we missed the
3:30pm bus and the next one was at
5:00pm so we killed some time in a cafe at the station and had some french fries :). When we got back to Skopje Erin joined us and we went out to eat at a traditional Middle Eastern
Restaurant. We were all so cold that we got warm drinks, they chose hot chocolate, but I had Arabic Tea. It came with a lokum which was like a little gummy covered with powdered sugar, sugar cubes and the hot tea. Pretty cool! For dinner I ordered the Chicken Tikke - SO GOOD!!!! Under the skewers was cilantro and very thinly sliced onions- I could eat that more often!
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| Arabic tea |
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| The Chicken Tikke with potatoes |
Cassidy, Erin and I decided to go back to the festival going on in Skopje for a while where we drank warm vareno-vino. Cassidy was going to be going to
Greece tomorrow so she headed back to get ready, but Erin and I decided to stay out for a while longer. We went to a cafe where she helped me order NesCafe with no milk and no sugar- It was the closest thing I have had to black coffee!!! (I have been missing black coffee and iced tea BIG TIME). When we came back we went to Erin and Cassidy's neighbors to hang out with them for a while. They were playing a game that translated to something like "Don't be mad" it was just like SORRY! It was fun to watch them play- I was even able to pick out the numbers they were saying in Macedonian!! By the time we left it was time for the Husker Game to start!!! I got my computer all ready to listen... and the power went out! I was totally bummed. I decided to set my alarm for one hour too see if it came back on so I could listen, and it did! I have to admit I was in and out of sleep, it didn't look to good when I got the computer all set, something like 27-6, I about cried. But then when I woke up again it was 27-20 and I got pretty excited. I have to say after last week's showing, I was worried when we were down so far... but what a come back! I am looking forward to reading the commentary and articles about the game!
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