Today was my first real day in Macedonia. As tired as I was last night I had a hard time getting to sleep. At midnight here it is 3pm back in California so I guess somewhere in my mind it wasn't time to go to sleep. It was tough to get up this morning. We asked the guy to pick us up at 10 am so we could try to sleep in a little later than usual. When my wake up call came I was nowhere near ready to wake up. Duty called though so I dragged myself out of bed. Today is actually a holiday in Macedonia. It is a religious holiday and I think it is something like John the Baptist day. Since we were visiting and there was lots to do the company we visited was open for business. Our hotel is near the center of downtown. It is called the Stonebridge hotel and that is because we are right next to a river that runs through downtown and there is a very old stone bridge over the river that is a historic landmark here. One of the things the locals do here is swim in the freezing cold river. One of the high ranking church officials here goes to the center of the stone bridge. He throws a wooden cross into the river and a bunch of adventurous Macedonian's jump into the river and swim out to the cross. The first person to get there grabs the cross and I think he has good luck for the rest of the year. That is if he survives the swim in the freezing river.
There were tons of people right outside of our hotel. Lots of people, lots of policeman, TV cameras, a whole team of paramedics and ambulances set up shot next to the river to take care of people who have a hard time with the temperature in the water. There is a very large PA system that is blaring traditional Macedonian folk music that made the entire scene are little surreal. Unfortunately we had to head off to work before the cross throwing ceremony began. It made for a very interesting scene for the first time I walked out of my hotel into Skopje. I took a couple of pictures and have included some of them here.
We got to their offices here and they gave us a little tour of the facilities. We spent the morning meeting people and talking about the work we are doing with each other. They have a very different meal schedule here in Macedonia. You eat breakfast at the normal time. Lunch isn't until around 4 and then they eat dinner around 9 or 10 pm. That stretch until lunch seems like forever and when my mind told me it was dinner time I was still pretty full from lunch. I am skipping dinner tonight but I guess I will have to try and get with the Macedonian way of eating tomorrow. They have been really great hosts so far. One of the guys who owns the company here really wanted to take us out for drinks tonight. Me and the lady I am traveling with really were up for drinks. He was really persistent but I just kept telling him that I was tired and that I really wanted to go back to the hotel and that I wanted to try and get to bed a little early. It is 10:20 pm here right now so I am not doing such a good job of getting to bed early. I am shooting for 11pm and I am hoping I can get adjusted to the time a little better tomorrow. Me and my travel partner did take a walk across the stone bridge after we got back to the hotel. Christmas here is actually in the first week of January. They use the Orthodox calendar here and that is where Christmas falls. There are still lots of Christmas decorations up in the public places. In the area over the bridge there is a big town square with a large Christmas tree in the center. All around the square there are shops and stores but unfortunately most of them were closed because of the holidays. The lights and decorations were all very pretty so I have included a couple of pictures of them too. I will put all of my pictures on photobucket at some point.
Macedonia is quite a bit different from any other place I have visited. You can definitely get the feel that this place is thousands of years old rather than hundreds of years like the US is. Honestly most of the places look just a little bit run down. You might say the place is dingy. It is nowhere near as run down as India but there is plenty of trash around and it seems like most of the buildings could use a fresh coat of paint. The TV here sucks, at least the TV in our hotel. Most of the stations are all in Slavic so I have no idea what is going on. I did get to watch some of the Steelers playoff game but I couldn't understand a word the announcers were playing. I guess I going to have to spend some time reading which isn't such a bad thing.
Well I am going to go crawl into bed and try to get some sleep.
If you have any questions or comments fell free to leave them at the end of my posts. It is nice to know if anyone is reading this.
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