Send The Bugger Back

Somedays I end up eating very little and some quite the opposite. Today was the latter.

I started with 2 full boiled eggs while waiting for my 4 slices of bread to toast, 2 of which I put butter on and the other 2 chocolate spread. Yum. More grub to follow later.

Before brekkie I was speaking to an interesting Norwegian bloke who’d very much been travelling off the beaten track. He’d followed up a year in Shanghai by making his way home in a rather indirect fashion, I’m talking about all the Stans for starters. You know, Kazak, Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen etc. Impressive.

I didn’t get very long at all to see Skopje today as I didn’t leave the hostel until well into the afternoon with trying to sort stuff out for the next leg. I’ve got a hostel (of sorts, which is unlikely to have WiFi so it may be a while before I can actually post this) for tonight in Pristina but beyond that my plans are a bit sketchy.

I’ve been unable to figure out online, what buses run from Pristina to Podgorica in Montenegro and also to find a hostel there. Hopefully there will be some info at the station tonight. There is actually one hostel but it looks bloody awful and it’s relatively expensive for it too. I eventually had to give up on the planning as there was a power cut, that kind of took the matter out of my hands. I’ll have to try and get net access in Pristina somewhere and sort out a cheap hotel if I can.

Whenever I’m on the net I tend to multi-task a lot to stop boredom setting in. So while trying to figure out my travel logistics I also signed up to Spotify’s premium service. Warning, you may want to skip the next 4 paragraphs if this sort of stuff doesn’t appeal to you in the least.

When this first came out a month or so back (or actually that’s when the iPhone app came out but that’s the bit that makes the premium service useful to me in my current circumstances) I initially thought why on earth would I want to pay a tenner a month for music that I won’t actually own. But when you look at it closer, what you get for the price of a pint a week is pretty damn fan dabby.

You can listen online to pretty much anything you want without any advertising interruptions or any other obstructions. But the really cool bit is that you can also download the music to play it offline as much as you want (as long as you maintain your subscription obviously) too and you can do all this directly on the iPhone (or a PC).

For example, earlier I downloaded some albums I had on my ‘to be purchased on the cheap via eBay’ list and I’ll listen to them later on the bus without any internet access. The very first 5 albums I searched for were all available and as the artists were Adem, Beirut, Black Lips, Cass McCombs, Crystal Stilts and Cymbals Eat Guitars they aren’t exactly mainstream.

It’s pretty impressive stuff and means I’ll get to listen to a huge amount more of music I wouldn’t have had access to before. I know you can listen to the tunes online via the free version of Spotify anyway (and I did used to back in my working days) but the offline feature together with the iPhone is just so liberating and perfect for travelling too. 10 quid well spent.

Anyway, Skopje. When i got out in the end I made my way across the River Vardar (over a bridge like, I didn’t swim it) to the old town and I liked it a lot. There’s lots of very narrow old rustic streets and it’s not touristy at all. It does get a bit skanky towards the back where there is a massive Market though.

I got a touch lost on the way back as it’s a right labyrinth. Luckily I found some high ground to spot some landmarks (like this) to get my bearings again.

After that I had a look round the fortress which isn’t particularly impressive but it’s worth a gander if you’re about anyway and it gives decent views of the city.

Ohh oh, here comes another Spotify paragraph, I’m not participating in an affiliate program honest. While wandering around I listened to all of ‘Takes’ by Adem and I don’t know how it made my list in the first place, it’s wishy washy nonsense and incredibly dull. Amazingly the songs are all covers. A real shame as I loved ‘Homesongs‘. So Spotify has probably saved me a fiver or so already as that’s what I’d have eventually paid for the album on eBay. Splendid. The only downside so far is that you have to run it interactively so you can’t do anything else on the phone (like compose stupidly long blog posts) whilst listening, but this is a restriction Apple apply to all 3rd party applications anyway.

Food was needed by this time and a little bistro called Trend looked decent and reasonably priced. I had the Pesto Genovese and it was okay, a little bit bland though. On the plus side the portion was rather large and I liked how they put Parmesan around the edge of the deep bowl rather than all over the pasta. Not bad really for 3 and a half €.

Then it was back to the hostel for a quick recharge of batteries (both the IPhone’s and my own) before making my way to the bus station.

My last meal was the unhealthiest of the lot. After a bit of messing about I ascertained that I didn’t need to pay to put my bag in the bus luggage hold so this left me with 130 local currency to get rid of with 7 minutes before the bus departed. I went back into the depot and spotted a fast food place doing burger, chips and a can for exactly 130, well that’s a sign isn’t it. The chips were rank but the burger was surprisingly tender.

This journey takes between 2 and 3 hours I think and the bus has plenty of leg room so it will likely go quickly.

Skopje is near the Macedonia/Kosovo border so it wasn’t long before the customs malarkey, it feels like I do this every day at the moment. The bad news is I didn’t get a stamp again and I don’t know why, man.

I’m in Pristina now and I think I’ll have to get a taxi as I’m in the middle of nowhere, it’s getting late and there’s no walking directions anyway.

The hostel said it should cost €3 and he wanted €8, I got him down to €5 by just walking away when he wasn’t having it, though I’m not sure where I was walking to as there were no other taxis about!

As expected, this gaff is much more a guesthouse (I suppose the clue is in the name) than a hostel. It’s okay though, for 15 Euros I’ve got my own room with cable TV (with loads of channels in English) and a fridge.

I’m enjoying just veging in front of the box, after so long travelling I could lie here for days. I watched a little bit of the World Cheer-leading Championships on Eurosport 2 and it’s the cheesiest thing I’ve ever seen, there’s even some blokes doing it, the gymnastics levels are pretty impressive though. Now I’m watching some rubbish Bruce Willis flick where he’s an army geezer in Africa. It’s cheesier than the cheer-leading stuff.

I may well have to stay another night here as it was all closed up at the bus depot when I got there tonight and by the time I get there again tomorrow (having also sorted a hotel) my bus may have left or at the least I won’t have time to see this city.

بطاقة الطالب is the most unusual search of the day. WTF?

Okay, I suppose I’d better reign this one in then. Time for tubby bye bye.