Ohrid is an attractive town on the northern shores of Lake Ohrid, which straddles the border with Albania in south-western Macedonia. The town sits on and around a hill which projects into the lake, and on top of which there is a castle, called Samuel's Fortress. There are many churches in the town, and it is said there are sufficient for anyone so inclined to visit a different one each day of the year. I am definitely not so inclined, so I didn't!
Day One - Friday 28th October 2005
Friday 28th October was a beautiful sunny day. It was an early start at seven in the morning, but soon we were off, and the first memorable moment of the trip was not far off - as we were going abroad we would all be needing our passports, a fact which went over the head of one dim woman on the trip, who said she hadn't brought hers and her son's passports and that she thought the photocopied sheet with the trip's itinerary would be enough to get her and her son across the Greece/Macedonia border. How to look a total dimwit in front of fifty people in one easy lesson. So the coach had to turn back into Kilkis (thankfully only a few minutes after we set off) and drop her off at her home to collect their passports. Then came the next memorable event, and this was when the wife of some priest stood up, stonked her way down to the front and grabbed the coach's microphone and proceeded to launch into a frenzied five-minute prayer, liberally laced with Kyrie Eleisons and other religious waffle. She went on for such a long time that even the people who believe in all that stuff had got fed up...! At least it was good of her to announce to us all early on that she was some religious nutter to be avoided like the plague for the rest of the trip...!
The trip from Kilkis to Ohrid took about five hours, including about an hour at the customs post at Evzoni, where everyone piled off the coach to peruse the tacky array of goods at the Greek duty-free shop, stock up on cigarettes and perfume, and stand around outside the coach smoking manically before they got back on the coach, where they wouldn't be able to smoke. The trip led across the southern part of Macedonia, the roads being surprisingly good and the countryside very attractive. We stopped for a coffee at a little place and the waiter was totally overwhelmed by fifty people trying to order various sorts of coffee in Greek, a language he didn't speak. I tried out my meagre knowledge of the local language ("a beer please" being something like "edna flasa piva, molam") and then it was off again, passing north of Bitola and eventually arriving at Ohrid.
Lunch was at a restaurant attached to the Hotel Riviera, on the lake front, and again there was great difficulty getting the message across as to what we would be drinking - the old language barrier rose its ugly head again. Fortified by victuals and hearty beverages, it was time for a stroll along the lake with Marina and her mother, Rita...
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Friday 28 October 2005 |
Friday 28 October 2005 |
Friday 28 October 2005 |
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Friday 28 October 2005
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Friday 28 October 2005 |
Friday 28 October 2005 |
The lake was stunningly beautiful, with the mountains in Albania as a backdrop to the shimmering water. There were swans and people feeding them morsels of bread, a lone fisherman in such a wonderful position to be fishing from. This was totally in contrast to the picture I had formed in my mind before we went to Ohrid, and it was a very pleasant surprise, all in all. Only later did I begin to realise that the picture I had formed in my mind was a result of all the negative comments spouted in Greece about Macedonia, and long-term criticism is very insidious on the mind when the views of those being criticised hasn't been heard.
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Friday 28 October 2005
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Friday 28 October 2005 |
Friday 28 October 2005 |
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Friday 28 October 2005
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Friday 28 October 2005 |
Friday 28 October 2005 |
After our stroll along the lakefront, we headed towards the main pedestrianised shopping street in Ohrid, and that too was an eye-opener. Back in Kilkis the pedestrianised area is poorly constructed - badly-laid pieces of stone laid into the concrete walkway, lined by a seedy selection of bars banging out dire music and kebab shops beneath unsightly late 1970s apartment blocks, with youngsters speeding recklessly by you on mopeds. Ohrid's pedestrianised area is by far a better place to walk, with polished marble road tiles neatly fitted together, pleasant shops under traditional first-floor houses with original overhanging Turkish-style balconies. Macedonia may well be a poorer country than Greece, but as far as Ohrid goes they certainly have got things right in their town centre planning!
At the top end of the pedestrianised area there was a small square with a working fountain (again Kilkis council should take note - the fountain in Kilkis' park hasn't worked in years and is a humongous eyesore), with a tree reputed to be some 900 years old, and a nearby minaret.
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Friday 28 October 2005
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Friday 28 October 2005 |
Friday 28 October 2005 |
We had been booked into the Hotel Gorica, some four kilometres south of Ohrid on the lakefront. When we arrived, there was some initial confusion as to who we were and whether we had actually been booked in (and we are talking a group of fity people here!). However, things were sorted out and we settled into our rooms. Time for a short kip or a beer on the terrace, and then it was dinner. This consisted of a buffet-style affair, which meant you could stuff your face to your heart's content. The food was good, but not what the Greeks were used to, and inevitably there was the "It is not like what we eat in Greece!" moans, but this is another country, Macedonia, and there should be no expectation of the food being the same so you can hardly expect the food to be just like back in Greece - this, after all, is one of the reasons why people go abroad! The wine, by all accounts, was exceptionally good - we tried some Alexandria and some T'za Jug, and both were superb, full-bodied and fruity red wines. The hotel was very nice, and there were about three separate parties of Greeks staying there, taking over the whole hotel, and the vast majority were pensioners. I was surprised not to see more young people taking part on the excursion, as it would seem to be a great idea for a group of friends to go on, but there you go.
After dinner we retired to the bar for a post-prandial, and I tried out my Serbo-Croat again. I was starting to get the impression that the locals were not actually speaking the same language as that contained in my Serbo-Croat dictionary and Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat book - I was not wrong, as Macedonian turns out to be more similar to Bulgarian than to Serbo-Croat, and whereas I was spouting "hvala" every time I wanted to say "thank you", their actual word for this was "blagodaram", close to the equivalent Bulgarian "blagodaria". I resolved to get a Macedonian-English-Macedonian phrasebook and, if possible, language learning course...! It later became clear that Macedonian is a language in its own right, albeit closely related to Serbo-Croat.
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Friday 28 October 2005
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Friday 28 October 2005 |
Friday 28 October 2005 |
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Friday 28 October 2005
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Saturday 29 October 2005 |
Saturday 29 October 2005 |
Day Two - Saturday 29th October 2005
On the Saturday we got up, had breakfast and prepared for the off. Again the hotel did us proud with a good selection for breakfast - cereal, hot sausages and scrambled eggs, bacon and so on, rather than the measly bread, rubbery sliced cheese and overprocessed and watery sliced ham you usually get for breakfast in corrresponding Greek hotels on such group excursions. Then it was off in the coach to visit a monastery on the southern shores of the lake, some twenty-five kilometres from Ohrid. This was Sveti Naum, and it was within spitting distance of the Albanian border. From the monastery you could see the Albanian town of Pogradec a few kilometres away.
I can hardly be described, by any stretch of the imagination, as a religious person, and so my interest in the monastery was somewhat less than minimal, but I did enjoy seeing an Albanian town, even if it was from a distance. The place was absolutely chock-a-block with Greek tourists and it was quite a giggle to see all the tacky souvenirs on sale as we walked along from where the coach had parked towards the monastery - from icons of some saint or other through to Teletubby dolls, it was all there. They even had some mangy-looking fox skins on sale, and, in true form, the Greeks had snapped these "bargains" up by the time we left. What some people will actually buy is a never-ending source of amazement to me...! There were complaints from some quarters that the monastery actually charged two euros for entry, and yet there they were, buying dead animal skins.
After the monastery, we sat and had a coffee and a chat with some new friends, Kostas and Stavroula, before heading back to the coach for the drive back to Ohrid. The afternoon was to be a free afternoon for looking around Ohrid after lunch, which was again at the Hotel Riviera's restaurant, but Christina and I decided against lunching there, even though it was included in the cost of the trip, and we set off to visit the castle on the top of the hill. We took a taxi up there, and noticed a nice-looking little restaurant with people sitting outside as we drove up there. The castle was impressive and had commanding views of the whole town, both old parts and new. The castle itself had been partially rebuilt, and it showed, but nonetheless it was worth the visit.
We then decided to head down to the restaurant we had seen on the way up, and realised that there were about five roads leading off from the castle down into town and that we hadn't noticed which one we had come up. This meant we had to walk down each one in the hope of spotting something we had seen coming up, which was of course quite tiring but yet very funny, as it turned out that I had chosen the right road first time and Christina had said it was the wrong one. How many kilometres we walked is anyone's guess! In the end, after beating various tracks through the streets in the old town up on the hill, we realised it would wisest simply to walk all the way back down into town and follow the route the taxi had taken going up. This worked out to be the best way to do, and it wasn't too long before we were sitting outside at the Sveti Sofiya restaurant, which turned out to be very upmarket and attracted a rich clientele, if the locals' clothes and cars were anything to go by. The food was really great there, and you could even have roast eel, which I did, and which was delicious. Of course, inevitably there were cats there, and they soon gathered round to partake of some eel too.
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Saturday 29 October 2005
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Saturday 29 October 2005 |
Saturday 29 October 2005 |
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Saturday 29 October 2005
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Saturday 29 October 2005 |
Saturday 29 October 2005 |
And so, after a superb meal, we had to head back to centre of town, where we would take our coach back to the hotel for dinner.
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Saturday 29 October 2005
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Saturday 29 October 2005 |
Conclusion
A great time was had! Ohrid is a lovely town set on a jewel of a lake and understandably attracts a lot of tourists, especially in the summer. The locals were friendly people and the prices, compared to Greece, were very cheap. The food was both tasty and varied, and my roast eel was finger-licking good - and the cats agreed on that (paw-licking good..)! We will definitely be going back to Ohrid soon!