Greetings from Arcadia,
I’ve said from the beginning that my travels would end when the money I saved up runs out. As it turns out, ten months of globetrotting and seeing fabulous places, doing things I’d only ever dreamed of takes a toll on the Travel Fund. I could have stretched out my travels to see more places by cutting out the costly activities or skipping out on the more expensive countries, but I would have missed out on the most exciting and meaningful parts of travel, the things that made it worth it. So, I am home now, and acknowledging that this is the end of my full-time world traveling. Though I fully anticipate I’ll continue traveling in the future, it won’t be for months at a time on the road.
If you don’t know by now, I’m usually one to reach out and meet a challenge head on. I’m not normally a procrastinator, and I have the patience of a three-year-old, so waiting to do things makes me irrational and cranky. However. The letter I’ve been meaning to write about my time in the Balkans (and my subsequent trip to Iceland) have spent weeks languishing on my computer, waiting to be written, even though they are near the top of my miles-long To Do List. I could say that since the moment I stepped foot across the doorway to of our home in Utah my To Do List has taken over my life. But that’s not entirely true. I could say that I’ve been taking time to unwind from my travels, which is partially true, but not the whole story. The truth of the matter is that these two letters are all that stand between me being “Sarah – The World Traveler” and “Sarah – The Out-of-Work Thirty Year Old.”
Like planting a tree outside your window then being frustrated when the leaves block your view, I’ve created a mental roadblock which prevents me from putting words down about these places. If I am in the mood to be honest with myself, I can see that it’s because these letters represent the ending of something I worked towards for years, a dream that seemed unreachable but that defined my life for a time. If I’m not in the mood, it’s because I don’t have anything to say about these places and I’ve lost the ability to have an original thought (if I ever had it in the first place).
It was a period of absolute freedom that I don’t expect I’ll ever have the good luck to repeat. ‘Once in a lifetime’ opportunities, I’ve learned, are a blessing and a curse. Even if you seize the opportunity the best you can, you have to mourn its passing like any other loss. Confessing these things to Dan, who on occasion has the wisdom of Job, he used his typical blunt logic to point out that “it’s over anyway, might as well finish it properly.” Sometimes it takes the people you love the most to kick you in the ass when you need it. So, here goes.
I could tell from 10,000 feet up that I was going to like this place. On a clear, sunny day (as if there is any other kind of day in the Mediterranean) the plane descended into Dubrovnik, passing over the outlying islands as sailing ships cut through the deep blues and greens of the Adriatic. I didn’t like saying goodbye to my husband in Slovenia, but we parted once again and I made my way to the southern tip of Croatia to embark on a culinary journey through the Balkans.
While it’s not known around the world for culinary prowess, at least not in the same way a food trip to India, Mexico, or China might have been, the Balkans have a lot of uniquely flavorful and delicious things to offer a hungry traveler. I had spent the great majority of my travels this year thriftily cooking for myself in various Airbnb kitchens, which saved me a bundle in food costs (a trade-off I was willing to make in order to afford some of the more expensive tours and activities), but it also meant that I missed quite a lot of the local cuisine as I passed through. Not this time; this was meant to be a full immersion into the food and culture of the five Balkan countries we’d be visiting over the next two weeks. And by we, I mean the group of mostly middle-aged Australian women who made up the bulk of the eleven-person group tour, plus a British man and two other American women. Our leader, a Macedonian named Alec, met up with the group in the evening and we headed out for an introductory dinner in Dubrovnik’s old town. I had arrived a couple days ahead of the tour to explore the beautiful city on my own, which included a sunset kayak trip and swimming in one of the caves along the edge of the sea, dodging the multitude of Game of Thrones tour groups, feasting on the fresh seafood which is the specialty of this coastal country, lamenting my lack of a sun hat, and enjoying the view from the balcony of my little apartment.
The first official day of the tour, we piled aboard a bus and headed north out of Dubrovnik along the coastal road, stopping at a very old village known for its sea salt production (where I remedied my lack of a proper sun hat), and at a beautiful terraced restaurant where mussels and whole pan-fried fish were served with Croatian wines. Overlooking the sea, eating the local catch and enjoying the Aussie chatter around me, I sensed these next two weeks were going to be more relaxed than my previous travels, and settled in for a comfortable diversion from “adventure.”
My co-travelers were from all corners of Australia – from Perth to Sydney, and places in between – and since my knowledge of the country pretty much begins and ends with marsupials and Steve Irwin, I was keenly interested in what the lives of Australians are like. Turns out, not too different from the rest of us, they just have better weather and their toilets flush the wrong way. Oh, and they’re insanely well traveled. Seriously, the sheer diversity of places some of these people have been makes me look like a miserly homebody by comparison. One of the women I spent a lot of time with on the trip, Jodie, is a nurse and serious world traveler having been to over 80 countries. Some of her tales from traveling solo in South America are frankly unbelievable, but told with the typical Aussie flair for storytelling. She spent the weeks just before our food trip sailing the up and down the coast on a small yacht and checking out parts of Croatia we wouldn’t be visiting. If there’s any sort of competition for world’s most glamorous nurse, she wins, hands down. Lindy is a public housing social worker who has an incredible zest for life, food, and travel, and kept our various local guides on their toes by asking endless questions and insisting on tasting absolutely everything. I also got to know Neal well – who had the distinction of being the lone man of the group (apart from tour guide Alec) and the only Brit. He works in real estate and takes free time from work to travel to far flung places like Sri Lanka and India, where he learns everything there is to know about the history, culture, economic and social dynamics of the country. Seriously, ask him anything, I never managed to stump him.
I got to know the group better at our next stop, the coastal city of Kotor, in Montenegro. This little country (slightly larger than the state of Connecticut) has just over 600,000 people, and manages to pack a lot in between its beautiful Adriatic coast and the mountains that fill in the rest of the area. The high stone walls encircling the city, gates guarded by cannon, and palm trees and Caribbean-like waters felt reminiscent of an old pirate stronghold. Having absolutely no idea what to expect in Kotor before I arrived, the quaint old town lined with restaurants and shops, and the calm, warm waters were a nice surprise. The old town was also packed with stray cats, which is apparently a point of pride, or at least local tolerance since many of the cats were fed by residents, and the cat- and non-cat themed shops all sold tourist items proclaiming Kotor as “Cat City.” Lindy, Neal, Jodie and I went out for dinner and drinks, scouting the city for a restaurant that served authentic dishes, and whiled away the evening listening to each other’s travel stories.
On our second day in Montenegro, we wound our way along a narrow road to the top of one of the mountains that surrounds the city and had an al fresco snack of homemade prosciutto and cheese, after seeing the drying shed where the proprietors hung rows and rows of cured ham. The group came in, took some pictures, then were ushered out quickly as our guide Alec said “if you stay too long, the smell of smoked ham never comes out of your hair.” We loaded back into the van and made our way down the mountain to a family-owned olive grove, where we had a delicious lunch in a basement room that houses the antique stone olive press. The third generation owner/operator explained the old way of making olive oil using the giant grinding stone which was operated by donkey power, then took us next door to the real heart of the operation, a modern centrifugal olive press. We got to taste their oil (very peppery and spicy), then walked off our lunch in the olive grove, hearing about how the olives are picked and the trees are cultivated. I think most trees are beautiful, but acres of olive trees, with their artistically gnarled trunks and silvery green leaves against a backdrop of ancient stone walls, are in a class of their own. It made this yet another place where I yearned to have some time alone, just me and the trees, and maybe a little music to get lost with. Alas, group tours are an impatient mistress, and they wait for no woman. We were hustled back to Kotor for one last night exploring the stone corridors and alleyways of the old city.
The next day we made our way out of Montenegro into Albania, where we stopped for a lunch of meats grilled on a little tabletop barbecue (one of which was local boar sausage, which was not to my liking at all, but seemed very pleasing to the kitty hovering near my feet). We then had a sweaty hike up a steep, very sunny hill to see the ruins of Rozafa Castle, a fortress perched on a hill between two rivers, which was very strategically important to almost everyone in the ancient world, based on the numerous times it was conquered or besieged. I enjoyed getting to stretch my legs a bit after long stretches in the van. Thankfully the sheer number of nurses on this tour (four, at my last count) had the side benefit of keeping me in a steady supply of motion sickness pills, which were critical for the more winding roads in the mountainous places we visited.
Since we weren’t stopping in Albania, but rather passing through, we made our way into Country #4 – Kosovo (or disputed territory, if you’re looking at it from a Serbian perspective). All I knew about this place was based on fuzzy recollections of hearing the name in newscasts when I was a kid, growing up in the 90s. This isn’t the time or place for me to rehash the Kosovo War, but needless to say, like most other conflicts that happened in the Balkan peninsula during those times, it was brutal, it was extremely complicated, and it has had lasting consequences for the people of this tiny country. It’s also a very new country, having declared independence in 2008. We came into the town of Prizren for the night not knowing what to expect from a place that’s known incredible hardship in the not-so-distant past (their most recent problem is massive unemployment – around 40% of the population is either without work or has one or more family members that have migrated elsewhere to find it). Prizren surprised me by having a very nice city center filled with bars, restaurants, shops, and a vibrant nightlife. A small group of us explored the town square, went inside the city’s mosque, strolled along the riverfront, and had drinks at a local bar.
This is a place that gets some tourism, but not much, and not many of them are Westerners. People are still genuinely curious about where you’re from, what you’re doing in Prizren, and why. They want to know about you, which gives you the opportunity to get to know them in turn. I had a nice chat with the bartender while sipping a whiskey and people watching, enjoying the rhythms of life in this place. Over the past nine months, I’d been to a lot of places where tourists outnumber locals, and the locals have given up on knowing or caring about the people who pass through. Kosovo is one of the refreshing places where it felt like that hasn’t happened (yet) and so you can still have a genuine conversation with a local.
The capital of Kosovo, Pristina, won’t take any prizes for most beautiful architecture or accolades for most amazing green spaces (or whatever criteria magazines use to rank the “best” cities in the world, like that’s somehow possible), but what it lacks in amenities it makes up for in straightforwardness. This place isn’t trying to hide its cracks or even its bullet holes, cater to tourists, have “Instagrammable spots” or be anything other than a place for people to work, live, and go about their business. It’s not particularly charming, but it’s real, and I’m glad I got to see that side of Kosovo, too.
Moving on, we entered our final country – Macedonia. Again, I had no real idea in my head of what Macedonia looked like. If anything, I assumed it was basically just like its neighbor, Greece, which I later learned would be incredibly insulting to Macedonians who have historically not had a great relationship with their big brother to the south. But actually, it’s much more mountainous than I expected, the air was cooler and crisper, and it has no part of the sparkling Adriatic that many of the other Balkan countries share. It sort of felt like I was back in Slovenia, with the van winding up and down mountain roads, eating hearty foods like bean stew and locally made sausages. After visiting a couple very old Orthodox cathedrals, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant overlooking a valley below. I say restaurant, but that’s not exactly the best term for a lot of the places we ate in Macedonia. It’s somewhere between a guesthouse and a restaurant. Owned and run by the family, these places are usually carved out of their backyard or a part of their farm, and the food is grown there or bought from the local market. They usually make a huge variety of dishes, and insist on serving them all, so you’re usually eating well past the point of comfort and bordering on miserably full when you finally say goodbye. This day was particularly memorable because we had not one, but two of these types of meals. Our lunch overlooking the valley with three types of grilled vegetable salad, bean stew, sausages, and dessert, and later at a guesthouse in Mavrovo National Park we ate our way through a sprawling and delicious dinner spread while bundled in blankets against the chill.
If there’s anything calculated to thrill the heart of this girl, it’s taking me out of the congested city and plunking me in the middle of a national park, with empty roads to explore and a beautiful sunset to guide me. Our break from city exploration in Mavrovo National Park was one of the highlights of the trip. Give me a dusty two-track road and wide open places anyday. I was sad to leave after just one night there, but I took with me the utter peace and stillness of walking along the edge of the lake, watching the sun sink in a blaze of gold.
The next day we stopped at a monastery, and our visit happened to coincide with an Orthodox religious holiday, so the place was absolutely packed with churchgoers. Of course, I was unprepared and dressed slightly inappropriately for stepping foot inside a busy church on a Tuesday, and went into crowd avoidance mode wherein I flattened myself against the wall of the sanctuary and listened to the chanting monks. Even in the middle of a crush of people (always slightly panic-inducing for me), I could appreciate the beauty of the chants, and wished I could have found a quieter spot to listen. It’s really mesmerizing if you stop and let the music vibrate around your head for a little while. I was struck once again, as I was in Georgia, about the loosely controlled chaos inside the church. It’s so alien to my churchgoing experiences of synchronized standing, sitting, singing, and neatly printed bulletins with the order of the service. Here, people mill around, touch the religious objects, talk to each other, pray, don’t pray. It’s sort of a choose your own adventure, church style.
We pushed onward quickly after that, stopping at Hotel Tutto, where we got a cooking demonstration from Tutto himself, a handsome middle-aged Macedonian man who is passionate about local foods and the hotel he built using only natural materials. It’s a project he started after spending time in Italy and abroad, and wanting to bring agri-tourism to his home in Macedonia. I was impressed by his work ethic and dedication, but a bit put off by the way a few of my fellow travelers talked to him and about him. I’m as big a fan of homegrown and locally produced food as anyone. It usually tastes better, and is better for the people who make it, eat it, grow it, raise it, etc. However…it seems like some people who live Western, urbanized lives are prone to irrational reverence for sustainable, farm-to-table, slow (whatever the term of the week is for this) type of foods. Which causes them to treat people who produce it like heroes or talk to them in worshipful tones about how “healing” the food is and how amazing it is that they can grow a tasty tomato or a pasture raised cow. I’m an urbanized Westerner, so I won’t presume to say how they feel about this kind of conversation with tourists, but to me, it seems like the “traditional, authentic” way of making food is just a simple fact of life to regular people who live in places where there is no WalMart or Whole Foods. It’s hard work, and it’s necessary work, and it’s something people around the world have done for centuries. So, it seems strange and slightly condescending to treat them like they’re owed a Nobel prize for serving a dish that is locally made. I certainly have seen the other side of the coin, where tourists are rude and dismissive of the people who grow and serve their food, and think that’s a recipe for making local people hate visitors, but I also feel uncomfortable around the tourists who fetishize producers (of food, handicrafts, whatever it is they make locally), which was what happened here, and in a few other places we visited. I came really close to deleting this little diatribe because I don’t want to come off like a snob who thinks farmers or gardeners or cooks are simple and don’t deserve any accolades for the work they do. If anything, the small amount of gardening and growing I have done at home gives me greater respect for the complexity of homegrown or produced things, and the skill and vast knowledge of people who do it day after day. But it also removes the romantic notions around homemade food – that it’s somehow a heroic stance against corporate, processed foods, instead of a basic necessity.
Ok, sorry for the digression. Back to Macedonia. Onto beautiful Lake Ohrid, and probably my favorite day of the trip. Seven of us opted to take a day trip cruising around the lake on a little pontoon boat, captained by an effusive Macedonian with a jaunty hat who was either so excited or so influenced by the shots of rakia we got from another boat that pulled alongside ours, that everything he said came out as a shout. Big hat on my head, sunshine on my shoulders, and an absolutely picture perfect day cruising the clear, green waters of Lake Ohrid. This is living. We visited a recreated fishing village built on stilts above the water, and a tiny monastery before we stopped for lunch, pulling alongside quaint little fishing boats docked along the rocky beach. As soon as I could politely leave the table (which was hard given the delicious spread of fish, wine, and salads), I changed into my suit and jumped into the chilly, but completely clear waters of the lake. It made me a bit homesick, for Michigan, that is. I’ve lived in a place that is literally surrounded by beautiful lakes all my life, so the feeling of a sunny day awash with fresh lake breezes brings back good and bittersweet memories. That evening, we went to a guesthouse-style restaurant in a nearby village and enjoyed another huge, but very late, dinner with a variety of food, wine, and herb-flavored rakia. We had different stews, a giant pan-fried rice dish and the ever-present spread of salads. I was so tired from the day cruising the lake that I struggled to even keep my eyes open, eventually drifting off to sleep in the van on the way back to Ohrid.
Another sunny, perfect day in Macedonia, and we started off in the local market, taking in the sights and smells, and tasting some sort of layered pastry, burek-type dish with various fillings (cheese, spinach, etc.). Many of the market stalls were piled with dozens of red peppers, which locals were buying by the 50-gallon trashbag in order to make their yearly ration of ajvar. For the uninitiated, it seems like a very simple spread, a savory jam of roasted red peppers, garlic, oil, and various spices. But Macedonians take it very seriously, and like katsup to a Midwesterner, they put it on just about everything. And in truth, a bit of ajvar spread on a slice of homemade bread with some salty cheese sprinkled on top is incredibly delicious. We left Ohrid in late morning and made our way to a little farm nearby with an apiary and a backyard restaurant, where I donned a Pepto-Bismol colored beekeeping suit and learned about Macedonian honey production. We tasted not only honey but some by-products, including a very strange bee pollen extract in some sort of alcohol solution that made my tongue go numb and gave everything a nasty aftertaste. Supposedly, this pollen stuff will cure what ails you, whatever that may be, from allergies to open wounds. Same goes for the beehive respirator system, which in all honesty I did not follow the explanation of why one would want to sniff the air that comes from the hives, but they had a tube and mask hooked up directly to one of their hives and we took turns sniffing magical Bee Air (which kind of just smelled like regular air to me).
After spending the night in the city of Bitola, we visited an archaeological site in Stobi, where researchers have been working since the 1930s to uncover a Roman city. Besides being more complete and extensive than any ruin I’d ever seen (it includes a basilica, bath houses, residences, a palace, and column-lined streets), the most stunning thing to behold were the absolutely beautiful mosaic tile floors, which have survived for centuries buried underground. After that we had lunch at a swanky, modern winery in Stobi, and headed from there to a smaller, boutique winery where we tasted countless varieties of Macedonian wine (and where I developed a monster headache). Then we pressed on to our last stop, Skopje, the capital of Macedonia.
Our final day was spent strolling around the city, taking in the massively large statues of Alexander the Great (who has been claimed and fought over in perpetuity by both the Macedonians and the Greeks) then heading out for a jaunt through Matka Canyon, where we took a short boat ride to a cave, then enjoyed a picnic lunch put on by our guide, Alec and his parents. We had one last meal and drinks that evening in Skopje, and bid Alec, each other, and the Balkans a fond farewell.
I spent one more day wandering around Skopje before hopping on an early morning flight to Dublin. It was the perfect stopover point to give me a few days of rest and alone time before heading out again. Twelve straight days of nonstop group togetherness can wear on anyone…but for a professed introvert, it’s absolutely exhausting. I won’t recap my three days in Ireland, but suffice it to say that my undying love for the country is still intact, and I got to wander the city, sip some Irish whiskey, and have no schedule and nowhere to be shuttled to or from. It was a good change of pace from the structured group tour, and a needed transition to the last stop on my trip: Iceland.
From Arcadia a little while longer,
Sarah
