Three more countries: Kosovo, Albania, and Montenegro

Phillip and I have been in three more countries since my last post five days ago. From North Macedonia and our pirate ship hotel, we traveled to Kosovo, spent one night in Albania (we will return there next week), and moved on to Montenegro. 

Kosovo countryside from the bus

We deviated from the tentative itinerary that we left with our family because of transportation concerns. We planned two stops in Kosovo, but only visited one Kosovan city, Prizren, a city not even on our initial list. Prizren did, however, have decent bus connections with Skopje and towns in Albania. 

river thru Prizren, Albania

We spent two nights in Kosovo which meant just one full day for walking around the city. That full day would have been Friday, June 6. However, that was a national religious holiday for the country. We weren't traveling that day, but we did go to the bus station to get our onward ticket a day early. No buses, no staff, no one at all around except a man from Istanbul and a man from London, both planning to take a bus out of town that day. I used Google translate on a notice taped to the bus station's ticket window to learn about the holiday. 

no traffic on the national holiday

Prizren had a really nice stone bridge over the river.

And a fortress on the hill next to town. Phillip and I did not trek to this fortress as there was no cable car, it's just ruins and piles of rocks, and guidebooks note the extreme steepness of the path to the top. And, most importantly, the temperature was above 90 degrees. 

top of the hill fortress

It wasn't too hot to walk on the level streets, although only restaurants near the stone bridge were open. All around town, we saw "hero" monuments. They were statues of local men killed in 1998 during the fighting between Kosovo and Serbia. Several of them had the word "hero" with the name and dates of the deceased soldier.

near the stone bridge

On Saturday, we left Kosovo and entered Albania.

Albanian countryside as seen from the bus

We stayed in Shkodar, Albania, for a night because no buses were scheduled from Shkodar to Montenegro after our bus from Kosovo. We didn't walk around Shkoder when we arrived because we plan to return to Shkodar. Also, our bus from Kosovo dropped us off over two miles from downtown and we walked with our suitcases to our hotel in the heat of the day. We weren't upset that the bus drop-off was at the edge of town, we just considered it part of the adventure! I do plan to order new wheels for our suitcases because they are taking quite a beating on this trip. 

The bus yesterday from Shkodar to our current stop, Podgorica, Montenegro, did load in town, just around the corner from our hotel. Another border crossing and into our 10th country of the trip. We've had no issues at the border crossings. The bus unloads at the crossing when leaving a country and the passengers file up to the window and present their passports. Back on the bus, and travel a few hundred feet to the next country's border stop. We unload and file up to that country's officials to get our passports stamped to enter the new country. Back on the bus and we proceed onward. No pictures because a border crossing is considered a secure area and photography is not allowed.  

Podgorica is the capital of Montenegro. We could have continued on to the coast but decided to stay a few days before going to the tourist area that is Kotor. Not much to really see here, but we did walk around and found another stone bridge.

Podgorica's stone bridge, not in a developed area like Prizren's was

The best views were from our hotel restaurant terrace. We ate dinner here with these views of the surrounding mountains. 

view from hotel terrace

Tomorrow, we travel to Kotor, still in "little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!" (a quote from chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby, when Gatsby showed Nick his medal from there). Kotor will put us back on the coast, about 200 miles south of Split, Croatia, our last coastal town before we turned inland a few weeks ago. 

Sleeping in a pirate ship in Skopje, North Macedonia

our hotel in Skopje

Yes, we are spending our nights in Skopje on a pirate ship on the Vardar River! This is the Senigallia Hotel, an 18-room hotel and restaurant built, not sailed, on the river in the middle of Skopje. Our room is the size of a cruise cabin, but with much better finishing - heavy wood paneling instead of covered metal walls.

the two windows have wooden shutters on the outside

The room is comfortable, but the air conditioning system isn't the best so in the afternoon, the room is warm. The high temperature today and yesterday was 94 degrees. As the sun goes down, the A/C system can keep it cool. 

Skopje, although the capital of the country, is small enough that we walk to see places of interest on both sides of the Vardar River. As we walked, we noticed dogs, mature, well-fed, but with no owner in sight, all ear-tagged. 

hot day, dogs resting on the cool tile in the shade

The sight we came to Skopje for is just a few blocks from our hotel, the Memorial House of Mother Teresa.

exterior of Memorial House

 

inside the memorial house

Mother Teresa as a child with her sister in Skopje

Skopje is known for its many, many statues. However, they aren't ancient statues but were installed during a government project starting in 2013. 

Phillip has the bull by the horns

The gold statue started out as a nude, but protests caused
the artist to return and put shorts on him as he is facing
the Parliament building right across the street

our hotel "rigging" can be seen on the right side of the photo

the largest statue in town

The above "Warrior on a Horse" is in the central square of the newer side of the river. It was constructed to represent Alexander the Great, but the Greeks made an official protest about Macedonia co-opting Greek things, so the name was changed to Warrior on a Horse.  

even the new bridges have statues

One bridge in Skopje, the Stone Bridge, is authentically 15th century construction. No statues on it, but they did crowd the ends with statues. 

the Stone Bridge

Today, we took a walking tour. Our guide gave context to and stories of several of the places we had already visited. The very best part of the tour was our canine escorts. 

Our two escorts, Linda (the darker dog) and her
friend whose name I didn't catch

Our tour guide said the tagged dogs we see belong to no individual. The City did microchip, ear tag and neuter or spay them. They are fed by the tourists and restaurants and are all well-behaved. We certainly found this the case with the two who tagged along the entire tour. When we went inside an old church, the two dogs laid down outside and waited for us as they knew they were not allowed inside. Our group of eight would stop and the dogs would stand or sit next us and of course get head scratches or shoulder rubs. 

The church that the dogs did not go in was halfway up the hill to the city's fortress. The guide said the fortress was just ruins and only served as a viewpoint to see the city. The tour didn't go on to the fortress and Phillip and I did not go visit it after the tour as it was hot and we've been to several better fortresses on this trip.

the city fortress ruins on the hill in the distance

The tour did take us into the bazaar, with its cobblestone streets and vendors. This had been one of the stops on the Silk Road. We did come back here after the tour and have lunch.

Our final stop of the tour was the actual site of Mother Teresa's house in Skopje. The guide had no clue why the Memorial was constructed three blocks away with a memorial marker on the real house location.

stone marker on the actual Mother Teresa house location

Tomorrow, we leave North Macedonia and go to Kosovo. We will change buses enroute and only spend a few days in Kosovo before making our way to Montenegro. 

Sofia, Bulgaria: changing of the guard, public art and communist locations tour

Sofia, Bulgaria, is much more modern and pleasant than I expected. My knowledge of Bulgaria came from college history and political science classes in the mid-1970s. At that time, Bulgaria was part of the Warsaw Pact, separate from the Soviet Union but closely aligned and receiving direction from it. The dissolution of the Soviet Union led Bulgaria to adopt democratic and free market policies beginning in 1991. By 2004, Bulgaria joined NATO and became a member of the European Union in 2007. 

Long before its Soviet ties, Bulgaria was part of the Roman Empire, like almost all of Europe and North Africa were 1800 years ago. When recent city leaders expanded one of their subway stations, they came across extensive Roman ruins.

Roman ruins in downtown Sofia

They built the subway station around the ruins and created displays in the subway station itself.

Phillip looking at ruins, subway turnstile on the left

Bulgaria was also part of the Ottoman Empire for a few hundred years, so colorful or patterned tiles are frequently used on buildings and parks.

During its history, Bulgaria has also been ruled by a monarchy, although not for about a hundred years. The President's abode, though, is still called a palace and has a changing of the guard ceremony that we watched. 

Only the ceremonial guards wear a colorful uniform. 

One of the sights in Sofia is the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the largest cathedral in the Balkans. Like other Orthodox churches, no stained glass, but with gold-plated domes.

On the other side of the church from my photo, the City was having a community fair. It reminded me of Fort Worth's community policing events. The police and fire departments had booths and activities for children. The police officers were letting kids sit in their SWAT-looking vehicle. The fire department had a cute activity, a pump-up sprayer that the kids could use to spray water and knock down plastic bowling pins, "putting out the fire."

the mother helping reset the pins for the next junior "firefighter" 

Like other European cities, Bulgaria has lots of public art and statues of historical figures.

military leader, in the middle of a traffic circle

not a historic figure, just a muscular man

some almost abstract statues

some statues in fountains

and some quirky and fun ones

One thing that we found the authorities are serious about is parking. We walked up on a car being removed from a no parking spot. The sign was clear; we understood it even though it was written in Bulgarian Cyrillic lettering. 

The "tow" truck parked next to the illegally parked vehicle. A worker put metal clamping arms on each of the four tires. 

An arm with adjustable spreader bars came from the truck and attached canvas-covered chains to the tire clamps.

The car was lifted up from its space and put on the truck. The workers guided the dangling car so that it never touched the vehicles in front and behind it.

The workers didn't lash the offending vehicle down as the arm and tire clamps kept it secure on the truck. 

And off they go.... The entire removal of the illegally parked car took three minutes and twenty seconds. The action that took the longest time was when the workers checked each tire clamp and adjusted the canvas chain cover so the chain wouldn't touch the car. 

We walked into one of the largest parks in town, a very nice green space in a city that has a lot of one-square block parks. 

Some parts of the park had very few people

We did this walk on Saturday, so vendors were set up around the edge of the park. Grilled corn for me. Phillip couldn't resist the ice cream vendor. 

one large scoop in a waffle cone cost about $2.50

About three blocks from our hotel, a wide, pedestrian-only street continues for about eight blocks. Restaurants extend their serving area out into this street, sometimes with covers, sometimes not. We ate dinner twice at restaurants on this street. 

During our last day in Sofia, we took a tour of communist sights in Sofia. I found it fascinating, Phillip enjoyed it. Our tour guide, Dino, had a loud voice, so Phillip had no problem hearing the stories. We used the statue in the following picture as a landmark when we came up from the subway near our hotel. We called it "the lady on a stick." During the tour, we learned that she represented liberty and replaced a statue of Lenin (on a stick) when communism ended in Bulgaria. She overlooked the former Lenin Square, a broad expanse of pavement surrounded by government buildings. 

The lady on a stick faces the square and at the other end of the square is the former communist party headquarters, now their congressional building. We learned that nobody wanted to tear the building down, but they did remove communist symbols from them. The hammer and sickle had been in the center adornment but was ground out. We could see the faint outline of where it had been in the center of the decorative leaves. 

We saw numerous other locations that had been important to the communist regime. When we visited the former secret police headquarters, Dino told us that his mother, while in college, was approached to inform on fellow students to the secret police. She didn't and told her father, a diplomat and person of prestige. The secret police did not follow up with her after that. 

Tomorrow, we leave Sofia and travel by bus to Skopje, North Macedonia. Skopje is the capital of North Macedonia and the birthplace of Mother Teresa.