A Walk Down What One of These Days Will be Memory Lane...

But for right now is called our walk to school each day! And while this may sound like a dull topic it is anything but! Allan and I leave our house every day at seven thirty and head down the hill. Sidewalks are a mystery here...sometimes there are sidewalks, sometimes there are cars or tractors parked on them and sometimes they just are not there for fifty feet or so. Today we passed the old woman who sweeps her small section of sidewalk every day with a broom made of twigs and that is only about 18 inches tall. This is the norm so you really have to bend down to sweep..not sure why but it's common. She told us in Macedonia that she was happy today and I understood her!

Next we head down the long steep concrete steps past homes and structures that are still here even though they date from the ottoman empire.  Every morning and afternoon we pass one man who makes rakija in his courtyard..We dobro yutro him in the morning and dobar den him every afternoon....and yesterday we were rewarded with an invitation to enter his courtyard and share rakija and aijvar with him, his wife and their world's oldest dog...and we had a hoot....no angliski on their part and weak makedonski on ours but we still managed to have a great visit. Of course Allan couldn't feel his feet after one tiny drink of the rascally rakija but he didn't seem to mind! And it's also amazing how fluent one becomes in a language after rakija!

We then head across the town square...lots of stay cats and dogs hanging around. Some of the dogs have a yellow tag in their ear that indicates that they've had their shots and are considered safe, however that begs the question about the dogs who don't have the yellow"earring"...friends or foe? We walk slowly across the square as that is where we have our pirated Wi-Fi, so we listen to the emails we wrote the night before ping their way to you, friends...ping, ping, ping and they're off!

Almost there...We greet our gevlek seller. Gevlek is a baked ring of dough dotted with sesame seeds, the circle is about eight inches across, looks like a big skinny bagel and costs about thirty cents. The gevlek seller stands on corners with a little cart and we enjoy chatting with our seller and occasionally indulging in this very Macedonian treat!

And while this may sound quite mundane it is an adventure every morning....car dodging, sign reading in Macedonian with Cyrillic letters, greeting people in a different language and just absorbing the sights and sounds...I must say this is  a great way to start our day.....now it's eight and we are at school..time for Turkish coffee and gevlek..eat your hearts out friends!! Priatno!