GOING POSHTA IN MACEDONIA!!

Adding to the List of Things that Macedonia Does Better than the U.S. must include the post office experience.  Gone are the days when the hardest decision was choosing the bird picture stamps or the ones with the tropical frogs.  This is now replaced by time-travel, inscrutable operations and entering a zen state.

First - Time travel.  Here in Gevgelija we have the city center and the main post offices.  The center post office is a small nondescript office between a bank and a T-Mobile store.  So far, so good, right?  This office only helps with letters and anything like a package is shunned like a plague rat.  The only place where a package can be sent or picked up, is - - 1960's Yugoslavia!  The main office is a massive concrete monolith replete with odd concrete projections that look like a spaceship model out of a B-movie set.  It has not been touched since the 1960's and all the efficient systems developed in that time are still in effect.  Upon entry, you are back in time, in a large room with marble slab floors, columns that rise 20 feet to a ceiling adorned with non-working blinking lights, and counters, many, many counters.  Behind the counters are many people, none of whom appear to work at the post office.

Now that you have entered an alternate universe, things get inscrutable.  Getting help takes some creativity.  There are no lines, so people tend to cluster around a counter window that seems to have a person making official movements.  If you show any sign of hesitation toward a window, others move in front of you.  Mailing items is not for the hesitant, the uncertain or the weak.  Once you do get to a window and present a package the reaction is usually one of surprise.  Each time is a surprise, so I believe the post office has like, infinite personnel turnover.  After the shock wears off a bit, the package is usually hefted, carefully observed, then left on the counter for a bit while other business is attended to. This inscrutable behavior seems to be to allow your package time to re-consider its surprise attempt at being mailed.  If the package shows no sign of retreat, then the weighing, re-weighing, stampings, looking up inscrutable information on lists on clip pads, more weighings, initialling, a group discussion and finally the application of labels.  You know that this inscrutable but important event is about to happen when the small paste container comes out.  All the paste containers that you used back in 3rd grade have made it to 1960 Yugoslavia, thank God.  The little brush thingy comes out, and, wait for it . . . . the serious pasting of labels commences.  For this activity alone, I want to work there.  After payment, which is different every time, even if the package is the same size and going to the same place; you exit the building.  I actually enjoy going to the post office and know I will get the hang of this.  Other people seem to be able to mail stuff.  I believe that achieving a level of calm and acceptance for things that are inscrutable is necessary.  Zen may be the answer.  

So - if you receive a package from Macedonia, consider the long process that has occurred inside a building that looks like a bad movie set and ends with the ceremonial gluing of the label.  Our mail process is a team sport that has twice the drama and all of the paste.   All you have are the tropical frogs.  Ciao,  Al