Kosovo and Macedonia

I passed a very peaceful night in my 4* palace in a real dump of a village. The Serbian economy seems to be in the toilet…..there is not a lot of business going on that I could see. It has the feel of my trips to Morocco except it is green and there are no camels. This part is nearly all muslim and my request for a beer with my steak was not satisfied (which is a good thing really, I should take more days off each week). I headed for the Kosovo border and felt like I was crossing no-mans land. First there was the Serbian official checkpoint, then passed two sets of fully armed Serb militiary teams about a mile apart, then the official Kosovan checkpoint with razor wire and a vehicle trap, then two sets of some sort of Serb irregulars a couple of miles apart. Seems like doing check-point duty is a serious career choice here. The north of Kosovo is hotly contested by both sides but I got the feel that this bit is Serb with flags and posters everywhere.

Down the road, I got to Mitrovice where the dividing line between the Serb and Kosovan and populations is very evident.  There is abridge across the river  which divides the town and also the populationa along ethnic grounds. At the moment it is blocked by the Serbs as a protest against Kosovan control of the border post I passed earlier. Last year they dumped loads of gravel across the road and are letting no vehicles past. This could have been a real pain as acceding to the map, there wasn't really a lot of choice about routes south.

Just beside the bridge was a bunch of guys jet washing cars so I paid them a euro to do my bike from the pasting it took last night with the idea chatting to see what my options were. Very proud to be Serb and did some sort of 3 fingered salute which I still don't understand. They looked the bike over and noticed there was no Serbia decal on the luggage and insisted on sticking one on before I left. They gave me directions to an alternative route across the river which is now policed by a great big armoured personnel carrier from KFOR. Good job too.


I went through Pristina which is a complete contrast to anything I saw in Serbia or Bosnia. The place has a real bustle about it with a lot of construction going on on the outskirts. I would have liked to stop there and mooch around but it was only lunchtime and I couldnt spare another day.  The other thing you notice is the security presence, Americans Humvee convoys like they were straight from Afghanistan, Germans in convoys of big armoured personel carriers, and Italian Caribineri in some sort of 1960s toy armoured car painted bright blue. There one thing Kosovo will never run short of is fuel stations. They seem to be every 5km....you never saw anything like it. GAs is 1.20 euro a litre here....



For the past couple of days, the road and driving standards have been steadily deteriorating to the point where I am being extra cautious. You can see and meet anything on the roads here. People droving sheep and cattle on main roads, selling strawberries on the motorway hard shoulder to name a few. Coming out of Skopje (Capital of Macedonia) this thing was setting off to join the motorway……tearing along at 7mph.


Tonight I am pushing the boat out and being really inflationary, paying 35 euro for a box room in a modern hotel in a resort next to Lake Ohrid which straddles the border with Albania. It is apparently one of the oldest and deepest lakes in Eurpope and is approx 350km sq…..so pretty big. I will take a look round it tomorrow and then head for Albania and then Greece maybe tomorrow night....got to be in Izmir at the weekend......Tempus Fugit.