Today is the day of that live concert that has kept me in the area and (i dont know it yet) will keep me around for some time. I leave Nis in the morning, this time i m hitchhiking back and it should not be a problem to get over the 200 kilometers to Skopje. I get out of the city after a minimal breakfast and a long struggle at the post office to get a package sent to Switzerland, a freaking long customs paper to fill which is fortunately in Serbian and French unlike the other paper for the post office which is only in Serbian, written in Cyrillic. The women at the desk is just as nice as in most French post offices, she is disgusting. Anyway, the guard is nice, we chat and laugh.
The first men who picks me up in the outskirts of Nis is young, he works for the family business and he takes me a couple kilometers, a good spot to get south, not by the highway but the normal local road. Soon an truck comes up, and i get the best ride of the day. A man in his 50s, he is driving his truck all over the place and has been to most European countries. he is keen to talk and with such people my Serbian is good enough to talk about almost anything. Of course we speak about the usual topic, the beautiful Serbian country. Its food, it girls, its music, culture and beautiful natural landscape. Serbia, he says, is a country with such great land that it was never hungry, always had plenty to eat and plenty of the best since it all comes from the neighboring fields and farms. It is true, you can see food growing everywhere and what you buy at the market (unless you are in Belgrade or buying bananas) rarely was driven around for hundreds of kilometers. You get fresh, local, seasonal and delicious fruits and vegetables. For proof of that he points at his belly, big and round like always in the Balkan, shows a great smile and drives on. We then also talk about his job, he tells me he has driven this Mercedes i am sitting in for 800 000 kilometers without maintenance, just the normal oil change. And it keeps going! he has driven over 3.5 millions kilometers in his lifetime!
H drops me in a tow some 40 kilometers south, Leskovac. A short but pleasant ride. As I walk to the right spot to continue my journey, a men on a tractor passes slowly, turns around on his seat and gives m the finger with a bad grin on his face. I realize how fast I can change moods, not that he scared me but he switched my thoughts from very positive ones inspired by my ride to darker ones about human nature. I then have to wait quite long before i get a ride with Vladimir to Bujanovac, he drives to visit his girlfriend or the weekend. We talk about rock, watch a live concert on the small screen sitting next to the driving wheel. He drops me in a familiar place, i have waited her on my less successful ride north a couple days ago...He started his journey this morning in Trieste, he is in a bit of a hurry and quite tired. Understandable, he has been driving for over 10 hours straight...
We pull up at the Macedonian side boarder, big queue 15 minutes of waiting, far to much for my stressed driver. He sakes little, we converse in a mix of languages, Italian, English and Macedonian. While we wait we watch the dogs begging for food at each car and make jokes. We pull over at the cafe just across the boarder, it seems my driver needs one more awaking drink to make it the last 70 kilometers. After the boarder i get to see the industrial zone bordering Skopje, on my way out, i was sitting on a bus reading the small book by Suskind i was offered by a German on the ferry in Albania. At first it is a real nice sight, some of the hilly fields have just been worked on and are brown other are yellow, between them rare trees and houses stand to complete the landscape. There is something about this view that made me think it is beautiful and i think it is the round shape of the fields laying on a hill side. Nothing is straight or flat. The dark brown color adding to the impression of relief.
We arrive in Skopje, i get of in Autokomanda, the area Aurelie lives in. she is not home so i take a little time and sit at the internet cafe where i wait for her and Totor. As they arrive, we head for her home and drink the bottle of beer that was waiting for us in the fridge. impossible to buy more, the stores stop selling alcohol in Macedonia at 7 pm. So we start the bottle of Raki i was offered on my first ride into Skopje. It is strong. I show em how to prepare a cafe bucheron. Make coffee, add a lot of sugar, dont stir, drink the coffee, leave the sugar, add the raki. Then comes the funny part, us a metal spoon to stir and as you stir put the raki on fire and mix until all the sugar is melted in. Nazdravie.
A friend of Aurelie who will get her in for free joins us and we head for the Skopje fair where the concert takes place. We catch a cab and i discover once again how cheap they are. About a euro, maximum two fro a ride trough the city. The crowd is pretty young and excited, so are we. guy at the wardrobe is a fucking asshole, i give him 100 and as i don't see my 50 change, i understand that he has no change and i need to wait, i give him an other 50 but never get my 100 back. Motherfucker. oups sorry did i just write that?? The The next lesson about Skopje is that it is a drug city. It is a trance night so of course there are drugs but I did not expect this many. Almost everybody takes something: mdma, ecstasy, amphetamine, speed, lsd... but it seems cocaine is to expensive. Tonight I am a little drunk and very excited to see Infected mushroom, the only trance band i really like, so i don't need any of this and off course you all know that it is not my type of drug. A bit later, i find Nicolas and Alberik who came from Pristina for the night. Nice to see them again!
Soon the show starts, distorted guitars, electric keyboard, crazy light show and the singers modified voice singing the classics of infected mushroom. Remembers me of the times i was biking over the hills of Sydney listening to my ipod. “I m the supervisor”. The crowd goes crazy, people dancing everywhere, jumping, turning, running... It is all over much to fast, but a good dj takes over and makes us dance for a couple more hours. As the show ends, we are all still up for more and try to find an after party. Impossible, so we head for a place Enes knows. We all expect an apartment and are surprised as we get into a strange internet cafe after a long taxi drive. The place smells like cigarettes and is pretty crowded (remember it is about 5 am) with people sitting in front of their screens. There are also a couple girls, young, maybe 19 sitting in the chairs, laid back. Unreal moment. What are we doing here?? Enes tells us there are rooms and we can go sit there... Hu?? we can rent a private room and site there... this just gets stranger. We don't real want this so we head to Aurelie's place. There i am confirmed what i know about Skopje. As Aurelie is sleeping next door, her young Macedonian friends (about 20) take an acid trip at 7 in the morning... Me and Nicola watch this unreal scene laughing and not really believing it. Soon i to go to sleep.
L'itineraire
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