And in fact we will not even go for that village or the bus she indicated. We rather walk all the way tho the mountains, after all we can see them, they can not be so far. So we walk, passively attempting to hitchhike once in a while. The roadside is really surprising, between the field and the road, where a European would expect to find a grass or stone or some other wildly overgrown ditch, there are huge good looking pumpkins growing. One of them is even hanging from a tree. Next to pumpkins, we find plum trees, berry bushes and nuts. The fields a bit further are once yellow of dying corn, once green and red from the apple trees (huge red dots in a sea of pale green).
We take a shortcut over a dirt road and get closer to the mountain. Green paturages pastries, goats, old woman with a hat and a cane, huge cows, grape fields, corn plants growing on the boarders of the fields, an old men picking the corn and trowing it on his wooden carriage while the pulling horse is peacefully eating grass. And at our feet, plastic shoes, tin cans, old woolen shirts or scarfs are growing out of the muddy road. We get into what first seems like a ghost town. Deserted streets and abandoned looking flats. But w find a shop and as we walk inside, all heads turn and check us out. i am used to this and don't worry, especially when i have company. Eric however prfers waiting outside and observing the scene and faces as i ask for a knife... We just figured we forgot to take knifes and that they would be good to pick the mushrooms and cut our picnic. But the faces straighten as i ask for the picnic first and then for a knife explaining in my basic words that we will need it to cut the salami. They smile and offer us the knife. One of those small Chinese fruit knifes that will do a perfect job for what we need it for. We still need water and wont find any... all the stores here only sell coke, lemonades or gas water. We get a bottle of the later, empty it and fill it at the main squares fountain. The main square is overlooked buy a building that could be the majors house and on the faced a huge Albanian flag is painted. Albanian flags a dancing in the wind above our heads and Albanian is the local language. I use my even more restricted vocabulary to great people. As we pass a couple houses on our way to the now very close mountains, we can smell once again the peppers being grilled and peeled in preparation of this winters ajvar reserves. As the road gets steeper, we find white chunks on the floor smelling like mushroom, it aint a complete mushroom and we imagine the huge size of the smashed mushroom. This is announcing as a good mushroom day!
So we walk in the woods, make stupid jokes, play and fool around but don't find much. Blue, sticky and shiny ones. Tiny brown ones, those with a long millimeter thin stem and a small hat. Bigger, round one with no stem, brown outside, white inside with a marshmallow softness... Too bad, we spent our time making pictures and fooling around with sticks. A kids day out. We are now quite hungry and stop for lunch. The salami is actually mortadela and everyone gets disgusted by the consistent of it and its lack of taste.
As we are attempting to get higher and maybe still find some mushroom, i get a very unexpected and pleasing call from my friend Remy in Australia. He is sitting in a pub in kings cross as he tells me about his freakin great life in Sydney. What a pleasure to talk to him. He lives just a couple blocks from where i used to live, in south Maroubra. As is sit down to talk with my mate, it soon start to rain a little and then a little bit more. We head back down but not trough the woods this time, rather on the dirt road. We are stupid kids today, playing, laughing farting and pulling silly jokes on each other. The dirt road is soon way to boring for us so we cross through the forest, into the steep part of it. Partly sliding, partly running we get down much faster the we went up and not really thinking where we are going we find ourselves fighting a way trough mean plants and rocky terrain before getting back on a path. It is now raining heavier and we are back close to the village. As we get in there, we get a fresh beer and start walking home, screw the bus, we can walk it and it will be a lot more fun. It is in deed, we talk more stupid stuff (the zombie, Peter Jackson talk when we where coming the other way make no comparison). And as we get back on the road, Eric and Tonin start a water fight. Not with water guns or balloons, they use their soaked shoes and the flques on the road to get each other wetter than wet.
We finally arrive in the flat, exhausted and wet to the bones. We are all already sick so it cant get worse :) still we have a hot tea with a piece of cake before cheering with another beer. Tonight there is a concert in the other great bar of Struga (not that of the first night). A rock concert and we get there just in time for the last song. Tonight I take my camera with me. Not so sure this is a great idea right then, but it will turn out to be. After a couple drinks here with Eric young friends, we all hit the only club in town. The mood here is quiet, nobody dances or seems to have a good time at all... I try to make jokes with a couple of Erics friends and get a couple (or maybe just one...) smiles out of them. I give it up and me and Tonin start stupid routines on the dance floor(stand floor tonight). The band is making poor covers of poor songs... We still manage to have a good time and get acquainted with a bunch of youngsters.
As we walk out the club it is pretty late and we are quite drunk as we hit the only opened burger house in Struga. actually i am most probably the most drunk and annoying on judging on the crazy amount of pictures i took of Tonin and Erik in that moment and their faces as took more and more. To bad there is no sound, i am pretty sure i was making a fool out of myself. We get home safe as daylight kicks in. Good morning!
