Eddie and I went to Skopji, Macedonia to play in the 5th annual US Embassy Soccer Tournament. Before this weekend if you would have asked me to locate Macedonia on a map I would have struggled a bit. I knew it was part of Eastern Europe, but had no idea what countries even bordered it. I'm still not exactly sure how to recap my time there or better yet, explain the aches and pains of trying to get there on Friday. It was definitely a trip with a comedy of errors.
I met up with Eddie and a friend for a beer after work to celebrate the weekend and kill a bit of time before heading to the airport. The storm looked like it had passed and some sun and a beer were exactly what was needed to start the weekend off right. After an hour of relaxing we headed to the airport. I was excited to use my passport for the last time on country number 42. I can't believe 10 years of traveling, 6 visas and 170 stamps has gone by so quick.
It was a short and painless ride to the airport, with our boarding passes printed and only our carry on luggage we were into the terminal and trying to locate our gate. You can imagine the shock on our face seeing this...
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| WHAT... CANCELED?? |
How could our connection flight through Zagreb be CANCELED? What were we going to do if we couldn't get a flight that night to get us to Skopji? Would we make it in time for the tournament to start at 8:30AM? The flight was canceled due to a mechanical problem. We (I) panicked a bit and told the lady how we had to be in Skopji by 8am. She realized that the Zagreb was not our final destination and began the processing of rerouting us. To my surprise, the woman helping us found a flight leaving that night, taking us through Budapest and getting into Skopji a little after 1am. Thank God!... before that we were contemplating the 11 hour drive.
We had a few hours to kill at the airport so we headed across the street to one of the hotels to have a better choice for dinner. That is when the thunderstorm rolled through. We tried to wait it out but ended up running back across the street in the pouring rain when we saw our flight said "go to gate". You can only guessed what happened next... Yep, our flight was delayed and the gates on the ground floor were flooding... Now the concern was making the connection in Budapest. We took off 40 minutes late and by the time we landed in Budapest we hit the ground running (literally) we ran until we found the first desk for the Hungarian airline (Mave) we made it just in time and got to our gate as it was boarding.
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| yep the airport is flooding... |
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| Budapest airport... trying to get boarding cards for a flight leaving in 20 min... |
I'd never been to one of the Balkan States before, I knew I was in for an experience. When we landed at the Skopija "Alexander the Great" airport and walked from the aircraft right into the terminal. Eddie just happens to have a friend who lives there so he picked us up and we stayed at his place.
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| the smallest airport in the world |
Unlucky for us we drew the first match of the day and had to play on the wooden gym floor for our first two games. That is about the way our luck went for the rest of the tournament. We were the only team that was 100% American. The rest were giant Balkan men that are security guards for the Embassies. Needless to say, we lost our first two games 0-4 and the second two 0-1. There was only one other girl in the entire tournament but I think we both held our own against the men.
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| The 11 Embassies from Eastern to Central Europe |
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| Team Vienna |
Macedonia is part of the former Yugoslavia. It is an interesting country because it has a slew of Orthodox churches, but it also has a number of mosques dating from the Ottoman period. I only spent 36 hours in the country but it was long enough to see most of this small town. Here area few of my favorite pictures from the weekend
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| The sports complex |
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| The communist style apartments |
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| men sitting around playing chess |
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| Delicious Slovak beer- Lasko Dark |
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| a view with the controversial cross on the hill |
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| everything is sooo cheap |
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| near the castle with a view of one of the mosques behind me |
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| yikes these dresses were so awful |
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| typical Balkan dancing at our group dinner |
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| They can't get enough of it. Most of our team jumped in too |
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