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Last night I had an epic pool session with a chap from Suffolk. We’d had one the night before until 3 in the morning (powered by 9 pints on my side) and I’d been pipped 6-5. This time round I found myself 4-0 down so took a little break to give myself a one on one pep talk and then mounted a valiant comeback to tie the score at 4 a piece. It went right down to the wire on the decider with palpable tension aplenty, you could have heard a pin drop (if you’d have turned off the TV, microwave, stereo and everyone in the room had of stopped their conversations). A black ball game it was and cruelly I was beaten by a hit and hope winner, a soul destroying blow to lose the entire contest on a fluke. Ah well.

I was awoken at not long after 6 this morning by an Aussie fella turning the light on in a bit of a panic. He wanted to know if anyone had a first-aid kit as apparently a mirror and fell on someone and split their arm open, white stuff and muscle visible and everything. Lovely. I do and provided him with it. I was very much awake by this point.

I reckon the Aussie who made the request might be a vampire. Every night I’ve been at the hostel (which happens to be the first one I’ve ever given a 100% rating, I must be getting soft) he stays up all of it and will then go to bed and not get up to 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Vampire.

Customer service in Bulgaria (and other countries in the region) is quite odd and takes some getting used to. This morning when putting my bag in the luggage hold on the bus I noticed that the other bags had labels on them. So I went to enquire about it at the office which the bus was parked in front of. The woman looked busy doing paperwork stuff and talking to another bloke behind the counter so like a proper Englishman I setup a queue and waited for her to make eye contact or express in some other manner that it was business time. A few minutes passed and then someone else walked in and flanked my newly formed orderly line and proceeded to get dealt with in seconds. Did the counter lady think I was just stood there mulling over her poor complextion? This country.

Anyway, all sorted now. In 7 hours or so I should be in Macedonia.

It occured to me earlier that I’ve not seen a Vespa (or Lambretta) in weeks and weeks. I’m really looking forward to getting to Italy, surely there is somewhere there I can hire a geared scooter (and if a vintage one all the better)?

I’m gonna try and get some bus kip now. This is a nice song to fall asleep to.

We’ve just gone through customs and I didn’t get a stamp on my passport, man . As far as I know Macedonia isn’t in the EU so I’m not sure why not.

The bus took an hour less than I was expecting (including the hour gained from switching back to GMT +1) so that was good.

Unless I arrive really late, the weather is bad or it’s stupidly far away, I like to walk to the hostel. The Art Hostel where I’m staying isn’t very far away but the directions that are always included in the Hostel World booking confirmation email consisted of “Head in the direction of Vodno Mountain for 20 minutes”, completely useless. It was only the equivalent of than €2 in a cab though.

I’m staying here just one night, while at the bus station earlier I booked a seat on a bus to Pristina for 18:00 tomorrow, it takes 2 hours. So that give me all day to scope out Skopje. I’ll have a little look tonight while trying to find some decent grub, but I’m abut knackered so am just taking it easy for now.

The hostel (actually it looks more like a budget guesthouse) I’ve booked for Kosovo doesn’t seem very good, though as it’s the only one I didn’t have much choice!

There was an Aussie bloke in the room at the hostel who was ambling for having a look about the city as a group and suggested seeing if anyone else was interested. I semi-politely got myself out of it by kind of not really saying yes or no and leaving by myself 20 minutes later. One I wanted to sit down and eat and didn’t fancy doing so with a load of people I don’t know watching having likely already ate themselves. Two, I often prefer wandering around a new city on my own.

So when I finally dragged myself onto the Skopje streets it was around the 21:00 mark, nosebag was needed greatly. I found Amigos pretty soon and even sooner afterwards I’d placed my order for chilli con carne and a bottle of Skopsko I think I might have over done the super hot habanero sauce judging by the severe burning sensation in my mouth and lips. It was very nice though. It came to just under €8 (I’m not even going to get involved in explaining the currency as it’s one of those daft ones with too many zeros in the denominations).

I’ve not seen nearly enough yet to judge Macedonia’s capital. That will have to wait until tomorrow.