Macedonia. Skopje

In Skopje we have whole family of CS friends - Vasko, Ana and little Istok. Vasko and Ana produce homemade jewelry and sell it from the street stand and Istok goes to kindergarden, plays and watches cartoons.
It was warm sunny Saturday, rash time for street venors, and Vasko met us at his working place - Square of Macedonia in the center of Skopje. We left our backpacks at his stand and went to explore the city.









In the evening we had dinner in Vasko's place with traditional shot of rakiya, interesting talking and making plans for Macedonian part of our travel.
And next morning we were on our way south - to Ohrid.




(to be continued)...

Bulgaria. Sofia

Our plane took off from Riga airport at 11:40 on 10th of March. In Kiev we had 55 minutes to change flights and were a little bit misled by absent signs. But proper gate was found in the end and we continued our travel above the clouds.



Couchsurfing friend Cvetan waited us in the airport of Sofia and took us to his flat.



Cvetan's home is full of books in Bulgarian, English and Russian. He speeaks good Russian and we used this language for communication. On arrival day we stayed in Cvetan's flat, drunk tea and some rakiya and talked.
Next day Cvetan showed us Sofia.
"It is monument of Rusian Tsar-Liberator Alexander the Second" - All Bulgarians remember that in 19th centuary Russians brought freedom after Turkish occupation.
"And that is monument of liberators. But nobody knows what kind of freedom they brought to Bulgaria." It was monument of Soviet soldiers. "Bulgaria was not occupied by Germany. Rather we can say Bulgaria was occupied by communists after World War 2."







Afernoon we hiked Vitosha - mountain near and above Sofia. And in his 72 Cvetan led us all the way up and down.






Next day, 12th of march, we left Bulgaria for Macedonia. Live and road goes on :-))) !

At Sea Again

It passed a long time since the last updating of my blog. I am on the same ship Nordic Chantal, joined her at Sankt Peterburg (Russia), then we sailed to Southampton (U.K.) with cargo of fertilizers. After that loaded potatoes in Greenore (Ireland) to S.Peterburg. It looks that last year was very bad for Russian agriculture. But what year was good for it? In Soviet era we carried grain, now - potatoes. The biggest country in the world cannot provide its not so big population with elementary food.
In Sankt Peterburg we discharged potatoes and loaded fertilizers for Netherlands. Due to the west and south-west winds approaches to S.Peterburg were covered with ice and we could navigate in Eastern part of Gulf of Finland with ice-breaker assistance only.
So now we are in port of Terneuzen waiting for discharging which is delaying by rain.


Gulf of Finland in winter:






S.Peterburg:






Northwest coast of Scotland: