Strumica – Last Days

That evening Mite and I decided to get our hair cut. For him it was his beardhair, for me it was the other headhair. In total, we got our whole heads cut. We walked a bit out of the town and into the hills. There were still a bunch of houses, but they got more and more sparse. We walked up a hill and up to the shabbiest barber shop I’ve ever seen. The guy did a decent job, although my hair wasn’t really shorter afterwards, only crooked, but it was for free since he was a friend of the family (not mine; Mite’s).

Being so happy with our new cuts, we decided that night was party time! Or maybe it was pre-decided. It doesn’t matter for the story, so I’ll keep it to myself, possibly carrying it to my grave. We got the whole group together and went to a few loud bars with FashionTV on their big screen televisions that were hanging from the ceiling. No difference between Macedonia and Bulgaria there. We ended up in some club and had a lot of smiles on our faces and alcohol in our blood. Excellent. The next day we did the same. See the pictures.

The next day we took all the children out to play in the park. It was really good and actually made me think twice about what I’m pursuing in my life. Activities like this make me feel really centred, calm and happy on a deeper level than the superficial level of every day happiness. For now I’ll just postpone this thinking about what I want to do with my life until a later point in time, probably mid-life crisis. Without further ado; the pictures! (As always, click to enlarge)

Click here for entire photo album…

The next day we chilled out and in the evening got together for one more drink since I’d be leaving. To those that were present: thanks for coming out to say bye! To those that were still up when I got into the taxi: thanks for staying up so late! Speaking about the taxi… I still had to go past a cash machine before I got into my bus back to Sofia (at 3am). We stopped at one machine, I tried… No luck. Other cash machine… same story. I started to get worried. We tried another, but nope. With the fourth one we finally had success. We headed to the busstation where we discovered the driver had no change. I went in quickly to buy a ticket, so I would have change to pay the driver. I tried to buy the ticket, but the guy kept repeating “600 denari, 600 denari”. I had given him one thousand and was wondering what the problem was… 600 more? Oh no… I’d have to go back into the city and get more money… I’d probably miss the bus. Then he put 400 on the counter and started writing my ticket. These people love to fuss about not paying in the exact amount. No more worries, paid the taxi, got in the bus, didn’t sleep in the bus… Ended up being awake for about 40 hours by the time I took my one hour nap. Back at the Art Hostel in Sofia. Back where I began.

If you wish to stay up to date about my travels, you can subscribe by RSS or email.