--Saturday, 06 May 00--
I awoke at 8:30, a time at which I am normally already at work. Just the thought made me feel good. I showered in my Jacuzzi tub and shaved - the luxuriance of it all was overwhelming.

The free breakfast that came with the room consisted of bacon and eggs, toast, orange juice & machiatto. Everything was delicious, especially the bacon. I decided to walk around the block just to figure out where it is and managed to discover the OSCE building near which the UN bus from Prishtina stops. I made a mental note of that for future use.

My friend Susan who hosted me in Skopje.

Susan came by at 10:30 and we visited a museum near the hotel. It has a clock on the outside that is left at 5:20, the time of the devastating earthquake of 1963. The international community responded impressively and built many new buildings. Many architects donated their time. The results are very uneven.

The National Post Office in Skopje.

Susan said that some people believe that because the architects were donating their time they pulled old plans from the files, plans that had been rejected by paying customers. That might explain the main Post Office building which looks like a Spider upside down. I haven't seen that much wasted concrete since the national library in Ashgabat.

We walked over to the Old Town and walked around, eventually ending up at the same table with the same waiter as I had yesterday. We talked and talked and eventually a friend of Susan joined us. The friend is ethnic Macedonian Albanian and he felt that things were improving. He said that he was less afraid to read an Albanian-language newspaper in public now. He told us that Macedonians fear that Albanians want to secede to join either Albania or Kosovo.

Susan's friend noted that his school had two classes with 40 Albanian students each while the Macedonians in that school had four classes with 20 students each. He mentioned that as a child he was made to feel like a foreigner: he was repeated told that he was not a Macedonian and that his country was Albania. In such ways do government here build national unity.

Susan drove me to her home and it was exquisite. We had more talk about work and people we knew and then Susan made some bacon and French toast with real maple syrup, direct from Canada. Slowly I was slipping out of the Kosovo mold into a more familiar one.


--Sunday, 07 May 00--
I was up at 8 AM and, after rejecting the crummy breakfast the washer woman tried to get me to eat, went to the nearby McDonalds and had a plain double cheeseburger for breakfast. Still tasty and filling.

I went for a walk trying to find Susan's place. Ultimately I gave up and took a cab -- a wise idea since it became obvious that I was walking in exactly the wrong direction.

Sunday is a quiet day in Skopje so Susan and I wandered back to the Old Town and had some coffee in the shade. While we were sitting there two young boys, perhaps about eight or nine years old, had a fight. I was an episodic thing, that was on, then off, then on, etc. The locals were watching the event as it unfolded and three times adults intervened and non-judgmentally separated the two. One time an adult picked up one of the boys by the belt and carried him away like a sack of heaving potatoes. Everyone laughed. Eventually both combatants went there separate ways none the worse for wear.

Sitting in the shade, talking about experiences, sharing good times is a very pleasant way to pass the hours before the airport. Ultimately I ordered five kebop with fried bread - ah! Frying the bread is a great idea that I will try to introduce into Prishtina.

Susan drove me to the airport and the long, slow process of getting home began. The trip to Vienna was only 90 minutes, then I stayed put for 16 hours at Novatel, the airport hotel that is convenient located about 100 meters from a runway. I sat outside the international terminal and had a few beers, relaxing to the roar of accelerating jet engines and enjoying the smell of airplane exhaust. Well planned international travel is a great pleasure. And I had sixteen hours with which to contemplate this pleasure.

My wash basin in the Vienna Airport Novatel.

The only solace I had was the elegant plumbing in the Novatel. Starkly designed in stone and chrome it spoke of a fancier world than I had become used to.

The next morning, I had a good breakfast. The orange juice was so good I had 5 glasses but given the syringe-sized glasses they made available, it didn't really amount to much.

To kill time until the departure of my flight in the afternoon, I walked around the international terminal and poked my head into all the shops. One stroke of luck, I found a liter of Grand Marnier costing only $21. It has been 10 weeks since I have had any - there isn't a drop in all of Kosovo or Skopje -- I know, I have been looking.

In the afternoon I finally boarded the plane for the trip to Chicago. The piece de resistance of the trip was the delay due to the person who boarded the plane thinking that a non-stop flight to Chicago stopped in Washington, DC. Such idiots should be restricted to ground travel.

Once back in the States, I set out to indulge all my food frustrations. It took time but I worked at it steadily. My first breakfast was a McDonald's sausage biscuit with cheese AND a bacon and egg with no egg and extra bacon, lunch was tacos with no lettuce and extra, extra cheese (I call this a Mexican cheeseburger; you watch, it is going to catch on), dinner was bag upon bag of Chinese take out. I went to Gloucester and had chowder (fish and clam) galore, Haddock fish and chips, the best fried clams I have had in years, Jamaican crab cakes, grilled Italian sausage and chicken. And much, much more.

Oh, the bliss, the joy, the rapture of being home!

Joe