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Pages from the Journal: Serbia, Macedonia, Albania Friday October 21, 1994 Skopje, Macedonia Hey! All in all that was a very nice train ride. I am agonizing again about my plans. It’s raining here, the weekend is coming, and it isn’t a cheap place to be (I need to save my money for this impending operation in Hungary.) I made a call to Silvana in Tirana and she invited me to stay with her and her family. It’s best if I visit them on the weekend, so I’ll go tomorrow. 
Went to register my passport at the US embassy again. This is the first US embassy I’ve ever seen that has almost no security. You just stroll in past the unmanned guard booth, up a few flights of stairs as you look for signs, and a local is there to check me out more out of curiosity than to know what my business is. He didn’t even check my backpack. Inside it looked like nothing more than a modern little office. No Marines, bulletproof glass or anything. This time I asked the secretary if I could sleep on the floor, but this was not considered even for a nanosecond. Would have been a great story. I thought of staying the night further on in Ohrid. In the meantime I checked out a private room through the tourist office. It was a shack, so depressing I couldn’t even consider it—and I’ll usually consider anything if I’m keen on saving money. Some grizzled characters loomed nearby and I thought back to what the consular guy in Belgrade told me. The room itself was so sad I knew instantly I wasn’t going to take it. I forgot to look but I’m sure there was a hook in the ceiling to better facilitate hangings. The morgue’s phone is probably on speed dial here. Sad. Not 30 seconds in there and I was considering drawing up a will. Not 45 seconds had passed when I wondered if I had passed a rope shop en route. I decided to stay at the youth hostel tonight, which is about $15. That caught me off-guard. I had a rat in my room. I complained and changed rooms. I can’t tolerate rats and $15 at the same time. I could be mistaken, but I think this hostel has an in-house prostitute. (Quite unlike good old Hungary, here you can differentiate between a prostitute’s clothes and a regular girl’s clothes.) This woman stroked my hand as I sat waiting for my room change. She made sure I saw her key number, somehow communicated that she knew mine, and toodle-dood off. Could she be a paid lackey? Are times tough for the International Youth Hostel Federation that they’ve branched out into new areas of revenue? Would I expect to see the IYHF house and tree symbol tattooed on her butt? There are several young guys here at the hostel from other parts of Macedonia doing construction work. They are the only “youths” here at the youth hostel. I guess I am not a youth anymore, and that prostitute certainly wasn’t. 
Skopje is actually a pretty cool place. The part of town south of the river is East European modern. Cross the stone bridge and venture a little northeast over the expressway, and it’s raw Balkan atmosphere. All of the Old World types were out in full force, shopping and socializing. The men literally hang on to each other and are seldom seen alone. The women all dress the same, all of their ample bodies covered and with scarves over their heads. There’s too much makeup in this country; the government has to stop subsiding it or something. I saw a poster that stopped me in my tracks: Latoya Jackson live in concert. The river that runs through Skopje, the Vardar, is polluted with cardboard boxes that clandestine salespeople use on the stone bridge and then toss down. My shoes are wet. They won’t be dry by tomorrow. I have no other shoes. No one really cares that I’m an American.
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