The Macedonian Jamboree Part Two

It was now the 26th of July, I woke up with my alarm at seven thirty as per the advice of some of the Macedonian scouts I had met the night before. I had a severe case of fuzzy tongue and a bit of a headache. Nothing a toothbrush, good breakfast and vast quantities of water couldn't cure. Alas, I could only safely have one of the three. I successfully brushed my teeth. The breakfast was a piece of feta type cheese, about the size of a deck of cards and strangely tangy, a hard boiled egg, strangely tasteless (I don't know how you can make an egg tasteless?) and a cup of what I assumed was milk but was actually extremely watery and sour yogurt. 'A Girl Guide smiles and sings under all difficulties', so I did. Well, I didn't sing but I ate my breakfast and looked forward to the vast quantities of water that would wash away the taste of the cheese and yogurt. I was sorely disappointed to discover the water was slightly dodgy for foreigners that weren't used to it. I took an executive decision at that point and decided my immune system was up to the challenge so I filled my water bottle and drank vast quantities of it and felt vastly better.

At this point I needed to use the loo, so I wandered over to a conveniently placed set of port-a-loos. I was not terribly surprised to find the first and most conveniently placed Port-a-loo was indescribably dirty and out of paper, so in foolish optimism I went to the next on to find it even more indescribably dirty and equally devoid of paper. So still with increasingly foolish optimism and under increasing pressure from my bladder, I proceeded with my search.

I was not successful. And it's an experience I am happy to have behind me.

I will not go into detail about the dreaded port-a-loos again but needless to say the situation did not improve, in fact it only got worse as peoples personal paper supplies diminished, and the poor water and food quality took its toll.

I still had my big scary black shadows following me around, they were waiting for me when I emerged from my tent that morning. I smiled and tried to engage them in conversation but nothing doing, nada, either they didn't speak English or they were trained like the guards outside Buckingham palace not to react to anything except immediate danger. I suspect the latter.

So I set about finding my friend and colleague Mihajlo, a Serbian I had met through my work in Brussels, he works for the European Scout Region. I was soon reliably informed that he was in Skopje but would return before ten am. It was now nine am. We were to share an exhibition tent so I found his display, and set up my own PR display alongside his.

This took about an hour so I happily settled in to wait at my stand for Mihajlo to return to give me the low down on the Jamboree so far and fill me in on the plan for the next few days. The Jamboree actually began on the twentieth of July, I was just catching the end.

So I waited, Big scary shadows on either side, and I waited. By midday I was bored, so I sought out some new friends from the night before and discovered a plan to escape the provided lunch, and dine out in a small village not far away. I was duly invited to sample some local traditional Macedonian food with them and I jumped at the chance, not only for the cultural experience but I also needed to pee again. So off I went with three Macedonians, two Croatians, a Serb and a Bosnian, leaving my shadows at the gate, wearing slightly put out expressions.

We arrived in the local establishment and I hurried off to pee while the others moved around tables so we would all be together. To my dismay what greeted me in the ladies was a hole in the floor. I am not exaggerating, It was an Asian toilet.

I like a challenge, and it was a just that. I wont elaborate, but there was paper, some of which I stole, shamelessly.

Anyway, we sat down to the meal, with happily dry shoes. My new friends ordered for us and we began with a salad of black olives, cucumber, tomatoes all covered with crumbled feta cheese. Mmmmmmmmmm. And Rakia. Yes, Rakia with the salad, neat. At lunch time. When in Rome and all that, so I drank and ate heartily. We ate salad and drank a lot of Rakia for about two hours. I was wondering when we might return to the campsite as I was beginning to feel a nap would be in order when the next course arrived! Big plates of chips and slabs of meat, and I mean slabs! There was chicken, beef, pork, venison and some fish. This was served with strong white wine that was watered down with sparkling water. As we neared the end of one platter, another would appear, even more delicious than before. We ate and ate and ate, and washed it all down with increasingly weak spritzer. (It never occurred to me to start with the strongest alcohol and move onto the weak stuff, it works very well. A very happy buzzy drunkenness is the result.) We finished up with a beer at about five o'clock and moseyed on back to the campsite for a nap.

In my happy condition I had forgotten all about the missing Serb, Mihajlo. I only remembered when I ran into a another old friend on my way to the port-a-loo (In my happy condition I had also forgotten to pee before we left the restaurant) and he mentioned seeing Mihaljo the day before. I tried hunting him down and found out that he was still in Skopje! Fecker, he was supposed to be helping me with my work. I couldn't possibly get riled up and angry at that moment due to all the food and happiness. So I let it go and went for a nap.