Churches and monasteries, hiking and friends--you know, just another birthday celebration in Macedonia. Like last year, I spent my birthday weekend outside enjoying nature and happily the weather was cooperative (mostly--more on that shortly). First, I finally crossed off my to-do list a hike to a monastery called Treskavec with my volunteer friends Jane and David. There is a monk who lives at the monastery and we saw him driving up in his jeep. For the common man though, it's about a 3 hour hike so the monastery has plenty of solitude. We nearly had the monastery to ourselves and it is quite picturesque, so I encourage checking out these pics. The monastery dates back to the 14th century and they just don't build 'em like they used to. On the way back into town, we made a new friend Spiro who gave us his phone number, his wife's phone number, and encouraged us to call him anytime we were back in the area. It just gives me a warm feeling when people here are so welcoming, I will really miss these types of encounters after I leave Macedonia and that time is not so far away anymore, just 7 months from now.
Maybe the monastery visit helped my prayers for good weather and on Sunday morning, I happily met up with about 10 volunteer friends and 6 locals for another hike. My colleagues at YMCA helped organize a hike going between 3 villages bordering the national park. Following a rather un-detailed map provided by the park, we visited churches and monasteries located in the villages (photos up on Picasa).
We began in the village of Trnovo, which had a church with some images that I had never seen in an Orthodox church before like Adam and Eve and Noah's ark. About 20 minutes later, we arrived in the village of Magarevo. This time, we had to ask around the village for the key to the church and monastery. Usually whoever lives closest to the church keeps the key. Up until this point, everything was sunny and easy but... Despite asking in Trnovo for directions to the next village, Rotino, and asking a cow herder along the way to confirm our path, we got lost. This might not have been so bad had it not led us to be on the side of a mountain hacking our way through scratchy, dense underbrush. To my friends' credit, they maintained good spirits and we distracted ourselves playing a guessing game. Of course, then it started to hail a little. This was more of less the point where I became frustrated with thrashing through the brush and started emphatically calling in English and Macedonian for us to go, "Down! Долу! Down! Долу, долу, долу!" Then I set off and indeed got us off the mountain. The sun came out again and everyone was happier. We decided to press on to Rotino...
Then the dark clouds rolled in and it hailed again, this time pea-sized pieces for about 5 minutes. Also, we still didn't really know where we were going. Some farmers rolled by in the their tractors and we got more directions. Eventually we got to Rotino and a really sweet baba loaned us the monastery key, even giving me a kiss when I asked to take her picture. Luckily Peace Corps volunteers are almost happier when things go awry because they can flex their survival skills and have another good story to tell, so my pals had a great time. I'm less certain about the YMCA members' enjoyment level but they claimed to have fun, although they did say they'd take a path they knew on the next group hike. After hiking, the volunteers came back to my place for a pasta feast and Jane demonstrated making Amaretto sours completely from scratch, assembly-line style, a very nice birthday treat. I'm not sure how my 30s became the decade for pushing myself with demanding hikes on my birthdays but I'm kind of liking it.
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