blancmange blanket

Rewind fifty years and London had the kind of air quality you find in Skopje. Another fifty years, replace one set of roadside pyromaniac children with another, Irish or something else, reintroduce stray dogs and the similarities are back. These few days have been a lesson in development and the socio-economic history of cities. While not retracting anything about people being friendly and what have you, I won't be unhappy to leave this city. No wonder you don't see people walking around - more than a couple of weeks here would give you permanent lung damage, not just for the 150% smoking rate; this place will be ripe for respiratory snake oil in a few years' time.

So happily, away is where I am going - this evening, an overnight bus to Istanbul, back on the second of 2007, then to Ohrid and Bitola for a couple of days, followed by a couple of days in Prishtina before going back to Belgrade, Vienna and Bratislava on the tenth.

Ottomania! (I think Orhan Pamuk is a marvellous author, but sadly we won't be able to visit him at home...)


Huggy new year, folks.


Chris