Well, the “pure holiday” portion of the Tour has wound down, as we enjoyed visits in small or larger groups to the castle overlooking Sarande and to the Butrint historic site. Butrint is one of those places where you need a few hours to really do it justice. It is another example of a jewel of a site that in 10 years will probably be overrun with tourists. Our brass group played a short concert for the other unsuspecting visitors at the amphitheatre, which was covered by Voice of America.
Once back at the hotel, we hunkered down to a rehearsal with the hotel kindly allowing their restaurant to become our “flash mob-esque” rehearsal space. With Bujar taking some time to work separately with the strings, the brass section carefully and quietly worked together on a bottle of Pinot Grigio.Having finished our deconstruction period, we set out on the road through Greece towards Macedonia. We endured an unexpected and prolonged delay at the border which eventually got ironed out. Thank heavens for our quadrilingual Lindita Musaraj, who did all necessary translations for us.
Driving through the Greek countryside, one is struck by the stark difference in public infrastructure, compared to Albania. Long tunnel and after long tunnel and towering bridges make one do the math in one’s head to figure out how all this was financed. (Well, actually, I guess you could just read the paper to answer that question ... .) There is also a notable absence of discarded water bottles and other garbage in the countryside which, unfortunately, can be seen regularly in Albania. I wonder whether even a small bottle deposit (3 lekes?) would reduce the clutter and provide a source of income for some. It certainly works that way in Vancouver.After a quick lunch break, we continued on up the highway to Skopje when disaster struck. Our bus, which had been struggling to maintain normal highway speed on these newly built roads, stalled out about 35km south of Kozani. After limping along for 2 or 3 km, the engine finally emitted a dramatic plume of white smoke which could mean that some part of the cooling system had merged with the combustion chambers (to those “non-car-guys”, this is not a good thing). So, there we sat, stranded on the side of the highway, thankfully on a not too hot day, and on a part of road with a good sized shoulder. Fairly soon, we were greeted by Greek highway emergency patrol and the police. After a number of phone calls to our contact in Macedonia, Vlad Lazarevski (a fine oboist who studied in Boston with my brother and also a member of Music Progressive Quartet whom we are accompanying in Macedonia), a charter bus was roused from Kozani which took us in style to the Greek-Macedonia border. Getting across this border was considerably easier (we walked across with our luggage and were greeted by our Macedonian bus at about 9pm.
After quick stop to pick up some snacks (that gas station never knew what hit them, with 36 hungry Canadians hauling out all manner of sandwiches and other comestibles) we eventually rolled into the Hotel Portal close to the centre of Skopje a little after midnight.And then to bed, to be ready for a 10am rehearsal the next day.
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| Rehearsing at the Hotel Bahamas |
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| Aerial view of Hotel Bahamas pool and grounds from our balcony |
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| Close up of livestock grazing to the right of the swimming pool (see picture above) |