[Author's note: The blog was named after the video at the bottom of this blog. See link below.]
PANORAMA RESTAURANT
The Panorama is a famous restaurant in Ohrid. The prices are cheap, the food is good, the portions are big and the staff is friendly.
I've made friends with the wait staff and current manager, Risto. He is working there while his brother the owner is tending to his broken leg.
Risto is quite an interesting fellow and we've had some good conversations. Here's one:
Risto: "Where are you from? Which ethnic background?"
Logan: "Don't know. Adopted."
Risto: "Your name? Where is 'Horsford' from?
Logan: "Might be Norwegian, not sure."
Risto: "You don't know your family history?"
Logan: "In America, most people don't. They might have some memories of their grandparents, but usually..." (shrug)
Risto: "I know eight generations back!"
Logan: "Most people in the USA would find that surprising. We have no sense of history."
I didn't have the heart to tell him that when people outlive their perceived usefulness, we like to stick them in old people's homes and usually they have little to do with the families. Here, the grandparents always live with the family and help raise the kids.
It's a different culture.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I know of at least one person who has traced their family back to the Mayflower but that is - in the USA - an anomaly.)
As a side note, I think the culture of the USA may be slowly changing within my own lifetime. Because of the poverty induced by the corporations. Kids now have to live with their parents much longer (often into their 30's). Poverty will continue to change things. Whether this is better or worse, I cannot say.
Some cooks and wait staff freak out if you try this but it worked here: I told them "I don't want anything that has ever lived in the water and keep the bill under 500d ($10). Bring whatever."
Rather than doing the cowardly thing of thinking "What if he doesn't like it!" they just brought food.
Some of the best meals I've had in Macedonia.
If you visit Ohrid, Panorama is a must go to restaurant. It will be about 120d (less than $3) by taxi to get there from the tourist area.
ALCOHOL
Somewhere, I'd made a comment that "in Macedonia I hadn't been drinking". This isn't quite true. Meals generally have a beer or two with them.
While in the 'we were founded by Puritans (later muddled by 'Victorian thinking') and still have all that baggage" USA, it might be seen as alcoholism, here it is 'just another drink'.
When I get beer with my food is is generally because:
a) only an idiot would drink tap water of a different country (even if it is deemed 'safe')
b) you get a half liter for the same price as you get a quarter liter of soda. I've no idea why.
MACEDONIAN CUSTOM
"Let's go for coffee" could mean any kind of drink, including alcohol.
It is probable it will involve sitting around a cafe for a long time.
DAILY SCHEDULE
There may be a couple people who are curious as to what my daily schedule looks like. For them as well as posterity I have taken the time to write it down. In several hundred years, my hope is that a teacher will come across it and force their students to learn it in order to bore the shit out of them. This, teachers, is your payback. Note, if apes have mastered the world by then, be sure to put in several 'groom myself and others' parts.
7:00-10:00 Depending on the amount of pain I am in, I wake up somewhere between these times.
10:00-11:00 Play my video games until somewhere within these times. In most of the world, there is really no point to go out before this time unless you like looking at closed shops. If a male asks another male to 'wake up early to see the sunrise', he should expect to be punched in the nose. If a boy asks a girl to 'wake up early to see the sunrise', it is a seduction thing. If a girl asks a boy, it's because she doesn't want to go by herself. If the boy accepts, it is because he wants to sleep with her. If he responds "Are you fucking nuts?" it means he thinks he has no chance of having sex with the female. Just so you know.
10:00-14:00 Wander around for one to three hours. The actual length of time is heightened by interest and decreased by pain and or hunger. Or diarrhea. The last will cut the time way down. Leaving a brown trail around the city is not generally smiled upon by the people living in that city.
12:00-14:00 Stagger back to flat and shower. Possibly take a nap ranging from :15 to 2:00. The time is dependent upon the amount of fatigue vs the amount of pain I'm in. After this, it is a combination of wandering around the flat muttering to myself (I talk to myself when I require an expert opinion), playing video games and writing blogs.
22:00-02:00 Bed time for Bonzo. The actual bed time depends on the amount of pain, fatigue, insomnia or drunkenness.
VIDEOS
Hills of Macedonia
The Great Flood
PANORAMA RESTAURANT
The Panorama is a famous restaurant in Ohrid. The prices are cheap, the food is good, the portions are big and the staff is friendly.
I've made friends with the wait staff and current manager, Risto. He is working there while his brother the owner is tending to his broken leg.
Risto is quite an interesting fellow and we've had some good conversations. Here's one:
Risto: "Where are you from? Which ethnic background?"
Logan: "Don't know. Adopted."
Risto: "Your name? Where is 'Horsford' from?
Logan: "Might be Norwegian, not sure."
Risto: "You don't know your family history?"
Logan: "In America, most people don't. They might have some memories of their grandparents, but usually..." (shrug)
Risto: "I know eight generations back!"
Logan: "Most people in the USA would find that surprising. We have no sense of history."
I didn't have the heart to tell him that when people outlive their perceived usefulness, we like to stick them in old people's homes and usually they have little to do with the families. Here, the grandparents always live with the family and help raise the kids.
It's a different culture.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I know of at least one person who has traced their family back to the Mayflower but that is - in the USA - an anomaly.)
As a side note, I think the culture of the USA may be slowly changing within my own lifetime. Because of the poverty induced by the corporations. Kids now have to live with their parents much longer (often into their 30's). Poverty will continue to change things. Whether this is better or worse, I cannot say.
Some cooks and wait staff freak out if you try this but it worked here: I told them "I don't want anything that has ever lived in the water and keep the bill under 500d ($10). Bring whatever."
Rather than doing the cowardly thing of thinking "What if he doesn't like it!" they just brought food.
Some of the best meals I've had in Macedonia.
If you visit Ohrid, Panorama is a must go to restaurant. It will be about 120d (less than $3) by taxi to get there from the tourist area.
ALCOHOL
Somewhere, I'd made a comment that "in Macedonia I hadn't been drinking". This isn't quite true. Meals generally have a beer or two with them.
While in the 'we were founded by Puritans (later muddled by 'Victorian thinking') and still have all that baggage" USA, it might be seen as alcoholism, here it is 'just another drink'.
When I get beer with my food is is generally because:
a) only an idiot would drink tap water of a different country (even if it is deemed 'safe')
b) you get a half liter for the same price as you get a quarter liter of soda. I've no idea why.
MACEDONIAN CUSTOM
"Let's go for coffee" could mean any kind of drink, including alcohol.
It is probable it will involve sitting around a cafe for a long time.
DAILY SCHEDULE
There may be a couple people who are curious as to what my daily schedule looks like. For them as well as posterity I have taken the time to write it down. In several hundred years, my hope is that a teacher will come across it and force their students to learn it in order to bore the shit out of them. This, teachers, is your payback. Note, if apes have mastered the world by then, be sure to put in several 'groom myself and others' parts.
7:00-10:00 Depending on the amount of pain I am in, I wake up somewhere between these times.
10:00-11:00 Play my video games until somewhere within these times. In most of the world, there is really no point to go out before this time unless you like looking at closed shops. If a male asks another male to 'wake up early to see the sunrise', he should expect to be punched in the nose. If a boy asks a girl to 'wake up early to see the sunrise', it is a seduction thing. If a girl asks a boy, it's because she doesn't want to go by herself. If the boy accepts, it is because he wants to sleep with her. If he responds "Are you fucking nuts?" it means he thinks he has no chance of having sex with the female. Just so you know.
10:00-14:00 Wander around for one to three hours. The actual length of time is heightened by interest and decreased by pain and or hunger. Or diarrhea. The last will cut the time way down. Leaving a brown trail around the city is not generally smiled upon by the people living in that city.
12:00-14:00 Stagger back to flat and shower. Possibly take a nap ranging from :15 to 2:00. The time is dependent upon the amount of fatigue vs the amount of pain I'm in. After this, it is a combination of wandering around the flat muttering to myself (I talk to myself when I require an expert opinion), playing video games and writing blogs.
22:00-02:00 Bed time for Bonzo. The actual bed time depends on the amount of pain, fatigue, insomnia or drunkenness.
VIDEOS
Hills of Macedonia
The Great Flood
From what I can tell, as long as people in America can trace their ancestry back far enough to when they owned slaves, they are happy....
ReplyDelete