So, our Albanian road trip turned into a Macedonian road trip as we continued around Lake Ohrid to our destination, also called Ohrid (quite the coincidence).
We only drove on a very small and pretty touristy section of Macedonian roads, so it might be unfair to comment, but they did seem better-maintained and the drivers less crazy than their Albanian counterparts.
I wanted to detour out of Albania to Ohrid because I thought it would be a beautiful, relaxing spot to spend the last few days of our holiday, and also because I had read there were some lovely and historic churches and monasteries in the area which I was keen to visit. It is true that there are some nice churches, but it probably delivered more on the relaxing front than the cultural. The churches were pretty and richly-decorated (more on them later), but very small on the whole, so you couldn't fill up too much time on each one.
As for the city itself, it was probably the most "complete package" of the destinations on our trip. It has the stunningly beautiful lake, an old town artfully piled up on the hillside which screams "Balkan city" (I've not been to Croatia, but it reminds me of photos I've seen of the likes of Dubrovnik, with all the red roofs), good food, sunshine, shopping, and cultural activities. On the downside, the beaches are, unsurprisingly, not up to snuff compared to those on the Albanian Riviera, and as mentioned, the cultural stuff is nice but not absorbing.
Still, it most definitely seems like the sort of place you dream of moving to and living a life of leisure, sipping cocktails in a lake-front restaurant or enjoying the view from a terrace on the hill.
Speaking of which, here's the view from our hotel balcony, which cost the princely sum of 30€ a night:
It's actually even better in real life
Looking down on the city at dusk
Sunset view from the hotel
The night view, captured as we sat on the balcony sipping Macedonian wine
We happened to be there at the same time as a folk music festival, and the folk music festival happened to be at a location where we could hear the concerts (over multiple nights) while sitting on the hotel balcony. It's fair to say not all the music was to my taste - it is folk music, after all - but it was pretty special to be able to sit out there, enjoying the view and listening to some traditional music. Slightly spoilt by the noisy family on the adjoining balcony who seemed to mystifyingly prefer to listen to practically the same music, but on a radio instead of the live version. Savages!
We spent a good amount of time trying to think up get-rich-quick schemes so we could pack it all in in dreary northern Europe and find our own dreamy balcony here minus the annoying family next door. Any ideas?
...la Fête de la Musique vient à toi! (If you don't go to the Fête de la Musique, the Fête de la Musique comes to you.) So someone said to me over drinks on Wednesday, the day before the Fête de la Musique, aka World Music Day, and it turned out to be true! He meant that you can't avoid hearing the music whether you go out or not, so you might as well make the most of it, but in my case, the Fête de la Musique came to me in the form of my friend Laura, who rang up to say she was coming past my house and did I want to come into town with her?
I had brownies in the oven, since Liz had given me a whole bunch of stickers which enabled me to get a fancy new mixer (for 25€, saving 38€!) to replace my crappy stick blender which is feeble and overheats all the time, along with some pretty broad hints about me using the new mixer to make brownies (if you can call saying "you know what you can make with the new mixer? Brownies!" about 20 times a 'hint'). So anyway, Laura and I had a glass of wine while we waited for the brownies to finish baking, then another glass of wine while we ate a brownie, and then headed into the centre-ville to see what the haps was.
As well as organised events and bars having their own bands or DJs, amateur musicians are encouraged to play on the streets during the Fête de la Musique, often only a few metres away from each other, so you can be listening to jazz one minute and dubstep the next (not that I actually know what dubstep is, but I'm assuming you can, seems to be what all the kids are listening to these days). The old town was really crowded, but most people didn't seem that drunk, and there was a great open, festive atmosphere, with people seeming more willing to smile and chat than is usually the case on a Saturday night or whatever. We just wandered through the town, from the Place du Monstre through the streets around Place Plum' (didn't go into the Place though, too crowded) and then over to Rue Colbert where we watched a group playing on the street for a while until it got to about 12.15 and the bands had to pack up, so we headed into the Pale for a nightcap.
I'm glad I went out, it was fun! Of course, last year the Fête de la Musique was the last time I went out with my old flatmate, since the next day I came home to the agent in our house informing me that she hadn't been paying the rent for a year... Time flies, hard to believe it's been a year since the start of all that drama, I suppose especially since it just dragged on and on with tax issues and so forth. I'd like to say I'm in a happier place now, but since then the only big thing that's changed is I no longer have a job, so yeah. Anyway...
Of course, the reason the Fête de la Musique was yesterday was because it was the longest day and the official start of summer! And yesterday, apart from the bit where it bucketed down for 10 minutes or so while I was walking to Carrefour, was actually quite nice weather, luckily! The sky wasn't even completely dark (that dark blue colour rather than black) when we were heading in to town around 11 pm, and this morning I was (reluctantly) woken up by sunshine streaming in through my shutters. So far, we've had rain, rain and more rain, but fingers crossed now it's officially summer!
I make notoriously crappy videos and this is no exception really, but it gives a little snapshot of being on the street during the Fête
I have been having a pleasant few days, without resulting in anything particularly interesting in blog terms. (So, um, you've been warned?)
Quiet Saturday night, I headed over to Laura's for an apéro dinatoire. I felt really bad because her text invite said "anytime after 8" but when I turned up at 9.30 there were only three people there and they were waiting for me to eat! Oops! But yeah, be more precise with your invitation maybe? I didn't mean to be quite that late, but I'm still having to wrangle Liz's cat on a daily basis plus there has been a bus strike for about a week so I had to walk all the way to Tours Nord.
On Sunday I watched the F1, pretty good race as with all of them this season, although I wasn't happy with the result. Tell you one thing, McLaren need to start aiming their (wheel) guns somewhere other than their own feet, because they should be leading both championships by all rights. Annoying. Then I had to clean the house ahead of Greg's arrival at 9 pm.
We spent Sunday evening just chatting and catching up. As mentioned, it's been 5 years since we last saw each other, but he kindly informed me I look the same and not like someone else he just caught up with in Paris who now looks like he's been fashioned out of a deformed leather bag. Score! Sunblock every day, no smoking and a healthy layer of face fat if you want to know my secrets ladies ;) Plus good genes I think, my mum has always looked young too. I do need to sort out the growing number of grey hairs I've got going on though!!
Greg is a Very Special Boy and I imagine he takes some getting used to for some people, but he's awesome. I was chatting with his mum on Skype last night (who is lovely, and not just because she said I was pretty and wonderful and I can come stay with them in Plano any time, but take note: it helps) and she told me just to stop him if he starts going off on a tangent (sample tangents so far: about how his parents abandoned him as a child to fly around the world in a dirigible or about how he was molested by a skeleton/Liverpudlian man in the Paris catacombs). I did very much enjoy his (I think true) story about how he hitched a ride off some Italian sailors who asked him if he'd ever been with a man, before driving him to an isolated Italian motel, where Our Hero thought he might be about to be raped by a pack of Italian sailors. (The story had a happy ending - the motel only cost 15 euros for the night. Oh, and no-one raped him.)
Going out with him can be somewhat frustrating at times, as it's like dealing with an errant toddler or a herd of cats. I pissed myself laughing in the park, when, having failed to open the gate by pushing it, instead of trying to pull it, he lifted it off its hinges. We soon attracted a small crowd of people trying to get through the gate as he attempted to repair it, and I had to explain that he was an American and this was his first time dealing with gate technology... On another occasion, I was trying to run some errands, but we had to stop so that he could climb down one of the boat ladders on the side of the Loire and run around on its banks while I looked at him exasperatedly. On the other hand, his exploratory spirit has already led to me discovering some Roman ruins just next to Place Plum which I never knew existed though! (They're going to be on the new edition of the Super Best Tour of Tours if so required though!)
Last night was awesome though, I said I'd cook him dinner on condition that he serenaded me while I did so. Greg's a fantastically talented guitarist and he wowed me by playing classical pieces like bits of the Four Seasons by Vivaldi or the Flight of the Bumblebee on guitar - I've never heard classical music played on the guitar, and it was pretty special! Also, can you imagine how good you have to be to play Flight of the Bumblebee on the guitar? I was just staring at his fingers in awe. I took guitar lessons for a bit as a kid, but it was the only class I ever wagged (skipped, cut) because the strings really hurt my wee little fingers. My mum always said I would regret it if I couldn't play a musical instrument (hence I was forced to try about 5 different ones, all of which I was bad at), which is normally not true, but I must admit I was a bit jealous last night. After dinner I made him play some songs I could sing along to (he seems to know pretty much every song you can think of, perhaps because he's fresh from a stint working in a band on a cruise ship) and we had a bit of a jam together until it got too late and I didn't want to bug the neighbours any more. It was really cool, like having a concert in my living room.
I'm sure Greg won't mind me sharing some of his music. Here's a cover of Eleanor Put Your Boots On by Franz Ferdinand, which is not actually one I know, but I like his version:
Here's one of his original songs, Happiness Machine.
And another one, which shows something of his sense of humour and political bent. To quote from his introduction to the song, "If the good lord hadn't intended for us to pave the entire continent, then he'd have given the indians kalashnikovs." He's a very proud Texan... (whoops, naughty naughty swear word in the freeze frame there)
If you like what you hear, you can buy his album! Get in before he's famous, that's why I'm keeping him on anyway ;) http://cdbaby.com/cd/gregreinert
Of course, as soon as I say the weather's been good and we won't have any flight problems this year, there's only a bloody storm (called "Joachim") across half of France! According to Météo France, the wind got up to 103 km/hr here last night. It claims the storm is officially over in these parts (until it maybe starts up again in the afternoon), but it's still raining on and off and windy. Anyway, on to the topic at hand.
Other than having to study the entire oeuvre of Jacques Brel at school, most of my knowledge of French music dates from 2007, when I lived in the Nord Pas de Calais with a bunch of Brits, some of whom couldn't speak any French at all. Consequently, the music channels (and we had about 5 to choose from on Canal+) were on in the lounge 24/7. Since then, I've mostly come across new (to me) ones in clubs or at the gym. I never listen to the radio anymore, so if I'm missing some good 'uns, let me know! It's a bit of a mixed bag genre-wise, but here are a few of my favourite things!
I first heard this back in summer, but I only just came across the video. It's Mika, singing in French! And it's super catchy of course!
Elle Me Dit - Mika
This might be cheating slightly, since Martin Solveig sings (or has other people sing while he DJs) in English, but he is French! And he performs the miraculous feat of producing music that makes me want to get on a treadmill and turn it up to 10 kph (truly a wonder for the ages). Here's his latest:
Hello - Martin Solveig
Big in Japan - Martin Solveig
This isn't really a favourite as such, but dancing the Madison is a weird fitting-in-with-the-French rite of passage. (Although I think it's maybe an American thing originally?) Everyone knows it (at least vaguely), and people will actually do it in clubs. I put this clip up out of the many available on YouTube because they dance the Madison about as well as I do.
The Madison by ???
Talking of not being able to dance...
Les blancs ne savent pas danser - James Deano
This gets stuck in my head big time every time I hear it, but I still like it!
Champs Elysees - Joe Dassin
Okay, I didn't grow up as the only black kid in a small French town, but I still feel like I can relate to this a little bit after living in the Nord Pas de Calais countryside
Marly Gomont - Kamini
There is a rocky version of this that everyone always ends up linking arms and singing along to at 3 am in your favourite French club, but I can't find it online. Does anyone know who it's by?
Emmenez-moi - Charles Aznavour
Mostly linking to this so French-speakers can have a laugh at the amazing spelling of whoever wrote the subtitles. And then he gives up on it altogether halfway through!
Garçon - Koxie
You can skip the first 45 seconds of this video if you're not interested in seeing old French men (including Eric Cantona I think?) argue in a tabac. This video always makes me want to go re-enact it in Marseille
A la Bien - Soprano
Kind of the "Sid and Nancy" of France, in that the lead singer of this band killed his girlfriend
I got really sick of this after thrashing it back in 2007. But I am proud that I can rap along with it! Plus MC Solaar is a legend - we even had him in our textbooks when I was first learning French
