That Time I Got Stuck in Paris by Mikaela Cortopassi

Okay hear me out: sometimes you actually don’t want to be in Paris.

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I know, I know. It sounds crazy at first pass.

But imagine, if you will. The time: Lunar New Year, laaaate January, after an exhausting fiscal year end. The place: a gate at JFK Terminal 8, having left the comforts of the gorgeous and absurdly bougie Flagship Lounge to ensure you’re able to board on time. Your destination? Reims, the heart of Champagne Country… by way of Roissy of course.

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There’s some weather (January in New York, after all), but not much. Not enough to be worried. The departure time changes. Then changes again. The gate agent gets on the loudspeaker, “we have the mechanics on the plane…” and a collective groan goes up from the passengers clustered around the boarding lanes. Your plane is now out of service, but! There’s hope! They’ve found another plane. If this can board and take off relatively quickly, you’ll miss the train where your reserved seat waits, but you’ll still probably be able to make it to Pommery in time for your tour and tasting.

Not too fast! Maintenance is on your new plane. It gets brought around to your gate eventually… without the maintenance logs. Another hour goes by. Kiss your champagne au revoir. Add another hour.

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Look: there is no first world problem like your flight to Paris being delayed. It is the ultimate. That doesn’t make it any easier to stomach alas.

And so, 5-ish hours later as we finally took off, I resolved not to find some alternate activity (though jaunting off on a cathedral hunt in Amiens or Chartres crossed my mind), but instead to listen to what the universe was clearly trying to tell me: SPEND THE DAY IN PARIS, idiote!

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The arrival into Roissy was absurdly smooth, and I plotted out my day from the RER train into town: take Métro from the train station to my hotel, attempt to check in, get a baguette, &c.

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This trip marked my first stay at the Moxy Bastille. Moxy is honestly my favorite of the Marriott brands – modern, affordable, new, and often with an excellent bar/restaurant to boot. I was able to check in relatively quickly and into a room with a balcony no less. While the weather wasn’t exactly conducive to being on a rooftop, I made quick use of it. There is little as magical as a terrace in Paris, if you’ll pardon the rhyme.

After a quick nap and quicker shower, I was off!

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Pack it up, pack it in. by Mikaela Cortopassi

My favorite activity.

Weirdly, this is a question I get a lot from friends and coworkers: “how do you pack for all of your intense trips?” I think packing is absolutely a science (there is no art here. at all.) and can be boiled down to a few guidelines.

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In truth, I was a terrible packer until I started traveling for business. Something about that experience makes you absolutely ruthless – do you want to be weighed down by three unnecessary pairs of shoes and an oversized toiletry case as you sprint across Charlotte Douglas trying to make the last connection of the night? No! You will sleep in Charlotte, and that’s rarely pleasant.

The beauty of it is that the skill has extended to my personal travel, to the point that I can confidently take a three week trip (between late Spring and early Fall) with just carry-ons. Goodbye, lost luggage. Hello, never having to wait at baggage claim.

I highly recommend it.

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For the past year, I’ve been traveling with an Away rollaboard. I only bought it because a friend gave me a gift certificate for Christmas last year but really leaned into the whole millennial thing with the color scheme. In truth, I was always a backpack traveler (see: sprinting across CLT), but I love their bag and it’s easier to carry atop a rollaboard than a shoulder, so here we are. I hate to be a cliché, but they are excellent pieces of luggage and the price is right.

I picked the pink (this one is called Striped and was limited edition… it’s not Blush which is still available but a tad more saturated) because I didn’t want to be yet another person with a Black/Navy bag and run the risk of getting accidentally grabbed by someone else while deplaning. People love to make comments on my ridiculous pink bag and honestly I’m here for it. There probably isn’t a more on-brand Mik bag, if I’m being honest.

Sidebar: this looks like an ad. It isn’t. I’m just really happy with my luggage.

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I have three key pieces of packing advice:

  1. Pick a color scheme! A capsule wardrobe will never serve you wrong, minimizes pieces while maximizing options, and keeps you from being indecisive. I will typically pick one or two neutrals (black or navy or white), one color (usually red or pink), and one accent (usually ends up being blue or yellow, but I would love to do green one of these days).

  2. Always carry silk scarves! They can jazz up outfits, keep your hair out of the way, serve as a makeshift sling, double as jewelry, keep your neck warm. Truly the best thing, and as an added bonus they take up next to no space.

  3. Wipes! This is a hold over from my backpacking days. Look: are they the most environmentally friendly thing in the world? No. But you don’t always know when you’re going to have access to a sink. Sometimes you’re so gross and sticky and miserable… a wipe can fix at least part of that. If you’re traveling traveling there’s a good chance you’ll get yourself dehydrated at some point and nothing feels better on a red overheated face than a cool wipe. Trust.

Fireworkstravaganza by Mikaela Cortopassi

Just like Icelandic food, Icelandic fireworks merit their own conversation. I had never been to a country as fireworks-mad as I am… and I’ve been in Asia for Lunar New Year. Enter Iceland.

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A truth – but joke at the same time – of Iceland is that they have a lot of “most x per capita” records. It’s the nature of a small country. Most professional footballers per capita. Most authors per capita. Most energy generated per capita. If you ever have a reason to spend New Year’s Eve in Iceland, you would not be hard pressed to say, “most fireworks purchased per capita” either.

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For what it’s worth, the fireworks sales support ICESAR, the Icelandic Association for Search & Rescue. So you can feel doubly good when blowing things up.

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All of Reykjavík (or so it seems) gathers at Hallgrímskirkja after the annual NYE special Skaupið is finished, of course. There are actual blast zones designated for lighting fireworks, but beyond that it’s fairly a free for all.

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You have everything from full-on rockets to much tamer sparklers, spinners, and cone fountains. All of the rockets have the advantage of exploding near the absurdly picturesque background of the church tower.

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I could do this every New Year for the rest of my life.

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Matur og Drykkur by Mikaela Cortopassi

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This isn’t solely about the Reykjavík restaurant Matur og drykkur, nor musings on the venerable cookbook whence it’s named, but rather a discourse on Icelandic food and drink (that is, matur and drykkur) from the eyes of a mostly-American tourist. (We’ll get back to the full recollection of the trip next post; this digression felt absolutely necessary with the number of food photos I took!) Prior to my first visit to Iceland I heard two schools of thought when it came to food and drink on the island:

  1. Expensive and boring

  2. Gastronomic wonderland

The latter viewpoint was espoused solely (though vociferously) by my friend Samer, who has written an excellent guide to Reykjavík dining.

After a few visits, I understand where the misapprehensions of school of thought Nº1 arise… even if I think it’s completely off-base. Food in Iceland is expensive (as it is on so many islands), but the cost difference between uninspired and sensational isn’t as dramatic as it might be elsewhere. If you’re already spending a lot for a meal, why not spend an incremental percentage more to have a fabulous one?

The good news is that even if you’re on a strict budget, there’s always the option of the best hot dogs ever. (Technically, the best hot dogs in town but I’ll go with ever.)

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My first visit was marked by a lingering cold that I could feel coming on as I waited in the lounge at LAX (another story entirely, but that was the start of a bizarre LAX-LHR-HEL-KEF routing, courtesy of oneworld, not to mention my first flight on the Dreamliner) and it meant soup soup and more soup. I found some pho early on which I’m fairly certain was good (it was hard to tell with zero tastebuds working well), but I spent a better part of the trip eating Kjötsúpa (translated simply and literally as “meat soup”).

I had eaten the soup probably about four times, thinking it a perfectly pleasant vegetable-heavy, brothy thing, before my cold had lifted enough for me to notice that the predominant flavor was in fact lamb. There’s something so comforting and earthy about lamb when you’re sick. And having had it well on another trip, all I can say is I must have been really sick to be able to taste none of that lamb flavor the first few times.

Fine dining in Reykjavík has been a bit of a revelation – somehow managing to pull off white-linen, in-the-Michelin-Guide dining without the stuffiness and (I think) at very reasonable prices for that caliber of meal. The lamb theme continued at a visit to Grillmarket with my mother last summer; I have truly never had a better piece of that meat. We were also able to try puffin, which was interesting but not entirely my thing texture-wise. Imagine if a duck ate sardines and there’s puffin.

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Nostra, meanwhile, was the site of the most luxurious dinner I think I’ve ever had: foie gras, fresh truffles, caviar, port, oysters, Churchill’s favorite Pol Roger champagne, gold. Like literally, gold on the dessert. It was decadent perfection with thoughtful, creative preparations; the foie, for example, was frozen and then grated over rutabaga. Genius. Oh and the beef tallow mashed potatoes! I could go on. If you ever have cause to be in Iceland for New Year’s Eve – and you really should, particularly if you like fireworks – try to get a reservation at Nostra. I’ve now dined there twice and could probably go back a hundred more times and still crave it.

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And it’s not to say that Nostra is merely a special occasion place, though it can be your special occasion. From reindeer to charred leeks to kohlrabi cream cheese “dumplings,” it was all brilliant and my compliments as ever to Chef Carl and his team.

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If fish is what you’re in the mood for, Messinn has you covered. There’s a location in Grandi with a spectacular buffet (try all the fishes) and another easily accessible on Lækjargata. Their offering comes in the form of Fiskipönnur – fish pans – which are the best possible iteration of an Applebee’s skillet. Excellent excellent fish (the joys of being on an island) with sauce and veggies. Done.

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And then of course, the aforementioned Matur og Drykkur, a brilliant restaurant also out in the Grandi neighborhood (which itself is foodie paradise). That was also the site of a NYE dinner, though sadly at the tail end of my cold. We had some truly perfect smoked lamb; it’s traditionally done over dung fires which I know sounds odd, but the taste is unreal, all earth and funk and Iceland. The duck breast was equally perfect, with the prettiest potatoes.

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Another particular favorite Icelandic treat is the licorice ice cream from Valdis – if lamb is the savory note that sticks out most in my mind when I think of Icelandic food, then licorice must be its sweet counterpart. They recently opened a location closer to downtown which means more in my future.

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My favorite combination was Salted Licorice and Passion Fruit, two flavors that were honestly meant to be together. I think licorice pairs so well with bright, acidic fruits – a sitruuna-lakritsi (lemon-licorice) ice cream while waiting for the ferry at Kauppatori in Helsinki was one of the great delights of my first visit to Finland. At any rate, lacking that, you can make your own combination at Valdis, and you can’t really go wrong.

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And let’s not neglect the drykkur. My favorite brewery has an outpost in 101, Mikkeller & Friends. A newer addition is the brilliant Session, for beer people, by beer people. It’s actually a brilliant beer scene, particularly considering that beer has only been legal there for the past 30 years after a long period of prohibition in the 1910’s.

Three Hours in Tirana by Mikaela Cortopassi

The traffic ringing Tiranë was just about what you’d expect: back ups, confusing street signs, shouting drivers, horns, diesel fumes. My cabbie decided that he’d had enough – and I can’t blame him: what with a drive back across the border to Macedonia and all, it had turned into a 5-6 hour adventure. He found a relatively safe street and dropped me off, luggage and all, and told me to be very careful and to take an “Albania taxi,” but being who I am I chose to walk into town instead.

Not the best plan I ever had. 

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In truth, I felt very safe the entire time. My sketch-o-meter is highly highly attuned from my years in the Mission District, and nothing about Tiranë set it off. However, my arms were about ready to fall off after 20 minutes (the joys of lugging camera gear around?), and I stopped at Parku Rinia for a quick snack and some light sunbathing. It felt amazing in the sunshine after some chilly time in Macedonia. After a quick respite, I gritted my teeth and made for a luggage storage facility I had found with some quick googling at the hotel.

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Luggage storage nearly always seems to be a trial, even in a good-sized city like Tiranë. I’ve had so many ridiculous run-ins over the years (dragging a rollaboard across the sand in Viareggio is a standout) that I suppose it’s no surprise I moved to backpack-exclusive travel for the vast majority of my adventuring.

Given this illustrious track record, I was surprised and pleased to find an excellent solution in the simply named Luggage Storage Tirana. It was having a soft opening of sorts (lucky me!), and I was able to leave my bags for a nominal fee. I got doubly lucky in that the proprietor, who first apologized for his command of English, saw my surname and asked, “ma non parli italiano per caso? - you don’t happen to speak Italian, do you?

What I learned later that day is this was not a particularly unique occurrence – Italian is still the most widely spoken foreign language in Albania, a remnant of fascist invasion and communist-era pirated Italian television – but this was still a remarkably welcomed turn of events. And should you ever have need to find luggage storage in Tiranë, I would highly recommend you do the same. Bags safely deposited, I made my way to the center square.

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I was greeted by a busy fun fair and Christmas market in Sheshi Skënderbej – the aforementioned center square, named for the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg. It seemed slightly smaller than it actually is with all the goings on of the day, but was massive nonetheless.

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The square is gorgeous: pure pedestrian paradise, ringed with key civic and cultural buildings including the brilliant old Et’hem Bey mosque which was unfortunately (for me) undergoing renovation. The majority of the architecture is no doubt a relic of the Hoxha regime… decidedly socialist, but somehow lighter or less imposing than some of the heavy-handed brutalist relics one might encounter in, say, Podgorica or Zagreb (which, incidentally, I adore, but the beauty of Tiranë’s buildings felt more universally accessible).

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I was absolutely enthralled with that contrast of harsh architecture and the palpable warmth radiating off the people I encountered. The square rang with laughs and shouts as it sparkled and gleamed in the surprisingly bright sunshine. There was something to be said for the incongruity of a massive and hideous conical Christmas “tree” with – I kid you not – “Feliz Navidad” emanating from one of the many food stalls in a majority-Muslim country. (Proving, as always, that we can all just get along, should we so choose.)

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The building I was most looking forward to seeing in my quick tour was the Piramida, a UFO-looking thing from the end of the communist era, originally built in memory of Hoxha, now abandoned and decaying.

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If decrepit communist ruins and discussion of photography aren’t your thing, you can probably skip to the end of the post. In fact, I probably could make this its own post, but what’s the fun of that?

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There have been plans to rebuild the thing for years, but here it sits, all broken windows and garbage and graffiti.

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While the sunshine had at first been a welcome antidote to all the cold, it did lead to some photographic challenges. What’s the fun of an endless blue sky and harsh midday shadows? I’m not sure how I would have liked to have shot the pyramid, but what I got certainly didn’t capture much of what I was hoping for. At the time I remember being frustrated I had nothing wider than the Q’s 28mm, though I’m wondering if that would really have given me what I wanted.

Black and white didn’t seem to absolve the images of their sins either, and it’s all a bit frustrating in reflection. All the same, it was exactly as impressive in person as I’d hoped – something I should probably try to keep in mind.

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The most delightful part was just how accessible it was: 10 minutes south of the square on foot, just across the river. Something like this in the states would be fenced in, boarded up, inaccessible (I mean, relatively inaccessible), but here people climbed freely up the sloping concrete sides for the view over the city.

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I wanted terribly to join in, but my footwear was suspect and tumbling off a building to crack a tooth or worse hours before an international flight seemed like a bad plan, even for me.

It may finally be time to give up the ghost and admit that I’m an adult.

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All too soon, my time was up, and I cut a quick path back to the luggage storage to grab my bags. Across the street was a cab stand, and after some quick haggling in Italian (The best kind of haggling, if I do say so myself. That language was made for furiously fast negotiation.) I was on my way to the airport.

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My quick Albanian tour felt almost like a gift with all the hassle it took to get there. I’m glad I toughed out the trip in, and am thoroughly looking forward to return visit some time in the future. Faleminderit, Shqipnia – thanks, Albania!

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The Great Balkan Taxi Adventure by Mikaela Cortopassi

One piece of advice I give for travel but rarely follow myself is not to box yourself into a schedule corner. Even with domestic travel, airlines have maintenance, weather happens, things go wrong. My itineraries almost always include back up schedules, particularly when trains and buses are involved as Plans B are easier to come by.

Naturally, I took not one second of my own advice when planning how to get from Ohrid to Reykjavík, where I was meeting a friend for New Year’s Eve. And somehow, I miscalculated times and booked myself on a 15.50 flight leaving Tiranë for London. (Unsurprisingly, there are no TIA-KEF directs.)

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The night before, I was packing and mentally preparing for the travel day when it dawned on me that I wouldn’t have too much time in Albania. Google Maps said that the journey between Struga and Tiranë was usually around 2.5 hours, which would put me into town at noon. I realized quickly I had neglected to factor in border time (assumed an hour based on how those things go) which meant 13.00 arrival... and then my paranoid brain hopped on actual Google to find stories of 5+ hour trips on the bus route.

I PANICKED. Full on looking up new flights, trying to figure out if the 4am bus still runs or if that was seasonal, and otherwise stressing myself out. 

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Eventually I settled on the world’s most privileged solution to any problem: throw money at it, this time in the form of a taxi. From a few posts, I gleaned I could get a ride for about 120€. I proceeded to sleep fitfully with a plan to take a taxi to Albania or – if no one would take me – at least to Struga where I’d roll my dice with the international bus.

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My fears were confirmed the next morning when the hotel owner shot me a look like I was insane when I asked her to call the cab company and see if a ride to Tiranë was possible. She laughed and shrugged and said, “we’ll ask...” Anxiety went to relief not two minutes later when her skeptical look turned to a smirk on the phone call (all I could discern from the rapid-fire Macedonian was that she’d repeated Албанија when asked – I assume – to clarify) and she announced that the driver wanted 100€ and could pick me up in 10 minutes. The driver arrived, I asked for a quick bancomat run (through the hotel owner), and we were off.

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The drive itself was pretty straightforward: back up around the lake, passing Struga, into the hills, over the border, through the snow, back down, through a few towns, and into city center. My driver’s English was a bit better than my Macedonian, but communication was still difficult… which of course meant I had to occupy myself by taking photos.

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Albania was always a bit of a question mark in my mind. Many Italian friends and family have opinions on the country which I always took with a grain of salt; after visiting, I understood some degree of their views. My Macedonian taxi driver was even more firm in his opinions, cracking jokes like, “look, Albania car wash!” when we encountered a wildly flailing garden hose, left on and walked away from by the side of the road. (I could have sworn I had a photo of this, but no such luck! I saw no fewer than five such “car washes.”)

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They say that every country has a country that they shit on, and all signs pointed to Albania being the much abused, younger sibling type. 

I’ve certainly never been one to eschew a location on the basis of loosely controlled chaos – quite to the contrary, I love the boisterous, frenetic energy of the Napolis of the world. On that level alone, it was the right destination for me, and I’m sure it deserves a longer visit at some point in the future.

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"This music crept by me upon the waters" by Mikaela Cortopassi

“This music crept by me upon the waters”
and along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street
— T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
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Ohrid was not necessarily a place I should ever have made my way to. I tend to gravitate towards the swirling metropolitan chaos of capital cities when visiting new countries. On this trip, however, it was this lake-side jewel that spurred the whole thing. I saw a picture of St. John the Theologian in the snow – half frosted gingerbread house, half orthodox chapel – and I was sold.

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In truth, it shouldn’t have been a surprising destination as Ohrid (Lake, town, environs) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site – the source of my only example of checklist travel. Ecclesiastical Byzantine architecture is among my favorite styles, and it is truly reflected and amplified in the town.

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My one great disappointment was that St. Sophia (funny how I kept running into her) was closed, so I missed out on any number of frescos, but all in all had a delightful time exploring the churches.

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I don’t know if I’ve ever seen as many stray cats as I did there.

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It bordered nearly on the ridiculous.

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Some posed, some ran… I even bore witness to an impromptu feeding from some local boys, carrying a grocery bag of tiny fried fish.

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Never ones to be outdone, the town’s stray dogs seemed to make a point to catch my eye.

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At the end of the day, the greatest delight was the lake itself, the bejeweled backdrop to every photo and every vista alike. I’d love to find my way back in the summer to soak up the sun and have more people around for eating and drinking and dancing – all things I found quite excellent in Macedonia, particularly given that it was the crisp frigid early winter.

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