Automobiles

I find myself slipping into Macedonian every now and then, so you will have to excuse me. I actually fall asleep at night practicing the lessons of the day and wake up in the morning conjugating verbs. It’s only been three weeks of language classes but we’ve learned enough to be able to survive in the town.

It’s Friday night and I don’t have to do any homework so I will try to get this e-mail together and try to post it tomorrow. One of our biggest challenges here in the town is trying to stay out of harm’s way. Here in a developing country where resources are in short supply, there are safety violations that would send a safety engineer into an epileptic fit.

Many of the cars being driven are from the time of the former Yugoslav Republic. They include many vehicles that we are unfamiliar with in the States. Fiats, Opels, Yugos, Zastavas, Peugeots, Citreons, Lavas, VWs, and a few BMW’s, Mercedes, small Fords, and Chevy’s rule the road. And I mean rule the roads. Every trip to the center consists of dodging speeding, smokey, and transmission challenged vehicles that barely fit on the back roads and barely make it up the hilly roads. Many of the vehicles are 20 to 30 years old and have been repeatedly patched up. They are forced to share the road with innumerable scooters, donkey carts, tractors, and fume belching trucks.

But this is the best part. The Macedonian people don’t care that they don’t have the newest, fastest shiniest auto. In their outlook on life, they are content with a car that gets them from point A to point B, enabling them to save a little time to accomplish other tasks. It’s a tool and nothing else. The last two mornings I noticed a neighbor start his car in this manner: as most persons do, he lives on a hill. He pushes his car out of the garage and UP the driveway (I mean literally UP since the garage is below street level) to the level of the road. I’m amazed he can push it, albeit it’s a small vehicle, by himself up the incline. When he gets to road level, he aligns the car with the road, hops in as it begins its downhill trek, pops the clutch and goes off to work. He must park on a hill at work so he can start it for its homeward trip. No big deal.
There seem to be no traffic rules for the drivers. They park on the sidewalks, as do the tractor drivers, so that pedestrians must walk in the road. They don’t slow down when passing pedestrians walking along the narrow roads. Autos inspections aren’t required, so they can leak fluids, pollute the air, be driven without functioning lights or brakes, and ride on treadless tires. And yet I’ve never seen an accident or heard a siren from an ambulance or police car. Go figure.

The weather here has been pretty mild, with somewhat cool mornings and relatively warm afternoons, much like the weather in New England. Today I found out why Macedonians iron their underwear. The reason, I was told by a native Macedonian, is that ironing kills the bacteria that may be on the T-shirts or briefs as a result of everything being washed in cold water. Whether this is folklore or scientifically accurate is not an issue with me. I kinda like ironed undergarments. Don’t you agree, Sweetie? Can I count on you to iron my underwear when I get home?

Speaking of clothing. it’s amazing how many days I can get out of a pair of jeans, a shirt, socks and other articles of clothing. There is minimum three day turnaround time for laundry. Most Macedonians have washing machines buy few have dryers. Being of the male gender, I am not allowed to do laundry. So if I need to have blue jeans washed, I put them in a laundry basket with my other dirty laundry. The water pressure drops considerably between 12PM and 4 PM and there is no water from 11PM to 6AM, so the opportunities to do laundry are somewhat limited. This is compounded by the small capacity of the washing machine and Slavitsa’s work schedule. When finally making it through the washing stage, they must be hung out to dry. When dry, they must be ironed. The process takes days, so I must ration my favorite clothing. The upside is that when you put on a pair of jeans that you’ve worn for eight consecutive days, you convince yourself, that because the jeans are so baggy and loose fitting, you’ve lost a considerable amount of weight.

I am attaching a short video of some Macedonian folk dancers that welcomed us on our first morning in the country four weeks ago. I hope I can upload it without any problems and that you can view it. Please be mindful that these are traditional costumes and that I have yet to see any modern Macedonians walking around dressed as such, although I think it would be kind of neat.

I hope the leaves are falling in neat piles as I directed them to do and that you are slowing down from all the partying that the boys have told me about. The snow blower may need a pep talk to get psyched up for the upcoming snowfalls, so share a glass of wine with her and talk about what a great job she’s done in the past. She likes to be reminded of the blizzard of ’78. And oh, she prefers a dry Merlot.

Anyway, writing this e-mail was the easy part. Sending it will be another issue. I love you.
Majkal

P.S. I’m not sure that the Macedonian font will be readable on your computer so I want to make sure you know this letter is from Michael, your husband.