Daily Challenges

Just when I feel confident of my ability to ‘negotiate’ my way with the combi drivers, I am reminded how easily my confidence evaporates! Last Saturday, I made an impulsive trip to attend a teacher’s conference at the South Eastern European University at Tetovo – a city I had never traveled to before. I certainly had prepared myself by checking google earth – both the location of the campus and the landmark that I had to get off at, before calling the combi driver. I told him where I wanted to go and where I needed to get off. He told me fine and the time the combi will leave my town.
What he didn’t tell me was that this was the weekend he was off work! I came to know only after being picked up! I am quite happy with the friendly competition between the drivers because they come to the police station adjacent to my house to pick me up. My first clue was the combi did not have the correct markings when he arrived. The second was that he was not driving, but directing the driver to the various stops to pick passenger’s up. After circling the town and picking up all his passenger's, he informed the driver where we were to be dropped and got off!
As we pulled into Tetovo, the driver of this combi dropped me at a corner short of my destination or so I thought. My comprehension of Macedonian is not all that fluent, though I can mostly infer and get by. A block away? "Nema" problem, as it was early in the morning, about 7 am and I love walking in the mornings. Armed with some knowledge of how to get to my friend's house I set off.  Since I was to meet her at the Painted Mosque, I walked towards a towering minaret in the near distance.  I walked confidently in that direction but soon started getting a queasy feeling that this mosque may not be the right one, because it was just the standard white and grey and the name ‘Painted Mosque’ must mean something a little more colorful than this! About 20 minutes later, more than a kilometer away and with phone contact with my friend, I finally arrived at ‘The Painted Mosque! What a beauty, as you can see it is picturesque!

So the next day, after the conference, I was determined that he pick me up at the ‘Jamjia Pasha’, as it is referred to locally. And making sure I used the local word for it so there would be no confusion!  Yet the combi didn’t show up and instead went to the stop from the day before! This driver had the audacity to call me up and ask me to take a cab there to meet him! After some confusing phone calls between this driver, my regular driver and I, this new driver called me back and told me in English “one minute” which I conveniently translated to "wait right there for one minute" and that he will come and pick me up. Fortunately, I had somehow inferred correctly and he did drive up and pick me up! Success!
One would think after such a stressful experience, albeit for 15 or so minutes, I would play it safe by opting for the bus station and buses with fixed schedules! No, not yet. It is such a pain to wait around for connecting buses at bleak, inhospitable bus stations that I am always willing to take those 15 minutes of stress with a combi. Is he on time? Will he remember to pick me up from a designated spot? Will he recognize me in the crowd of people waiting to stop and pick me up? Will I recognize his combi? Will he be another driver that I don’t recognize? The bottom line is that combi’s are really a very safe form of transportation and I think I would have no trouble with them if I was fluent in their language, which alas I am not. They are also full of friendly people from your community and who look out for each other. On the other hand, taxis – wild or licensed, are not my cup of tea!

Thus when returning from a conference from beautiful Ohrid covered with wild spring flowers this week, I realized that getting from the hotel back to my hometown by bus would mean, waiting at two bus stations for about 2 ½ hours, plus the 1 ½ hour journey for a total of 4 hours.  There also remained the possibility of missing the connecting bus at the second bus station and ending up with an expensive taxi ride or waiting another 2 hours.  Thus it made sense to use the military combi that made a daily trip taking soldiers to and from my town. The catch - be there on time (punctual is unusual for this country) and wait just outside the gates of the military barracks on the left curb (easy). It would take only an hour and a half to get home from that point and all "waiting" would be in our posh hotel, before heading out to the pickup point.  The funny thing was the taxi driver bringing us from the hotel didn’t know where the military barracks were or couldn’t believe we wanted to go there or most likely thought we were making a mistake about where we were to go. No one in their right mind would go from that hotel to the barracks - we certainly didn't look like soldiers. I finally called my friend to give directions to him and viola we were there in a minute. The barracks are walking distance from the bus station, but as it was raining and we had to be on time, we had to be dropped at the correct spot. This incident just reinforces my lack of confidence in taxi drivers.
I have learned combi driver’s are always willing to bring you home from whichever city you are in, if it happens to be on their route (slight detours acceptable). The trick is to find out which combi's are making those inter-city trips, what times they are scheduled and where their pickup and drop-off points are! They are so much faster and cheaper than the buses, because they serve the needs of their small communities -  towns and villages that are not near the two or three main highways in the country. I will use them as often as I can!