Welcome to Macedonia

I can now say that I have been to Vienna, Austria. Well, for a few hours in the airport. The flights from Heathrow to Skopje were on Austrian Airlines, and well, I guess I shouldn't complain about the service on American flights. It was especially bad given that the flight from Vienna to Skopje was absolutely packed. There might have been one seat free. Maybe. And apparently everyone brought lots and lots of luggage. Bleah.

But I made it here. In terms of the real reason I'm here, this is going to be great. I'm very excited about what I've seen in terms of the hotel, the dig site, and that sort of stuff. There are twelve of us in the group, including the Fullers, some people from the St. Louis area, three from Grove City College in Pennsylvania, and myself. It seems like a good group.

Today we went out to Stobi, a Roman city about an hour from Skopje. They believe they've excavated only about 15% of the city, but what they have done is quite fascinating. Lots of impressive examples of Roman architecture and building technology (especially the baths of course), and some beautiful tiled mosaic floors.

There's also a small museum with some of the items they've recovered. The most interesting item was a knife blade that looked very much like a saex blade. When I get the chance I'll post pictures and you'll see what I mean.

The when will be questionable. Macedonia bills itself as the first wireless country. Um, well, I have yet to find wireless and the wireless we thought the hotel had was not in existence. I'm at the American Corner room and using their computer right now, but of course for some reason the mail server at Metapros must be down because I can't open my mail right now. GRRRR.

Anyway, the upshot is I don't know how consistent I'll be able to post. My plan is to go ahead and type up the LiveJournal entries, and then put them up when I can. This may mean that there will be several posts at once. I'll try and let you all know when I'm doing multiple posts so you know to check down to previous posts, but I might forget. You're warned.

So, for now, talk to you all later, whenever that is.