9:15 am on a Sunday morning. I am staring at the sleepy and hostile face of the guy working at the information desk at the Skopje train station, who, for the 3rd time tells me "5 more minutes, it is coming, I told you." I overdo it really;  the Thessaloniki-Skopje train is barely half a hour late which is not that uncommon and not even that late. Just as I head to the nearby newspaper stand to kill some more time looking at magazines, I hear the unmistakable earth-shattering noise of the arriving train overhead. As I head to the foot of the staircase which all arriving passengers descend from, a pack of local taxi drivers rush up the stairs and prepare themselves to pounce on tired and confused foreigners, offering taxi rides at dizzying rates and choosing their prey by the size of their backpacks and the fairness of their hair.

After about 5 minutes of watching backpack after backpack disappear into the unknown of the Skopje streets, I see Abi coming down the stairs. I've only seen one photo of her on her couchsurfing profile, but its easy to recognize her even though she's crumbling under the weight of her backpack (that, she later tells me, holds all of her possessions). It's Sunday and buses are few and their schedule redefines randomness so we load into a taxi (not the kind that charges 5x the regular rate) and head home. Abi's exhausted; she has been traveling for 2 days, her original schedule collapsing due to the general strikes in Greece. Right off, she tells me she has been dreaming of coming to Macedonia for so long and that she's in love with the Balkan music and culture. In addition to Skopje she'll also be seeing Ohrid and then heading to Kosovo to then go to Montenegro where she's meeting a friend who makes puppets.

Abi was born in Israel, in a small town near Tel Aviv. When she was 14, her parents decided to move to London, where she's been living for the last 8 years (with the exception of a year spent doing Erasmus in Rotterdam). She finished her Fine Art studies last year and has decided that she's now looking for a new home - London won't cut it and her recent 2 month stay in Israel made her wonder if even that could again be home. She thinks Spain may be a potential home but her options are still open.

At our home, we talk about the Balkans and the Middle East. Abi had a great childhood in Israel but her parents left the country in search of a better life, something her grandparents have never quite forgiven them for. Abi's mom was born and grew up in a kibbutz but left it as soon as she could, while her grandparents still live in similar community setups. "My grandfather had never seen the inside of a bank until recently, he asked me to come in with him to show him what to do", Abi says.

Abi is a storyteller; she naturally weaves stories into every discussion. Somehow, our conversation touches on the topic of Gypsies (the politically correct term is Roma people, but I will use the name they use for themselves) and we hit jackpot. The Gypsies are part of the reason Abi has traveled to the Balkans - this is a land they've highly impacted and that has (regardless of occasional rough patches) embraced them more than most regions
in the world. We talk about their position in Macedonian society, the often-failed efforts to integrate them into what our society considers a "normal way of life", their perspectives of the world, and the good, the bad and the ugly about their presence on the street and in our daily life. Seeing the spark in her eyes when we talk about this issue, we suggest that she visits Shutka and even though we can't keep her company due to family Sunday lunches, she happily plans her afternoon visit.

Shutka, for those of you from other places, is one of the largest (if not the largest) Gypsy settlements in the world, with various sources quoting anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants of which around 80% (if not more) are Gypsies. Shutka is one of Skopje's 10 municipalities, with its own mayor and a cultural/social life like no other municipality in the country. It's a magical place: from corrugated cardboard shacks to royal palaces, from horses to multiple BMW's - Shutka has it all and in every color.

On our short way from home to the bus stop (10 minute walk) we see several scenes that further illustrate the Gypsies' presence in everyday life in Skopje: we see a young Gypsy mother with her roughly one-year old baby, sitting down picnic style under a tree shade, mom has filled the baby's bottle with Coke; further down, a father and a son rummaging through garbage bins, looking for plastic bottles that they collect and sell; and finally an older guy with a cart full of, well, just random stuff - stuff that people have left behind, stuff that would make a great rug, or a nice toy for the kids or will be converted into something else that will be useful. We arrive at the bus stop, where a privately owned (and if that sounds better than public, don't be fooled) bus number 19 is waiting for Abi along with its inch-thick layer of window dust and grime and a "20 Den" price tag scribbled on a torn out notebook page.

After mine and Ivica's lunch with our parents, the three of us meet again at home. Abi has had a great time just walking around Shutka, although she had no luck to run into one of the famous Gypsy weddings that often go on for days at a time. But to complete her Shutka experience we watch a movie about it - The Shutka Book of Records (locally knowns as Шампионите од Шутка) - an amazing (award winning actually) window into Shutka's inhabitants, their stranger-than-fiction beliefs and daily life. And because I think it may be interesting to people like Abi that are fascinated with that culture, here's a link where you can watch the full movie and transport yourself into this incredible place of champions if only for a bit.