Kris and I arrived in Skopje - no worse for wear! We left from Lancaster on Monday morning at 8:30AM and headed to the Philadelphia airport. Going to Macedonia is not like hopping a flight to Disney. There are 100's of flights to Orlando daily -- one or two from Macedonia and two other locations that you must leave from if you are travelling from the USA!
We then took a flight to Washington Dulles Airport to connect with Austrian Air. Austrian was purchased by Lufthansa which controls most of the "strange" European cities. They are the "Alleghany Airlines" of Europe. That was an eight hour flight and as I had asked people to pray....we got the bulkhead seats! Bulkhead is a poorman's first class seating. That and the emergency row! With just having surgery, it was important for me to stretch out my legs. At 6'6" and "great" in size, the extra room was important.
I did not sleep much. A little dozing off after a lovely dinner and watching two movies - "Hollywoodland" and "De Ja Vu" with Denzel Washington. The latter was the winner! We arrived in Vienna and had a five hour lay over. Thank the Lord for Starbucks. There was no real seating anywhere in the terminal, but Starbucks had some great couches and chairs where we took a short nap (and I had a grande carmel latte)! We talked with a group of nice students from Northwest Missouri College -- music students on a tour of great music history sites. POI - Mozart lived in Vienna!!
Finally got on our flight to MK - an hour and 20 minutes. ALL OUR BAGS ARRIVE: yes friends I have underwear!!! There are little things to be grateful for and getting your bags is one of them! Phil, Lynn, Greg and Heather were waiting!, and got us to our apartment. We will be staying in the home of missionaries who are in Albania for the month. What a blessing. We had a great meal and some MK creamy ice cream and then collapsed for 12 hours!
One suggestion - there has to be a way for airlines to take out two or three rows of seats and give all the other rows 2-3 inches of extra room. Normal sized people struggle with airline seating -- you can imagine how uncomfortable it is for me. Oh well -- we arrive safe and sound. First day is complete on this month long adventure!
The best news of the new day is that I have internet connection....that is how you are reading today's entry. from Skopje with love - PJM