Today was the fourth day of the dig. The walk is becoming easier. I have told the others that my goal is to walk from the hotel to site and then after working back again without stopping.

The walk out consists of a big hill from the hotel to the trailhead, then almost immediately another big hill, then generally sloping downward to the final really big mountaintop climb. It’s actually easier going out than coming back because the generally sloping downward part becomes over a mile of generally sloping upwards.

Right now I stop at least six times, three each way, though yesterday I made it up the big hill at the end without stopping and today I made it up the first hill and then to the place on the second hill I had stopped the first three days.

The real challenge to doing this will be, I suspect, coming from my test pit, which is wayyyy down the mountain from the peak. In fact, It’s about half again longer from the test pit to the top than the big climb to get to the top in the first place. I’m estimating it’s about 80 feet up from my test pit to the peak. We’ve got a GPS and I plan on figuring that out just to now.

My test pit is likely a catch basin for stuff from up the hill. I’m finding a lot of roof tile and some pottery, mostly Byzantine, as well as a lot of animal bones in my pit. They brought the metal detector around and found a nail from the time of Justinian and a bomb fragment from World War II. There’s still stuff to find, though all four of us digging in this area are getting worried about where we might hit bedrock.

Our schedule is basically this:
5:30 Get up
6:00 Breakfast
6:30 On the road
7:15 Begin the day
11:00 Sort of second breakfast/lunch
1:00 End of the dig portion
1:45 Lab where we begin by cleaning our artifacts
7:00 Dinner
8:00 Class
Then crash.

We get from about 3 or 4 to 7 to roam around Skopje. Skopje itself is an interesting town. Our Hotel (Hotel Vodno) is well up the hill about 4 miles from the center of the city. The cab rides on the twisting-turning road with crazy cab drivers are, umm, exciting.

Yesterday we went to the local Irish Pub. It did not have Guinness or Strongbow, though it said it did. It did have a large menu, but it was sort of a gamble whether they had any individual item. What we did not get was the Indonesian Chicken subtitled “Nazi Goring.” Hmmm, not sure that marketing scheme would go well in many places. Oh, and we were served by a Slave. Well, we think it’s pronounced Slaavaa, but that was how it was spelled.

Then we went to the castle is the center of the city. It’s a fascinating collection of a variety of periods of architecture from Byzantine to medieval. It’s a cool castle and from there we can see the hotel and bits and pieces of the trail we walk to get to the castle we’re excavating. It’s encouraging to see how far we’re walking each day.

Today I just came to the local shopping center that has WiFi access to catch up on email and make this post, but tomorrow we’re going to roam about the bigger mall including a Macedonian Antique Flea Market. That should be fun.