Skopje

Skopje is the capital of Macedonia. It's home to around 750,000 people, a surprisingly large city.

Hitching Out

North, South, East towards Belgrade (Serbia), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Athens (Greece)

From the center of Skopje, get bus #2 (or any other bus that heads for Avtokomanda) eastwards all the way to the last stop. This is the the eastern edge of Skopje city proper, on the main road east before the turn off north towards Serbia.

It's around 5 km before the road splits into north (Belgrade, Sofia) and south (Greece), so have a sign saying which way you want to go. For north, I recommend a sign saying KU (in latin, not cyrillic since it's the way the car number plates work) for Kumanovo (the first city before the Sofia junction), and for south 'VE' for Veles - the first big city south.

For hitchhiking to the north you can take a bus from the trainstation of skopje to the direction of kumanovo, and tell the busdriver to drop you at the pay-toll before kumanovo. The bus is really cheap, and at the pay-toll you have a good chance to find a lift. If the busdriver doesn't understand english you can use the words "autostop" and "patarina", which means pay-toll. When you are at a pay-toll, also the coaches will stop to ask you if you want to go with them, but not for free. But be careful, a busticket from Skopje to Belgrade isn't more like 20 euros. After the Serbian border the motorway from Macedonia turns into a normal road, but as it is the only road from Skopje to Belgrade, you have the same amount of traffic like on the motorway.