We went to visit the beautiful Lake Berovo. As is always in North Macedonia there are few footpaths or routes you can follow so with our trusty (which turned out not to be so trusty) ‘maps’ we headed off for a walk.

Now some people are always organised and take more than enough food and drink with them, we are the people who spontaneously go for a walk expecting to find a cafe round every corner. Not only that we invariably get lost.

We got lost.

We were thirsty.

So we popped into what look remotely like a guest house and asked if we could possibly get a drink.

This appeared on the table, oh and the Rakja was local brew!

I was happy I had a cool drink, after one swig of the rakja Johan was also pretty happy.

The lady asked if we wanted to eat, she had some salad, and off she disappeared in the kitchen.

In the meantime a local had joined us on the table and was discussing local politics with Johan. This is the favourite pastime of Macedonians, politics! You cannot be here long without keeping up with current affairs, everyone has an opinion and the famous ‘conspiracy theory’ is never far from the door. Sometimes I am pleased I cannot follow the conversations.

The food arrived on the table, by this point we had managed to source a bottle of water but the Rakja was still flowing.

The food was typical Macedonians’, simple but delicious.

After finishing this the lady asked if we would like coffee and said she had some pancakes for us.

At this point refusing was not an option.

We ate like a king. She also told us the best route to get back to our car! She did try to over charge us, and said quite honestly you are rich europeans, by this time the Rakja had ensured that Johan was walking like Forest Gump but had also improved his fluency in Macedonian and he suggested that there is taking the piss and taking the piss and paid half of what she asked, which was still more than we have ever paid for a meal in Macedonia!

Moral of the story: never be afraid to ask!