[cont.]

Our dealings with the police
Yesterday we arrived at the police station shortly after 1600 to be told we needed confirmation from the immigration police next door and that they closed at 1600.
This morning, the immigration police asked if we had registered with the police within three days of our arrival in Kosovo. As we did not know this was required, we said we had not. (It seems formal hotels probably register their foreign guests, but that it is unlikely AirBnB hosts do so.) The officers (armed) were polite and friendly, but did scare us a little saying we had broken a law. After discussion between themselves, we were told to return to the police office after their lunch break.
We explained what we needed for the visa application and that we had not known about the need to register with one man, then two, then three. In the end, this is what they said, which does not assist with the visa application, but did settle our anxiety: Kosovo is a democracy and for the last 20 years has been learning more about what this means. What it does not mean is controlling or harassing tourists. They said that the registration requirement was not something anyone ever checked unless a crime was committed, and that the entry stamp in our passports was sufficient for their needs and should be all that is required by the Macedonians.
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So, this weekend we will pull together all the documents we can, we will pay Monday morning for the mandatory medical insurance, and we will return to both the Macedonian and Bulgarian embassies hoping they will overlook the police letter requirement and call centre appointment respectively.
We are booked into our apartment for ten days - here’s hoping we can get done by then!
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Oh boy…
We have not yet applied for our visas as we have not been able to access our bank account since Friday.
Few places here take credit cards. We can shop at the Spar with a credit card, but not at the travel agent from which we (tried to) purchase medical insurance for the visa applications (mandatory despite Discovery covering medical costs to the Rand equivalent while we are away).
It will cost almost R4,000 for insurance for two months ie for Macedonia and Bulgaria, double what it would cost if we were under age 65, and they want payment in cash.
When we went on Friday to draw cash, the ATM declared we had insufficient funds in the credit card account. When we tried to transfer funds from the current account, we found we could access neither Nedbank’s Money App on my phone nor internet online banking on my laptop.
It is not easy to get hold of Nedbank if you cannot call them. Neither of us had chosen to purchase a SIM for Kosovo, relying on wifi and WhatsApp messaging and calls. So it was Saturday before I reached someone at Nedbank via their Facebook page and Monday before I was having a real “conversation” via WhatsApp.
No-one can figure out what the problem is and it has now been “escalated” to the technical team.
Last night we asked Charl’s daughter to try accessing the account in South Africa, wondering if Kosovo’s diplomatic status (unrecognised by South Africa) might be the problem, but she also could not get into the account.
We are not in dire straits, but things are a tad difficult and more than a tad annoying. We have sufficient cash for another day or two; we presumably have some money still on the card as we used it last night, but we do not know how much as we cannot view our balances; our accommodation is paid through Friday.
Charl has this morning sold our Bitcoin and transferred the cash to his FNB account. We are hoping it remains functional and we can use it for the visa applications - we will know later today.
I have also, of course, been unable to pay my monthly accounts, including our City of Jo’burg invoices - hope our tenants do not get disconnected!
Thank goodness for Netflix which is a great distraction…

[cont.]