Jance

Jance (or Janche) is a small mountain village in Mavrovo National Park.

The best reason to come to Jance is probably because the well-known hike to the mountain village Galicnik starts here.

The worst reason to come to Jance probably is Hotel Tutto. We stayed for 3 nights in Hotel Tutto in August 2016. Hotel Tutto has seven guest rooms and a huge restaurant. This large restaurant is mainly used to accommodate wedding parties and other big groups. I do not like to write bad reviews, but Hotel Tutto just asked for it…Here is a copy of the review I wrote on TripAdvisor:

The room: The room had a nice balcony with a great view over the village Jance, but that’s almost all that was great about it. Our room was pretty small, although advertised on the website as “spacious”. The toilet seat was broken and had a crack, which damaged the skin of both my girlfriend and myself. Very unhygienic! Many things were broken in the room and bathroom: One of two electricity outlets in the room did not work, the rack for towels was broken, the sink in the bathroom was not working well, and the light on the balcony did not work either. Lighting in the room was very bright and unromantic. The one good thing in the bathroom was the shower. During our stay the ROOMS WERE NOT CLEANED AND TOWELS WERE NOT REPLACED. When the toilet paper was finished we had to go downstairs and look for someone who could give us a new roll.

The Wi-Fi had a very bad signal and slow connection, making Wi-Fi basically NON-EXISTENT in the room (although advertised).

The restaurant: Breakfast was mediocre, both in quality, quantity and choice. The slices of bread were old and dry the first morning, older and drier the second the morning, and the third morning the bread apparently was so old they had to serve it toasted. However, the toasting process could not hide the patches of MOLD/FUNGUS ON THE BREAD. A complete appetite killer! It was replaced with the regular, old and dry bread we were used to, at least without mold. Since the restaurant is huge, it is not very cosy. We were sitting either alone or with a few other people in this enormous hall.

The dinner was relatively ok, but came in very small portions especially compared to the price of the dishes (not included in the accommodation price). The first evening the grilled chicken was way too salty, it kept both of us craving for water the whole night. Allegedly, a feature of Hotel Tutto are their traditional Macedonian dishes that have to be ordered at least 5 hours in advance. Despite this obligatory heads-up, we could not choose many of the traditional dishes listed on the menu because they were not available.

The noise: We were woken up every morning at 05.00 by the loud announcement of the Morning Prayer of the mosque in the village. During the day, extremely loud music was played either directly from the hotel or from within the village in order to celebrate weddings or births, using a speaker system that would make a small festival organization jealous. Not a place where you come for peace and quiet.

When confronted with the molded bread and the lack of cleaning of our room, the personnel shrugged their shoulders and told us “this can happen” and “we are extremely busy with all the wedding guests we have to cater during the day”. The summer period is the wedding season in the region, when all the people who work abroad come home, marry and party. There basically is a wedding every day in this region. With its large restaurant, Hotel Tutto’s core business is these weddings, and hotel guests clearly come at a second place.

The price for a small double room with breakfast (50 euro) is very, very, expensive for a hotel in such a remote village. For this price one would expect a room without major defects, good food without fungus, daily room cleaning etc. We will definitely not come back to this place or recommend it to anybody else.