The official figure says 30 minutes to an hour. The people sitting in the cars say two to three hours. Both claims refer to the same place, the same morning, the same border crossing.

The Automobile and Motorcycle Association of Macedonia reports that over the Ilinden weekend traffic is heaviest at Tabanovce for entering the country and at Bogorodica for exiting towards Greece, with waiting times of around 30 minutes to an hour. At the other crossings there are no longer delays.

At the same time, citizens on social media say it took them two to three hours this morning to get through both passport checks heading into Greece - at Bogorodica and at Dojran. The gap between the official hour and the real one is no small matter for someone standing in the sun with children in the car.

Part of the explanation is that there are two checks, Macedonian and Greek, and statistics from one side do not measure the hold-up on the other. But for the driver it is one queue, one wait and one lost day of the holiday. When official information consistently sounds rosier than the experience on the ground, people stop believing it - and start planning around social media comments instead of press releases.

The jams are not only at the border. At the Glumovo toll station, on the exit from Skopje towards Tetovo, a queue a kilometre long formed in the morning. Large numbers of people are travelling towards Ohrid, Prespa, Dojran, Kruševo and Pelince.

The association recommends adjusted speed and careful driving, especially on the Katlanovo - Veles, Mavrovo - Debar - Struga, Vinica - Berovo and Kočani - Delčevo sections, where rockfalls are possible. On Saturday until 18:00 heavy goods vehicles over 15 tonnes are banned, and on the Skopje - Ohrid road the ban for vehicles over 7.5 tonnes applies from 18:00 to midnight, to ease pressure on the toll stations.

So everyone knows the crush is coming. It gets planned for, truck bans get introduced, traffic gets redistributed. If the day is forecast that accurately, why does the wait at Bogorodica still last as long as it does?