When we left Greece we were on the road for almost two months. That was two months of amazing and unforgettable life experiences including learning about history, enjoying natural beauty, and meeting beautiful people. We gave ourselves a lot of freedom on the road. We had a general idea of where we wanted to go geographically, but we made no concrete plans until usually two days before. We could follow our whims. We could go to the mountains when we got tired of the cities or of driving. We could go detour to any village and stop at any cheese or fruit vendor along the road. And many people we met, and probably many reading this, would say: “That is the best way to travel, just go with the flow.” But that was also two months of living out of 40L backpacks and changing our bed and our bath every second or third night. That was two months of encountering different cultures, languages, religions, customs, and food as well as different currencies and exchange rates, different road rules and vignettes, different public transportation every couple of days. Most people (including myself prior to every previous vacation) spend weeks, if not months, planning a trip to a different country and learning about all of the nuances. I spent close to zero days planning for a dozen countries. Going with the flow, especially for type A (well, honestly more like A minus but probably B plus) people like me, can be nerve-wracking as well. But I survived, and dare I say enjoyed, two months of no plans. At the end of two months, however, I was feeling a little tired of the unknown. And a little homesick. I needed some familiarity.
And then we arrived to the country of Macedonia! Macedonia, which welcomed us with people who treated us like siblings. With shared history and mentality. With ex-Yu Rock music. And, most importantly, with burek and yogurt. And I felt like we were home!
Bitola
Our first stop was the town of Bitola. You wouldn’t really know it but the looks of it but Bitola is the second largest town in Macedonia located in the south of the country only some 10 or so miles from the Greek border. It is the oldest city in Macedonia established by King Phillip II, father of Alexander the Great, back in the 4th century. Ruins of the ancient town, Heraclea Lyncestis, still exist and can be visited (but we were a bit ruined-out by then). During the Ottoman times Bitola was a strong trade center and Turkish influence can be seen in the architecture and several mosques in the city. It was also known for a strong military academy that was actually attended by the Ataturk, considered to be the father of modern Turkey. Bitola, as well as the surrounding Pelister Mountains, were also literally where the Salonika front (that I wrote a bit about in Thessaloniki) was located in WWI.
Sirok Sokak (Wide Street) runs through center of Bitola.
There aren’t really too many things to do in Bitola proper. There is one long and wide street (aptly named Siroki Sokak meaning wide street) that runs through the center of town. People are bustling up and down the street, some running errands, others coming from the market, and few just enjoying the sunny day. Cafes and restaurants dot both sides of the street playing ex-Yu Rock. At the end of the street there is a huge statue of Philip II of Macedon and a fountain representing his shield. The Saat Kula, or the clock tower, with the nearby Church of St. Demetrious, sit side by side with the Yeni mosque.
And smack dab in the middle of siroki sokak stood a bust of “our friend” Josip Broz Tito, the Marshall. Macedonia was actually one of six countries that made up former Yugoslavia. Macedonia was the only country that split from Yugoslavia in the early 90s and did so without a war. Technically, even today, the European Union recognizes Macedonia by the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). This is because Macedonia is also the name of the northern region of Greece (which used to make up the majority of the Ancient Greek Macedon). Greeks in Northern Greece identify themselves as Macedonians, unrelated to the Slavs who mainly populate FYROM. Greeks also accuse Macedonia for appropriating their history such as claiming that they are descendents of Alexander the Great. This dispute over the name has been going on for many years and has caused quite a number of political issues, and is effectively blocking Macedonia’s path to the EU. And there is quite a bit of animosity between the Macedonians and Greeks (at last when this topic is brought up).
Macedonia has definitely had a little trouble in establishing its independence. It was not semi-autonomous during the Ottoman rule as its neighbors Serbia and Bulgaria were. Serbia and Bulgaria, along with Greece, helped Macedonia gain independence from the Ottomans in 1912 during the First Balkan War, but then promptly divided Macedonia up amongst themselves. Bulgaria wasn’t to happy with the way Macedonian territory was split which led to the Second Balkan War. This was largely the disputed territory that caused Bulgaria to join the Germans in both WWI and WWII after being promised they’d get it back. The territory that makes up the country of Macedonia today was all under Serbian realm after WWII and, being a fellow Slavic country (and for a million other strategic and economic reasons), ultimately got incorporated into Yugoslavia under the command of “our friend” Tito.
Speaking of “our friend” Tito, I touched a bit on him back in Bulgaria as he was the Yugoslav communist leader and mentioned that a lot of people from former Yugoslavian countries still have Yugo-nostalgia, fondly remembering the “good old days of Tito”. It is very clear from our travels that Tito is probably the only Eastern European communist leader to actually retain somewhat of an image of a cult-person (positive and respected cult-person) after his death. And this nostalgia was definitely palpable in Macedonia as well. And it wasn’t only the bust of Tito that gave it away. It was the conversation with the people and the topics that came up. Similar to Slovenians, the Macedonians could easily shift to speaking Serbian to us and we had no problem in communicating. They were genuinely excited when they learned that we were “Yugoslavs” too. It was in Macedonia that we actually met the second man with “kind eyes” who would have spent hours, if not days, reminiscing with us about the “good old days of Tito”.
Now some countries do have less Yugo-nostalgia than others (we didn’t feel it as much in Slovenia or Croatia), and that probably has to do with the fact that those countries have managed to do better both politically, economically, and socially (and having closer ties to the West and Vatican probably helped) after the break-up of Yugoslavia and war. The Yugo-nostalgia, honestly, is probably more of a reflection of the social and economic problems that the remaining countries are facing today versus some strong ideological tie to Yugoslavia and Tito and communism. But, I also realized when the man with “kind eyes” spoke, and many other people spoke, many of these people who reminisce were in their 20s or 30s during the “good old days of Tito”. Their lives were filled with friendship, adventures, travel, good music. Their life was filled with the sense of endless possibilities. And they all loved the “mandatory work actions” that all young people of Yugoslavia “volunteered” for (mainly consisting of manual labor building things such as the railroad) as well as the mandatory time served in the Yugoslav National Army. They were young and they were surrounded with their peers (sort of like a sorority/fraternity type of atmosphere). Who doesn’t want to go back to being in their 20s or 30s, right?
This may also be why everyone in Macedonia still drives the same car they bought in their 20s and 30s (well over 30 years ago): The Yugo!
It is generally agreed upon that the Yugo, made by Yugoslavian company Zastava, is one of the single worst cars (due to it’s small size, low price and difficulty finding parts) ever imported and sold in the United States. It was not built for a consumer society used to comfort and status. But, I am not going to lie, I LOVE the Yugo. It was the car I grew up with as my dad drove a little red Yugo. Oh if that little red Yugo could talk, the stories it would tell! It was pretty much the only car in our extended family, and with my dad at its helm, it went on many adventures (kind of like our little red VW Polo). Some of Yugo’s adventures very happy (many of my cousins as newborn babies were taken from the hospital home in that car) and some very sad and scary (many people and several animals were evacuated from life threatening situations during the war in that car). And this was not isolated to my family. Yugo was the national car that families could save up for and afford (just like VW in Germany, it was meant to be the “people’s car”), and the freedom that came with owning a car was empowering. So it was good that it was cheap. And, given the roads in Eastern Europe, who cared that it was not fast!
There aren’t many Yugos on the road in ex-Yugoslavian countries anymore, so imagine my surprise (and general state of giddiness) when I realized that in Bitola every THIRD car driving down the road was a Yugo! No, I am not exaggerating. No, they don’t make the Yugo anymore. Yes, all these cars were at least 30 years old. While this very well is probably a reflection of the poor economic conditions in the area, I am a romantic at heart and choose to believe that it is the love and devotion of the owners that has kept all these Yugos on the road after so many years. And yes, I’d like to think that the “worse car ever” does have the last laugh!
While in this region of Macedonia we stayed in a small village of Dihovo only a couple of miles outside of Bitola. From Dihovo we had a great view of the Pelister Mountains and very much enjoyed strolling through the village every evening at sunset. It is typically when the weather cools and most people come out of their homes. Dihovo is only a couple of miles, but several degrees cooler than adjoining Bitola, and people from the city visit it to escape the heat (plus it has a natural swimming hole). It is a small and quiet village, 300 inhabitants tops, and everyone knows everyone. Most of the homes were built of stone and wood in the 1920s (which could be easily gleaned from the inscriptions on the front of the homes), and the homes were all very big! That was definitely not the standard in most Eastern European villages and you can conclude that people of Dihovo once lived very well. This is because the textile industry was located in Dihovo as Dihovo was heavily populated by Vlachs (similar to Syrrako those Vlachs really have talent for textiles) and many of the population practiced “pechalba”, where at least one man from the household would work abroad. This heavily contributed to the economic success of the village.
Ohrid
From Dihovo we took a day trip to Lake Ohrid. Lake Ohrid, said to be 3 million year sold, is right on the border of Macedonia with Albania and about an hour drive from Bitola. It is not only considered to be the oldest, but is also the deepest lake in Europe. And it is beautiful.
On the day that we visited it was very sunny with no cloud coverage. The blue sky blended in perfectly with the blue of the lake. The coastal mountains in the background were almost invisible from the sun haze and it made it appear as if Lake Ohrid was an endless ocean, not a contained lake. The actual town of Ohrid was extremely busy (it is a UNESCO protected site and one of the most visited places in Macedonia) so we decided to avoid crowds and drive along the Lake’s coastline. There are not many towns along the coastline of Lake Ohrid but it is dotted with many fishing villages and beaches.
The coast of Lake Ohrid also used to be decorated with hundreds of churches, 365 to be exact (one for each day of the week). Most of the churches were built by the Byzantines and Bulgarians as Ohrid was the seat of the Bulgarian Patriarchate way back in 900s (First Bulgarian Empire was huge and encompassed Macedonia, so you can see how the territory disputes go waaaayy back). While many churches were destroyed or turned into mosques, many still remain. We decided to visit Monastery of St. Naum, established back in 900s. St. Naum was a disciple of Saints Cyril and Methodius who were Greek missionaries tasked with disseminating Christianity among the Slavs. They are credited with translating the Bible into Old Slavonic Language. This was no easy task as the language could not be easily written by using the Greek or Latin alphabet, so they basically invented a new script (Glagolitic). The descendent script of Glagolitic is Cyrillic, which is used by most Slavic speaking people today. Ohrid contained the Ohrid Literary School which continued to translate many works into the new language and therefore significantly contributed to the expansion of Christianity among the Slavs. So it turned out that Lake Ohrid was not just beautiful but it held so much historical and cultural significance!
St. Naum Monastery is also surrounded by some of Lake Ohrid’s sandiest beaches. Which means that is far from a serene and peaceful place you’d imagine it to be. Right outside of its entrance there are dozens of beach restaurants and cafes blasting folk music and hundreds of tourists walking around in their bathing suits. Definitely not our cup of tea. So we decided to go across Galicica Mountain to Lake Prespa. Lake Prespa is the lesser known, but equally as beautiful, little sister of Lake Ohrid. The fastest way to reach one from the other is using an old, but well-preserved, military road across Galicica mountain which allows for some amazing and unobstructed views of both of the lakes.
As we descended to Lake Prespa we quickly noted that unlike Lake Ohrid, Lake Prespa is completely devoid of tourists. It is clean and quiet. There are dozens of sleepy villages and endless apple orchards that line its cost and it is populated by century old juniper trees and many animal and bird species. It can only be described as pristine.
Skopje
After several days in and around Bitola we decided to head North to Skopje taking advantage of, almost completed, highway connecting the two cities. Our initial plan was to stop near the town of Prilep and hike up to the Treskavica monastery in the mountains. Unfortunately, there was a large forest fire in the mountains surrounding Prilep threatening the monastery and we obviously did not go. But it was my first time observing a forest fire (albeit safely from afar), it is truly a very scary scene. So before settling back into the city life of Macedonia’s capital city we decided to visit Matka Canyon instead. Matka Canyon is another beautiful gorge known for its caves (and houses possibly the world’s deepest underwater cave), and it is the gathering place for locals as well as tourists who like to swim, cave dive, kayak and rock climb.
The approach to the Matka Canyon was a bit rough, however. It is only some 15km away from Skopje but the narrow road goes through several densely populated suburban villages and many people on the streets that you constantly have to dodge with your car. The narrow road continues along the side of the canyon and, given the lack of organized parking, the cars park along the road for miles. This, in turn, creates a ridiculous traffic jam since half of the narrow road is already occupied by the parked cars, and cars entering and exiting the area cannot pass by each other. This is, in true Eastern European fashion, accompanied by lots of honking and cursing and waving of arms. So I was starting to think that this was not going to be the experience I imagined, and we almost turned away. But, as it always seems in life, I am glad I didn’t. We decided to park far out and hike.
The first part of our hike was hiking up to Sv. Nikola monastery. As I’ve mentioned before the beauty about Orthodox monasteries is that they are usually built in places surrounded with amazing natural beauty. So it is no surprise that Matka Canyon and the surrounding mountains have several Byzantine churches and monasteries. And this makes for a great hike because you get to enjoy the nature as you hike and then you are rewarded with history! And we found that we both greatly enjoyed this type of hiking.
Our hike up to the monastery was fairly leisurely and moderate. The monastery had only two other visitors and the keeper who opened the door for us and allowed us to look inside at the frescos. On the way down from the monastery, however, the path became ridiculously steep until we finally reached the water. But then we panicked a bit because it seemed that, other than going back up the steep way, there was no other way to cross the lake to the other side (where there was another monastery and continuation of the road). Thankfully we soon realized that there was a big metal bell that you hit to signal to the boat rowers on the other side that you are ready to be picked up and rowed across the lake. A much more pleasant prospect then climbing back up!
After our unplanned yet welcomed boat ride we headed back to Skopje to settle into city life. As we’ve been doing in most of the big cities we joined a free walking tour to orient ourselves to the city and its history. In Skopje we were welcomed with one of the most hilarious tour guides to date. He was an elderly gentleman with a great Eastern European sense of humor (sarcastic and ironic, borderline politically incorrect). A sense of humor very familiar to us. Except that his sense of humor did not translate that well in English. TK and I soon realized that the reason the two of us were laughing (when the rest of our German, British, Portuguese, and American tour companions only chuckled awkwardly) is that we were automatically reverse-translating his jokes back from English to Serbian/Macedonian, and we got the true sense of their meaning. No one else on the tour could do that. And this made it all even more funny!
I expected Skopje to look and feel like many of the bigger ex-Yugoslavian cities, and for the most part it did. As we entered the city we passed through rows and rows of residential block style buildings. To my disappointment, however, there were not as many Yugo cars. In the center of the city an Ottoman bridge across the Vardar river divides the “old” and “new” town. The “old” town still retains traces of Ottomans with Turkish bazar and mosques, as well as the old Kale Fortress overlooking the city. The “new” town, saturated with grand neo-classical buildings, is brand spanking new. So new, it practically shines. This part of the town got a very recent, and exorbitantly expensive, face-lift as part of a project called Skopje 2014.
Skopje, very unfortunately, suffered a devastating earthquake in 1963 which flattened most of the city as well as majority of the historical buildings. Most of the city was rebuilt during communism and, in 2010, the government decided that this was not appealing. They needed something that would promote nationalism and unity (particularly given the tensions between Macedonians and ethnic Albanians threatening sense of instability), promote Macedonia’s ties to Alexander the Great, and bring in the tourists. So they decided to revamp the city. This includes building hundreds of new structures and buildings and bridges, all in a grand, if not a bit tacky, neo-classical style. This was, as you can imagine, met with a lot of criticism as the project cost hundreds of millions of dollars (lots of money for a country struggling economically).
In addition to the new buildings and bridges there were hundreds of new statutes built and placed all throughout the city. The biggest statue, and the once centrally located, is that of a “Warrior on a Horse.” Very obviously a statue of Alexander the Great. However, due to the dispute with Greece regarding appropriation of their historical figures, it cannot be called that. Statue of Philip II, his father, dominates the other coast of Vardar river.
But there are literally hundreds of other statutes dotting every corner of the city. Some representing historically significant events in Macedonia, such as the below ASNOM statue representing the anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia which proclaimed Macedonian as a nation-state of ethnic Macedonians with its official Macedonian language in 1944. It was also a meeting heavily influenced by communists, pro-Yugoslav politicians (anti-German politicians) proclaiming Macedonia to be part of Yugoslavia’s “brotherhood and unity”.
There is also a statue as well as a museum and several plaques dedicated to Mother Theresa, who was born in Skopje. My favorite was below which reads: “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
Then there are statues like this representing the modern Macedonian woman, sporting a cellphone and an extremely low cut dress. Supposedly she is known as the “first girlfriend” of many boys of Skopje who like to rub her bosoms for good luck. She is the perfect example of Eastern Europe’s sense of humor!
It was starting to feel a bit like we were walking down the Las Vegas strip with this fabricated sense of history. It was very refreshing to come across some buildings, like the old train station, which were not destroyed or rebuilt in a neo-classical style. The old train station truly is history. The clock on the face of the station stopped at exactly 5:17 am on July 26, 1963 when the 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck Skopje, destroyed 80% of the town, and killed over a thousand people. The left side of the station was destroyed in the earthquake and the right side houses a museum today. Interesting story we learned is that Skopje, then in Yugoslavia, received relief aid from over 70 different countries to rebuild. Even Pablo Picasso donated one of his paintings to Skopje to lift their spirits. Of most interest, however, is that in the dead of the Cold War both US and Soviet Union freely worked and played together in Skopje given Yugoslavia’s non-alignment policies.
It was also fun to see some of these gems, such as the Post Office building in Skopje. While concrete and brutalist in style, as what you would expect during a communist rule, it was actually designed by a renowned and influential Japanese architect Kenzo Tange (by no means a communist). The UN commissioned him after the earthquake to help redesign and rebuild the city. Most of the brutalist, communist seeming buildings that can still be found in Skopje, were designed by him.
As you can imagine all this walking and learning left us pretty hungry. Food in Macedonia was extremely cheap, the cheapest we encountered in all of Eastern Europe to date (on par with Bosnia, if not actually cheaper). But most importantly, as I’ve alluded to earlier, it had burek and it had yogurt. One should not be eaten without the other, and, when eaten together, the closest I can come to describing it is heaven on earth. I will say, even if I will sound biased, that best burek is made in Bosnia followed by Serbia, but Macedonia squeezed into third. Granted I have yet to try it in its original country of Turkey, but it has been 500 hundred years since they introduced burek to the Balkans and I am sure we perfected the recipe since then. Just my, not at all biased and very humble opinion 🙂
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