When I was up in Scandinavia for the holidays I began planning a two month trip through the Balkans and up into Austria and then back down to Sofia, which I would depart on a few days after arriving back to base. The first stop on my trip was Skopje, Macedonia where I would be spending five nights in my first ever hostel. I boarded the bus and left cold and snowy Sofia Wednesday morning and arrived in cold and snowy Skopje Wednesday afternoon. Things got off to a bit of a rocky start for me in Skopje. Shortly after leaving the bus station I slipped on the ice and with the weight of my bag on my back throwing off my balance, I was not able to stay on two feet and ended up going down to one knee. Fortunately, it was a fairly light fall and my knee didn’t hurt too bad. Then a couple of minutes later any trace of pain I had felt in my knee was completely eradicated when a woman walking by me started to slip on the ice and threw out her arms to keep her balance and ended up backhanding me in the mouth, cutting open the inside of my lip in a couple spots. Welcome to Skopje.
After checking into my hostel and taking care of a little bit of writing I headed into the city center to get some dinner and get some first impressions of the city. My hostel was situated near the river and I walked along it to take me into the center of town. I immediately fell in love with the river (which I was sad to find out is quite polluted). It is my favorite part of the city, which makes sense because I love water, but it didn’t hurt anything that the whole time I was there it was snowy and at night with the lights shining down and reflecting off the water it was just beautiful. Then I approached the city center. If there is one word that can sum up the Skopje of today it’s this one: GRANDIOSE.
I felt the need to capitalize GRANDIOSE there because of how GRANDIOSE Skopje is. I really wish I had visited ten years earlier so that I could have seen the city before the “Skopje 2014” project had begun. I am also interested to return in ten years when the project may finally be finished and see just how much more GRANDIOSE the city has become. “Skopje 2014” is a highly controversial project that is responsible for the GRANDIOSE nature of the city. I will attempt to explain this project and the current state of Skopje without getting too bogged down in the politics of it all. Wish me luck.
So, there was a devastating earthquake in Skopje in 1963 that wiped out about 80% of the city. Since then the city has been rebuilt, but many of the buildings that replaced the old ones were kind of plain and simplistic and there were those who thought that the city needed a more visually appealing style. Thus began a project to construct a bunch of monuments and several buildings done in a neoclassical style like some of those destroyed in the quake along with putting new neoclassical facades onto many already existing buildings. The project began in 2010 and was supposed to be completed in 2014 but during my stay in 2017 it was still going strong with no real end in sight. The project has been highly criticized for its cost in a nation with more pressing concerns than beautification and for its perceived tackiness (many native Macedonians told me that Skopje is becoming the Las Vegas of Europe). There is also controversy over many of the monuments they have erected and the significance of the figures portrayed in them to neighboring countries.
I personally believe that this project on a much, much smaller scale might have been a nice thing. A couple of nice monuments, a new building or two, something to draw some more tourism to the city, without being super in your face about it, could have been great. I just think they took it way too far, but that is my personal opinion. You’ll have to go there and judge for yourself. Whether you like the project or not, one thing that can’t be denied is that it definitely leaves an impression.
As I mentioned earlier I had never stayed in a hostel before. I was very fortunate to have my first real hostel experience be at Shanti-hostel in Skopje as it couldn’t have been a better place to stay. As I lay in bed one night there thinking about how much I was enjoying staying in a hostel it really made me appreciate my personal evolution. I have a lot of anxiety issues, specifically social anxiety and if I had had to stay in a hostel ten, or even five years ago, it would have made me extremely uncomfortable and I probably would have spent all of my time in my bed on my computer rather than out in the common room socializing. It also probably would have ruined my whole time travelling as I would have carried that anxiety throughout my day as i was out exploring the town. Now though, I still do have some anxiety over it at times, but I loved being out in the common room and chatting with new people from all around the world. At times it can be nice to have some privacy to retreat to, but overall I would much rather stay in a hostel with a bunch of other people than stay in a hotel by myself.
Some of the highlights aside from just meeting a lot of cool people from different parts of the world were that I got to watch a couple of handball games with some locals. I was informed that handball is the most popular sport in Macedonia and I got to cheer the Macedonian team on as they beat both Tunisia and Angola in their first two games of the preliminary rounds of the World Cup. Another great thing at this hostel was all of the free extras that they didn’t advertise. Almost every night I was there I got a small glass of really tasty Macedonian wine, and usually this was accompanied by a snack. The best snack came on January 14th, a holiday known as Vasilica or the “Old New Year”, based on the Julian calendar. The owner of the hostel brought in pita (a savory pie) that his mother had made. Baked into the pie was a coin and whoever got the piece with the coin is supposed to have good luck in the coming year. Not only was the pita super delicious, but I also got the coin. Excellent. One of the best conversations I had in the hostel was a really in depth conversation with a guy from Ukraine and one of the girls that worked at the hostel about philosophy and perceptions of the universe. The conversation drove some people from the room and left those who remained complaining about the ridiculousness of the subject matter, but personally I really enjoyed the conversation and am pretty sure that those participating in it with me were enjoying it as well.
There were three museums that I was debating visiting while I was in Skopje: The Archaeological Museum of Macedonia, the Museum of Macedonian Struggle, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. I ended up visiting two of these museums. The Archaeological Museum of Macedonia was really interesting, they had a great coin collection and a lot of other fantastic artifacts. I spent over two hours there (by myself most of the time), and thoroughly enjoyed it. I would have liked it anyway, but the discount I received made it even better. The cost of a ticket was 300 denar, but they were not able to break my 500 denar bill (which I found odd) and I only had 200 denar in smaller bills so they sold me a student ticket for 200. Score. I also visited the Museum of Macedonian Struggle, which was interesting enough but included in your ticket is a guide and you cannot go through the museum without one. There was nobody else there at the same time as me so it was a one on one experience. My guide was decent, he seemed to know what he was talking about, but I didn’t like how quickly we went through the museum. There wasn’t much time to really look at many of the artifacts and we just passed by a few things without him talking about them at all. That was kind of a bummer. I did not end up going to the Museum of Contemporary Art so I can’t say whether it is worth the visit or not. I can say that the Trip Advisor page about it is definitely worth a look though. I have never seen a more contradictory Trip Advisor page before. Within days there are several posts that completely contradict each other on a wide range of aspects of the museum. I won’t spoil it. Just check it out. It’s amazing.
One thing that I noticed on my first night in Skopje was an illuminated cross that seemed to be hovering in the sky. The next day I discovered that this cross was actually on top of a mountain. A couple days later I headed up to check it out.
I went down to the bus station to catch a bus up the mountain to the cable car, which would take me the rest of the way up to the cross. I went over to the information booth and asked what bus I needed to take and was told I needed bus 25. I walked over to the stop for bus 25 and waited. I was then approached by a couple who asked if I spoke English. I told them yes, and they asked if I could help them. I told them probably not but we could find out. They wanted to know when the bus up to the mountain was supposed to come. Fortunately I actually knew the answer to that one so I told them and then we all waited for the bus. We began to talk and I found out that they were on a weekend trip down from Slovakia and that he was Slovakian and she was Lithuanian. We continued to chat until the bus arrived. From everything we had been told or read about the bus we all believed that we were supposed to buy our tickets from the bus driver, but when we boarded the bus, he told us that we had to go over to the yellow bus up on the sidewalk and get our tickets there. We hurried over and the woman there told us, no, we needed to get them on the bus. We rushed back over to the bus and the bus driver told us that we could ride for free. It was all a bit confusing but I wasn’t complaining. Free is free. We went up to the second level of the double decker bus and chatted as it took us up to the mountain. They informed me that the reason that Skopje has these double-decker buses is that after the earthquake in ’63 the U.K. donated several buses to the city. They returned the buses a few years later but in a nostalgic move, ended up ordering double-decker buses in the same style from China. The only real difference is that the steering wheel on these buses is on the left side of the bus rather than on the right. We got up to the cable car and took that up to the cross. The view out over the city from up there was pretty great, but nothing compared to the view off of the backside of the mountain.
Gorgeous.
We hung out up there for a while, hiking around in the snow and then headed back down into the city right as the weather started to change and forebodingly dark clouds began to move in. We got lunch together and then parted ways, making plans to meet up when I am in Slovakia later in this trip. That is one of the many great things about travelling. You often get thrown together with great people that you otherwise never would have met, over the simple fact that you’re all just trying to figure out life in unfamiliar surroundings.
Another instance of hanging out with a fellow traveler that I had, was on my final day in Skopje. I was planning on going on a day trip out to the nearby Matka Canyon before I took my bus up to Prishtina. I had been chatting with a girl from Canada who had arrived the night before and asked if she would care to join me. She agreed so we found the timetable for the bus and then headed out. It was a while before the bus was supposed to arrive so we went and explored the city for a while. After having spent a few days in Skopje I had learned quite a bit of the history of the city from various sources, in particular from the free walking tour that I had taken (which may have been the best free walking tour I have been on, and not just because it was a one on one situation as nobody else showed up for the tour, or because he bought me a couple of shots of rakia, but mainly because the guy really knew his stuff and delivered the information with a great sense of humor). With this knowledge I was able to play tour guide for this girl and answer almost every question that she posed to me and tell her plenty of trivia about various things throughout the city. We finally returned to the bus station a few minutes before our bus was supposed to leave, and I am not sure if it left early or if I got the schedule wrong or what, but we waited over half an hour before calling it and deciding to go get some lunch. So, I didn’t get to go see the canyon, which was a bummer, but I hope to return at some point and I’ll have that to look forward to when I do. Besides, it meant that I got to play tour guide for a bit longer, which I was quite enjoying. After getting lunch and going to the grocery store and exploring the city some more we returned to the hostel and I said goodbye to the friends I had made there before heading off on the next leg of my journey.
Now we have arrived at the part you have all been waiting for. The food. So I already mentioned the delicious pita but I’ll mention it again. Super tasty savory pie. Wish I were eating some right now. Another delicious dish that I had was “uvijac” which is cheese, wrapped in pork loin, wrapped in bacon. Mouthwatering. Another great traditional dish was “muchkalica” which was a hot plate filled with pork, onions, tomatoes and peppers that had an almost stew-like consistency. Yum. The most common street food I came across in Skopje were doner (Turkish gyros), durum (Turkish burritos) and hamburgers. When it comes to burgers Macedonia’s motto seems to be “go big or go home”. The patty is a pretty decent size and they load it up with the usual burger accoutrements I am used to in the states, but they don’t pickle their cucumbers and they add shredded carrot (which was interesting), then they take the fries and throw them on top of the burger before adding the top bun. Scumptious.
My final anecdote for this entry takes place in the Kale Fortress. Located up on a hill near the center of the city this cool fortress offers some pretty cool views of the city in all directions.
It is really weird getting used to the way stray dogs are dealt with in many countries over here. I have always hated seeing dogs running loose on the streets and am so worried that they are going to get hit by cars, so whenever I would come across a dog out running around I would try to round it up in one way or another and get it to the pound so that either its owners could find it or it could hopefully get adopted. In Macedonia as in many other countries in the region there are a lot of stray dogs running around and you really just let them do their thing. Stray dogs are rounded up and given all their shots, spayed or neutered, tagged on the ear and then let back out on the streets. They all seem pretty healthy, I didn’t come across any that looked malnourished, but I still can’t help but want to take care of them. When I was hanging out up at the fortress I was alone most of the time until this guy showed up and tried to adopt me.
If it had been at all possible I definitely would have done so. What a sweetie. He broke my heart when he stood there staring after me as I walked away. Wow. I really didn’t mean to end this post on such a sad note. Let’s end it with a pretty picture instead.
