Skopje, Macedonia
We left Sofia first thing yesterday morning to travel to Macedonia - the original plan was to travel by public trust but our guide Ivan decided that the cost of a private minivan could be justified by the two hours that would be cut off the travelling time. The road out of Sofia is up and then more up - dense forest (mainly pines) and beautifully green. We passed a couple of guys cycling which didn't look much fun - the hills would kill you! (Remind me of that when I decide that a tour like that would be a good idea..). The forest was burnt out in places, sometimes on both sides of the road - the fires across Europe have been terrible this year.
The further up we went the darker the clouds until the first of the drops fell: sideways with the blustering winds. The driver parked as close as possible to the cafe just before the passport control and we sheltered under the eaves of a cafe drinking coffee. Two border stops - the Bulgarian one as we left that country, and then the Macedonian one as we entered that country.
We applauded the driver's skills when we had to backtrack along a narrow one-lane dirt road to loop around a traffic accident which was blocking the traffic from both directions. Some creative driving to squeeze past cars inching towards us with the road dropping away to our side - all to the backdrop of an intense conversation about Trump and American politics. We have three women from Washington, and a couple from Denver, Colorado - all fiercely anti Trump, anti Pence.
So Skopje - two things are the backdrop to this city: Skopje was flattened by a 6.1 earthquake on July 26 in 1963 at 5:17 - and we know the time because the clock on what was the railway station stopped at that moment and has been left frozen in time. 83% of the town was flattened. The second point is that Macedonia is working towards membership in the EU. A 'Skopje 2014' was formed to revamp the city to bring about National Pride, and to attract tourists to Skopje. The amount of public money spent on the project to date has ballooned out at 570 million and still counting. The place is filled with statues, with no real explanation (in most cases) of the relevance to the history of this area. Some of course are the founding fathers of the area (some of which are disputed historically) - as there were not many of the earlier neo-classic buildings left standing, replacement apartment blocks have been constructed - most of them in the style of Paris or Athens. The feeling is two dimensional almost. They have thrown in a replica Charles Bridge (not with statues of christian saints) and a few Roman arenas - there is even an Arch de Triumph! At night the place is lit up like a Christmas Tree - quite beautifully bizarre.
But cross the old Stone Bridge (1440's ) and you disappear in time into Casija (with 'ch' on the 'c' and a 'sh' on the 's') the Ottoman trading road, with little winding cobbled streets and the call of the mu'addhin echoing in the evening air - filigree jewellery shops, rugs, cafes with the shisha pipes - quite the contrast and we were glad that we didnt see the city in the opposite way (the old part and then the new part).
The money is the dinar - and this is worth 60 dinar to one euro - so there is a lot of maths going on, the sum of which is that food is delicious and cheap!
oh and by the way, our favourite nun (recently canonised) has a museum here - Mother Theresa was from Macedonia (although she was Albanian).
The further up we went the darker the clouds until the first of the drops fell: sideways with the blustering winds. The driver parked as close as possible to the cafe just before the passport control and we sheltered under the eaves of a cafe drinking coffee. Two border stops - the Bulgarian one as we left that country, and then the Macedonian one as we entered that country.
We applauded the driver's skills when we had to backtrack along a narrow one-lane dirt road to loop around a traffic accident which was blocking the traffic from both directions. Some creative driving to squeeze past cars inching towards us with the road dropping away to our side - all to the backdrop of an intense conversation about Trump and American politics. We have three women from Washington, and a couple from Denver, Colorado - all fiercely anti Trump, anti Pence.
So Skopje - two things are the backdrop to this city: Skopje was flattened by a 6.1 earthquake on July 26 in 1963 at 5:17 - and we know the time because the clock on what was the railway station stopped at that moment and has been left frozen in time. 83% of the town was flattened. The second point is that Macedonia is working towards membership in the EU. A 'Skopje 2014' was formed to revamp the city to bring about National Pride, and to attract tourists to Skopje. The amount of public money spent on the project to date has ballooned out at 570 million and still counting. The place is filled with statues, with no real explanation (in most cases) of the relevance to the history of this area. Some of course are the founding fathers of the area (some of which are disputed historically) - as there were not many of the earlier neo-classic buildings left standing, replacement apartment blocks have been constructed - most of them in the style of Paris or Athens. The feeling is two dimensional almost. They have thrown in a replica Charles Bridge (not with statues of christian saints) and a few Roman arenas - there is even an Arch de Triumph! At night the place is lit up like a Christmas Tree - quite beautifully bizarre.
But cross the old Stone Bridge (1440's ) and you disappear in time into Casija (with 'ch' on the 'c' and a 'sh' on the 's') the Ottoman trading road, with little winding cobbled streets and the call of the mu'addhin echoing in the evening air - filigree jewellery shops, rugs, cafes with the shisha pipes - quite the contrast and we were glad that we didnt see the city in the opposite way (the old part and then the new part).
The money is the dinar - and this is worth 60 dinar to one euro - so there is a lot of maths going on, the sum of which is that food is delicious and cheap!
oh and by the way, our favourite nun (recently canonised) has a museum here - Mother Theresa was from Macedonia (although she was Albanian).
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