what a funtastically fascinating country! all of skopje (pronounced skow-pee-ah) is seemingly under construction. they are building all kinds of huge museums, and statues in the central square of famous macedonians throughout history, such as the byzantine emperor justinian. the centerpiece is a massive bronze alexander the great on a horse, which apparently was only erected a couple of weeks ago. there is a splendid old town, a huge bazaar, a beautifully ornate ottoman era church (that had to be built three feet under ground because churches couldn’t be taller than mosques in the ottoman empire), and a really nice chapel built in commemoration of mother theresa, who grew up in skopje. also, a clock tower. did you know that every town in the ottoman empire needed a clock tower so that “no shop keepers could work longer than anyone else and earn more money”? good thing that era’s over, eh!?
if you want to climb the skopje clock tower you can find your way through the construction zone and into the big mosque on the hill. find the old guy with no teeth and give him some non-verbal pleasantries about his mosque. then motion to the clock tower and he will open the lock with a huge, archaic key from the middle ages that he finds under a carpet in the mosque. climb up the stairs, but watch out for the randomly placed wooden beams which could almost knock you out if you walk into one, and be careful not to step on the rotting corpses of dead pigeons or, further up, the nest with recently hatched baby birds. when you get to the top, crawl out the small window unto the ledge and see a beautiful view of skopje!
here’s something interesting: the greeks don’t like the name macedonia. the ancient macedonia included part of greece (or as the greeks would say, it was greek to its core), and indeed there is a region in greece today called macedonia. thus, when the republic of macedonia emerged out of the ashes of the former yugoslavia as an independent state, greece saw their choice of name carrying with it the possibility of territorial expansionism, and demanded that the country be referred to in the united nations as the former yugoslav republic of macedonia (fyrom). as a byproduct of this angst, buses between macedonia and greece are extremely scant, despite the fact that they are right beside each other and its not very far. also, skopje has one of the largest roma settlements/slums in the world. the roma are a transient ethnic group in the balkans who struggle with unemployment. there was actually a roma museum in belgrade that i wanted to go to but i didn’t have time. and because i have a thing for superlatives, i simply had to see the largest cross in the world up close. it is called the millenium cross (because it was built in 2002 to commemorate 2000 years of christianity in macedonia and the world), and it sits atop vodno mountain overlooking skopje. one gets to it first by hiking for two hours up the mountain (or by taking a city bus, i later discovered was an option), and then taking a brand new ropeway.
since i wrote this blog post, the official name of macedonia has been changed again to north macedonia.
