Sculptural Skopje

New, brash, sculptural and ever changing. Skopje is certainly unusual.

We leave our strange homestay room in Ohrid and head to the bus station. It is Sunday and no buses are heading back to Skopje for another hour and a half, just our luck. We get the ticket, leave our bags at the ticket office and head back into town for one last coffee next to the lake.

An uneventful journey back and we pull into Skopje just after lunch. We grab a taxi and head straight for our accommodation for the night, there is no one at home. The taxi driver calls our hotelier, they are most helpful around here, and he turns up ten minutes later. We dump our stuff and head into Skopje, wanting to make the best use of the time available.

First impression of Skopje, sculptural!

And when we say sculptural, we mean sculptural; every space, every bridge, square, garden, podium, stair, plinth, vestibule, colonnade. At every turn there is a sculpture.

They are mostly modern, well we think they are, it is hard to tell. Some are fantastic, thoughtful, memorable and interesting, others are dull. There are so many of them perhaps they lose their impact after a while, sculpture fatigue you might say.

But it is Sunday, and things are closed, which is a shame. We will have to return tomorrow. This old railway station is now a museum. The clock still shows the time of a devastating earthquake.

Skopje appears to be in eternal flux, there is so much building works going on. The main square is off limits, and will be for some considerable time, or so it looks.

But there are many grand public works, this riverside walk. Everything is new and clean, except for the old bridge.

And lots of new public buildings. To the right are the government offices for various departments, the largest must be the public works department!

The tourist map exemplifies what we mean, this is a city under construction.

That’s the new opera and ballet venue and behind it the home of their philharmonic orchestra.

We make our way up to the castle where we can overlook the town; the new stadium. A storm is brewing. We can see lightening in the hills and it starts to rain, so we head back to our apartment. On the way, we stop in at a restaurant to book a table, probably not necessary at this time of year.

In Skopje, for €20 a night you get a rather nice apartment, with kitchen, balcony living room and large screen TV. Not bad at all!

Didn’t take long to settle in.

We think this will do for the night, although not that sure about that headboard!

That night a delightful dinner; Susana has stuffed chicken breasts.

And I have lamb, with lovely roast potatoes, the bit I really miss from Sunday dinners.

And afterwards, for dessert, pancakes, but unusual ones, the waiter seemed pretty worried when I ordered them and described them at great length. They were lovely. The extremely thin pancakes have been sliced small and are in a creamy sauce with apples. Delicious.

Stuffed, we tentatively head back to our apartment. Some protest seems to be taking place, maybe protesting about too much construction. It looks like it could be a wet night for some!

Sorry about the slightly blurry photos; a result of too much wine and food, too little light and too far away.

And up on the hill the largest cross is beaming down its goodness across Skopje, how distasteful! Surely god should be in focus!

The next morning and it looks brighter, we head straight back into town. Everything looks really quiet, which is strange. This is Monday morning. We were hoping to see all the touristy stuff that was closed yesterday.

That is not to be, it is a public holiday, and things are still closed.

No matter, we will just make the best of it.

The buses here are not dissimilar to London buses, very strange.

It took us a long time to work this out until we saw finished ones up stream.

It will be later clad in timber and will be some mock battleship come restaurant. They seem to like faux here.

Not so sure it is the best idea to have a fountain in a river. Another one has been hit by a boat and is no longer working!

They are really into their period architecture here. But from what period, who knows. Whoever commissions these monstrosities has had little education in history or architecture. I wonder whether they actually can fulfil their purpose properly, as office and meeting rooms, they are surely so inefficient. Mock classicism, fake columns, everything plastic coated. Are they trying to recreate some sort of fake history? Is this a way to erase the past? Maybe that is what all the sculptures are about too. Grandiose architecture for a grandiose new democracy. Maybe they are trying to imitate the whitehouse.

At last we find something that feels real, a market. Even though it is a public holiday it is alive and well.

The Carsija is an old bazaar from the Ottoman period, with the vegetable market called the Pit bazaar.

Now although we are fans of markets as a spectacle, we are not so keen on their selling practices. Very unscrupulous, all those nice fresh, ripe looking fruits at the front, but oh no, you won’t be getting those. You will get the slightly manky old ones from the back, so you’d better eat them quick and cut out all the rotten bits.

Now I know some people think markets sell better, real produce, with warts and all. And the supermarkets are just interested in fruit that lasts for days on the shelf and taste of nothing. Strawberries are the UK’s highest earning fruit and Sainsbury, one of the UK leading chains spent ten years developing a new variety that did last longer on the shelf, but also travelled better, bruised less, was bigger, redder, also, and most importantly tasted better. Give me the evolution by artificial selection, or the genetically modified, or the non-organic equivalent. Give me the scientifically sanctioned, modern fruit and veg.

Oh, they did cheese too.

Is it Christmas already?

You can get absolutely everything here.

They look so lovely, who could believe the rotting pile of muck that lies behind!

Yes, we did try to pick our own, they were having none of it!

We had a lot of fun trying though.

It just goes to show, you get what you pay for.

Not sure what all that is, and was too afraid to ask. It smells good though.

But you could work out what that is from a 100m away.

Haven’t seen those for about twenty years

or maybe it is the largest MP3 player known to man.

People who still have VHS films and cassette tapes and wish to listen to them have no choice but paying astronomical amounts for old players, as there are so few available in the UK. Come to Macedonia and get them almost for free! SM

Yes, I have the same attitude to the DIY stalls, selling knocked off imitation goods and who knows what safety standards have been compromised. Buy at your own risk!

But it is also amazing how much hand made stuff was available, fire places welded together out of super thin metal that would surely distort the first log that went in, and not sure how long these shovels would last.

But probably this is all they could afford. A shame, better to save up and buy something that lasts.

The rest of Carsija has been gentrified, with new cobbled streets, cafes, bars and restaurants and coachloads of tourists.

Will starbucks and Mc’D’s soon move in.

 

At least some of the shops are still interesting and useful, this one just selling shoelace holes and cobbling apparel.

And this one fox fur. I hope they have clipped his toenails.

And in every town a clutch of wedding dress shops, all selling every girls dream, to marry in white, no matter what culture they were bought up in, the pure meringue reins supreme.

A hypocritical symbol. How many women who keep themselves immaculate to their marriage day these days? SM

It is time to head back to our one night apartment, not this one, ours was much more swish.

There are still some old school cars on the road.

And on the way back a monument to….

the bitch. It seems everyone wants a piece of this nastiness.

Oh and by the way, it looks nothing like her.

We thought she was from Albania, apparently she was born in Macedonia. When it becomes more widely known the suffering she inflicted upon so many, the medications that were withheld to support her religious doctrine, hopefully then these countries will be embarrassed about these horrific monuments.

Since she was put forward as a candidate to become a saint, the countries where she spent most of her life in rushed to proudly claim ownership. I hope what Gary says becomes true, although I am sceptical. The Catholic church will manage to play these facts down somehow. They have become very good at that throughout history. SM

We left, exhausted, on a bus back to Dora.

Macedonian impressions

To be honest, I knew nothing about Macedonia apart from the puerile lack of recognition by the Greeks. If they want to join Europe, they should, and one member state should not be able to stop them.

Small, compact, proud and beautiful are my overriding impressions. We only spent a few days and got to see two towns, both have provided lasting memories as did the kindness of the people and the great food.

Green, diverse, easy-going, work in progress. Small description for a small stay in a small country. SM.

GDR