2022 World Tour – North Macedonia
Hello from North Macedonia, my eighteenth (Skopje) stop on the trip and my 53rd country.
Below is the standard summary:
– Cool Ranch Doritos: No
– Thai ATM Card Works: Yes
– Thai Debit Card Works: Yes
– Thai Internet Purchase Works: Yes
– USA Credit Card Works: Didn’t try
– Worldwide Telephone/Data/SMS eSIM Works: Yes
– Spanish SIM Card Works: No
– Magic Jack Works: Didn’t try
– VPN Works: Didn’t try
– COVID Compliance Chronicles: No Requirements
– Internet Works: Yes
– Drone Flights: Need a certificate and government notification 24 hours before flight
– Cost of Living: $$
– Currency: Denar Ðен 58.8 = USD $1
– Language Issues: None
Your Short History Lesson: North Macedonia is a very young country with a very turbulent past. In ancient days the region was conquered by the Greeks and Persians. Alexander the Great is heralded as a local hero, building one of the largest empires in history from Greece to India. Despite his legacy also being claimed by Greece, there’s a massive statue of him in the capital Skopje, titled “Warrior on a Horse” but everybody knows it’s really Alex. The airport and a major highway are also named Alexander the Great. “This is our way of saying [up yours] to them,” Antonio Milososki, the state’s former foreign minister, told the Guardian in an interview in October 2010.
The Romans followed as they do in this part of the world, then the area fractured into many realms, followed by the First Bulgarian Empire then the Byzantine Empire then the Serbian Empire, then Albanian kings then the Ottoman Empire. Wow, a lot of Empires, eh? And so fleeting is your mighty empire… The area was captured and annexed by Serbia in 1912 and became part of the “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes”. A coup in 1929 renamed the region the “Kingdom of Yugoslavia”, run by Josip Tito as a Communist state in league with the Soviets. After WWII, Tito granted autonomy to “People’s Republic of Macedonia” within Yugoslavia. As Yugoslavia collapsed, the “Republic of Macedonia” was formed as its own constitutional democracy. Greece complained about the use of the name in the context of northern Greek history and culture, so in 2019 the country was renamed the “Republic of North Macedonia”, which is still a hot topic for the locals to this day.
Personal Note: In the early 1970s I did an elementary school report on Yugoslavia by interviewing my next-door neighbours in Toronto. Years later I realized that they fled the country and couldn’t say anything bad about Tito that might cause problems for their relatives still back home.
My bus from Tirana Albania to the North Macedonian capital of Skopje is a small 20-person van with no toilet, no aircon and the USB charging jacks are tauntingly broken, but it’s comfy enough. We drove 2.5 hours to the outgoing Albanian border checkpoint, gave our passports to the driver and he took them into an office. He seems like great pals with the border officers, he must come through every day on this route. The bus then drives into a garage and we all have to pull out our suitcases for inspection. Some he examined deeply, some he just waved off. That’s a first for me, and I wonder why they’re inspecting as you leave the country, rather than entering.
Along the way we reached a roundabout where traffic was stopped by police. We were told that we have to sit for an hour waiting for an EU delegation from the airport to pass by, but they let us go after 10 minutes.
At the Skopje bus station I took a taxi to the location my AirBnB said to go to, then someone will meet me there and take me to the room. Well, the location ends up being 3 km from the room! I don’t know if the problem was the taxi driver or the AirBnB location pin, but another taxi to the Greek Embassy gets me within 50 meters of the flat. Wouldn’t it be great if the AirBnB just said “Go to the Greek Embassy and call us.” Ugh. I had to pay cash for the rent upon entry, this will be a trend for the next few countries as it’s untraceable and untaxable. Another bad shower stall, ugh. The faucet must have been designed by Vogons, no way to tell how to set the temperature or pressure and nearly impossible to get one human body to fit inside. I’ve begun selecting my lodging based on the pictures of the shower.
I walked to the Old Bazaar, the second largest in the world behind Istanbul apparently. I passed many of the “Brutalist” style architecture buildings – hard concrete surfaces with sharp angles, half moon windows and tubular portholes, just check out the pictures. This style was done in a mass construction project in 1963 by a Japanese architect. Then in 2014 a lot of the buildings had their façades changed to more classical designs. Lots of casinos here, I’m afraid to go inside as I don’t want to lose all my money. Many small shops in the winding cobblestone streets of the Old Bazaar, second hand items from the communist era, clothes, shoe repair shops, restaurants & bars. I spotted a massage/hammam shop and made an appointment for the next day. I exchanged my remaining Albanian Leke at a dodgy looking exchange shop, I’m sure he boned me on the exchange rate but they’re all equally dodgy.
The next morning I walked to the city park across the river. There’s a very nice tennis club there with clay courts and a tournament going on from toddlers to very skilled players. It’s great to walk on the grass in the shade of the trees, cool breezes, happy dogs and strollers. I went into the Dinosaur Park, quite small and about half of the models were animatronic with sounds. I walked around the front past the zoo entrance, across the river and followed the riverwalk back into town. In the Old Bazaar I stopped at a tiny dirty musty shoe repair place to see if I can get the widening holes sewn up in my shoes that the repair guys in Barcelona said were unfixable. This guy was a master! He put in reinforcement leather pieces from the inside with contact cement, then ran some stitches and locked everything in with a heat gun. He asked for Ðен 400, I gave him a Ðен 500 for job well done. Looks nearly perfect and should last for a long time.
I arrived at the hammam, which started with a 1 hour strong oil massage. My masseuse’s technique was quite good, far better than the Chinese style I’ve had so far on the trip. Then we moved into the tiled “wet room” and I laid down on the warm marble table. My knees and tops of feet hurt on the stone just like I remember from my hammam in Morocco. First she poured hot water on me, wow too hot so she cooled it down a bit. Then she sprinkled Turkish coffee all over and started scrubbing. I asked if it was new or used coffee but she didn’t say. Then another rinse, then a coating in bubble bath and another scrubbing, then a rinse. I can’t remember what it cost but it was worth it.
I walked home through town, saw a live rock band playing next to the river and people with flags walking to an anti-government protest. I had read about this protest yesterday on the U.S. State Department Facebook page.
The next day was Sunday and I was quickly reminded of the Sunday curse in Europe. I tried to order a Caesar salad, the waiter says no salads today. I changed to a chicken wrap. 15 minutes later the boss comes out and says his staff isn’t coming to work today because the police will fine them ⬠5000 for working on Sunday, despite tourists needing something to eat. Yay so “No lunch for you!”
I booked a 3-stop tour and found the pickup location at the Kale Fort next to the Old Bazaar. Now Kale means Warrior in the local dialect, not leafy green vegetable. 6 of us pile into a tiny Fiat van that has seen far better days. We drove to the city’s cable car station and took the short and not very scary ride to the top of the mountain hosting the Millennium Cross. Next stop was a 12th century monastery, then last a stop at a magnificent river canyon. Now remember this is still Sunday and the canyon is packed with locals on their day off all trying to drive and park long a 1 lane road – madness! We gave up, parked and walked 15 minutes uphill past the hydro dam to a restaurant and boat rental area. On the way home an American guy started in on Fox News talking points about Obamacare, volcanoes causing global warming, Biden is responsible for gas prices, they’re teaching kids to be gay in school, etc. and the rest of the tour’s non-Americans got in a shouting match with him, it was very entertaining, like a real-life Facebook comment section!
As I was checking out of the AirBnB the father of the girl renting the apartment was very nice and offered me a ride to the bus station. On the way, he said the former prime minister was caught in massive graft while installing statues around the city and then he fled the country, just one example of the massive corruption here. Normal people are nice though he says and I did find that to be the case.
Next stop: Pristina Kosovo
