After I wrote last night, a few of us went with Naya and Tanja for a quick walk through the city of Skopje. The first thing we noticed is that there are a lot of ginormous statues and fountains here that are very over the top. At night they were all lit up in beautiful colours. We had a drink at a craft brewery and then headed back to our hotel.
This morning, Mum, Caroline, Sarah and I joined a free walking tour which was separate to our tour group. It turned out this was a little awkward because our tour group was starting a walking tour at basically the same time. But there are a number of people in the group as I’ve mentioned who aren’t very nice, and aren’t interested in history etc. We knew that walking tour would be a rush so we chose the other one instead.
It turned out to be a great choice. We had a very charismatic guide called Mika, and he was engaging and gave us lots of interesting information.
Skopje has had many earthquakes over the years, but particularly devastating ones occurred in 518, 1555 and 1963. After the 1555 one, much of the city was rebuilt in the Ottoman style because of the Ottoman Empire being in charge here for 500 years. The most recent devastating earthquake in 1963 took the lives of 1070 people. Considering that at this time there were less than 50 000 people living in the city this was huge. It was “only” a 6.1 on the Richter scale, but 83% of the buildings in the city were completely destroyed because they were not of a high standard. Only 5% of the buildings ended up being salvaged, including our first stop which was the old railway station. It is now a museum and has been partly left in ruins, with the clock on front still showing the time the earthquake occurred, 5.17am.
After the earthquake, countries from the east and the west (including the USA and Russia) all stepped in to help. England even leant the city five double decker buses for public transport because their system collapsed. They returned them after a few years, but nowadays they have ordered some more of them to commemorate the time they were used anyway. It’s strange seeing them driving around here!!
Over time just like many other Balkan cities we have visited, Skopje has been controlled by various empires and countries. The Ottomans ruled here for 500 years, then the Serbs, then the Austro-Hungarians, then the Bulgarians and then Yugoslavia. The main pedestrian street has changed its names 6 times in 90 years. Mika told us about an old lady living in a flat on this street who had lived in four different countries without even leaving her house.
Unlike Bosnia and a couple of other Balkan countries, Macedonia escaped the war of the 90s relatively unscathed and gained their independence on the 8th of September 1991. Serbs were not persecuted or under threat here, so they were allowed to go their separate ways after a few discussions about border. However, there are still disputes with Greece about the name ‘Macedonia’ because there is a region in Greece with the same name. As a result, Macedonia is not allowed into the EU just yet. You may have heard of Macedonia being referred to as ‘FYROM’ or ‘the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia’ because some countries refrain from just calling them Macedonia. Greece wants them to change their name to ‘North Macedonia’, and the minister for foreign affairs has agreed to but this will go to a referendum in September, and our guide reckons it won’t pass.
Next we went to a statue of a bull like the one in New York City and Mika started to tell us about the ‘2014 Project’ the last mayor started. This guy was in charge here for 11 years, and in that time spent €800 million of what Mika called “Copy Paste Syndrome”. Everywhere you look here there are buildings, statues etc that remind you of other places, and aren’t very Macedonian. The bull is one example, and we were going to see many more..
But first, we passed a beautiful new Orthodox Church being built, and then visited the Memorial House of Mother Theresa. Mother Theresa was born in Skopje on the 26th of August in 1910. She was baptised in the Catholic Church that formerly stood on this site. She then lived out most of her days in Calcutta, India and in 1979 won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was really interesting looking at photos of her interacting with the likes of the Queen, Ronald Reagan and more. We also saw personal items such as a headscarf she left in Skopje last time she visited. She died in 1997 in India and was made a saint in 2016. How strange to see the belongings of a saint, when usually they are merely ancient relics that we are unsure actually belonged to the saint!!
After looking at the chapel upstairs, we moved on. At this point we gained our “tour dog”. Stray dogs are well looked after here including food, shots and being fixed. As a result they are not aggressive and are actually very friendly. We ended up with about three following us, chasing off and barking at cars that came near us. The guide says the same ones follow him and “protect” his group most days. Cute!!
Then began the parade of statues. Like I mentioned before, the previous mayor spent an obscene amount of money here on monuments. When a new mayor came into power late last year, lots was put on hold and some things are being deconstructed. A bit like the East West Link at home!! For instance, a replica of the CN Tower was being built on the hill and cost €36 million, but is now being deconstructed. Our guide said he was ashamed because future generations will be paying off the loans for decades to come. On the way we also saw Mother Theresa's birth house.
We saw statues of Alexander the Great (cost €8 million) and both his parents, as well as many others. Mika said some of them don’t even have any meaning. The bridges here are also covered in them. We also saw the ‘Triumphal Arch’ which he said is hilarious because Macedonia have never really had any military victories, but that the mayor said he wanted this arch to celebrate cultural victories. It cost about €4.4 million, and €25 000 interest is paid just on this arch each month. Yikes! Two brothers from Macedonia created the Glagolitic alphabet, a stepping stone to Cyrillic. Because one of the brothers was called Cyril, this is where the word ‘Cyrillic’ comes from.
Then we passed the Stone Bridge. This was constructed in 519 after the first bad earthquake. In 1689, a guy called Karposh tried to lead a rebellion against the Ottomans. After less than five weeks, he was captured and was executed by being impaled on the bridge for three days. They also made him wear a boiling hot crown.
The three ships sitting permanently in the Vardar River were out there by the same mayor and don’t really have anything to do with Skopje either! They’re restaurants now.
Next we had a break in the Old Bazaar area where we got to try more Rakia. We reluctantly drank it and had a nice buzz afterwards! We found it interesting that after just 2-3 hours we felt more comfortable in that tour group than we did in the Travel Talk one we’ve been with for a week.
We continued up to the fort which was built in the 12th century. In the 1960s it was used as a storage facility in Yugoslavia during the time of fear of nuclear attack. We had a nice view from here and stood in some shade with our stray dogs surrounding us haha.
Here we found out that the reason Macedonia’s flag has a sun on it is because the people who lived here 2800 years ago worshipped the sun. We also learned that Macedonia aren’t very good at football, because they lost to Luxembourg whose goal keeper is a baker!! Haha.
We ended our tour by walking past the Mustafa Pasha Mosque and then going to the Holy Salvation Church. This didn’t look like much from the outside, but we learned that during Ottoman times if you wanted to build a Church here it had to be lower than the mosques and not as beautiful. So this one was built underground. The man inside wasn’t actually the tour guide, but the guide hadn’t turned up to work. He was a guard and was wonderful! He knew so much. The beautiful icons inside (which I wasn’t allowed to photograph) took three men seven years to build. It told lots of religious stories and was beautiful. Randomly, his son has moved to Melbourne! He’s about to get married and he told us we have stolen his son and we live at the end of the world!!
Once the tour ended, the four of us had lunch in the bazaar area. I had a local speciality which was meat with cheese inside. The men at the restaurant were so lovely. We have found everyone here to be. We went to look at their friend’s jewellery shop afterwards and each bought a pair of beautiful filigree earrings.
After a good break, Caroline, Mum and I went to the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle. It was quite well set out, but only some parts were in English. We felt we were missing some bits of information.
From what we could tell, the first somewhat successful uprisings against the Ottomans occurred in 1876 and 1878. Various Macedonian Revolutionary organisations were established. In 1903 there were many battles and lots of people died. It seems a lot of this country’s history during that time involved death and struggles.
In 1912-1913 the two Balkan wars took place, after which Macedonia was divided between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. This meant that during World War I Macedonians were fighting on different sides of the war, leading to a bit of a loss of national identity.
Then Yugoslavia came along in the 1940s. The end of the museum was weird, because we thought we would learn about independence and happenings throughout this time, but apart from showing us prisons and work camps, it then just finished abruptly. We still enjoyed it but thought it could have been a little better explained.
We had a rest at the hotel and then the same six of us as in Ohrid (me, Mum, Erin, Susan, Sarah and Caroline) went out for dinner at a restaurant near the hotel. Now we are watching England play Croatia: and England so far are winning 1-0! I hope they win and go through to the final as they are my second home :)
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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