Officially North Macedonia since 2019, but you won’t hear anyone refer to it as such and will get a disapproving look if you do. Macedonia is a lovely little country in the Balkans. I only visited the two most popular locations - Lake Ohrid and Skopje - but I think they give you a fairly rounded view of the country.
Lake Ohrid
Macedonia is land locked so lake Ohrid is their answer to the seaside, and is a popular destination for Macedonians on holiday. Ohrid is one of the towns on the lake and the one I stayed in. It was fairly touristy, but in a Balkan way. This means the strip was filled with people selling corn on the cobs and weird arcade machines. If you walked out of the town a little way you got to a boardwalk which wrapped around the lake, delivering you to a little beach and then to the monastery that sits on a piece of the cliff jutting out. The lake is lovely to swim in, but beware of the water snakes. The sun sets behind the monastery so climbing up there gives you the most amazing views. I spent both my nights captivated by this, the latter complete with beers and card games. There are lots of lovely, traditional restaurants so you can try the Macedonian twist on Balkan food with a stunning view of the lake. I got up for sun rise one day, and watched this from the little beach. It was so peaceful walking along the boardwalk in the early hours of the morning, with just the stray dogs that I picked up along the way for company. I sat on a little wooden jetty and just took in the sunrise, before doing some yoga and having a swim. An old man was the only person I saw, and he exclaimed with joy when he entered the water, shouting over to me “therapy” whilst gesturing to the water. I couldn’t agree with him more. Before everyone else joined in, and before it got too hot, I walked around the old town, seeing the fort and the old churches. It wasn’t anything too impressive, but it was very pleasant, especially with no one else around. The rest of my time in Ohrid was spent hanging out by the lake with friends - new ones I met on the bus over from Tirana, and old ones that I’d met previously.
Looking through my photos of Ohrid I think it’s the prettiest place I’ve been to so far.
Skopje
I had my first bus hiccup on the journey from Ohrid to Skopje. I was napping away happily (or as happily as you can be on a crammed minibus with no AC in 35 degree heat) when a big bump and a bang awoke me, only to witness us roll to a stop on the side of the road and the bus driver get out and open the bonnet up. We’d broken down, on the side of a fairly busy road with no shade at midday. At this point in my travelling I’ve learnt to just accept the things I can’t control and go with it. So I got off the bus armed with my headphones and phone, a bag of crisps and some cream cheese, and some peaches. I sat on the curb and watched some of the netflix I had downloaded, enjoying my snacks. After over an hour a man in a beaten up car pulled up with a handful of tools. Everyone on the bus took a collective sigh at this point. We had all assumed a new bus was coming to rescue us, but it seems we were doomed to remain with the broken down one. Miraculously this man did manage to fix the bus, until it broke down again 20 minutes later. The same man reappeared and repeated his miraculous fix and this time we made it all the way to Skopje.
I liked Skopje (the capital of Macedonia). It’s definitely a strange city. In 2014 the government decided to renovate the centre completely. Which for them meant building an unbelievable amount of statues, and fancy old style buildings. They went quite overboard with the statues though. There are hundreds. For example, there are two bridges right next to each other, each with 35 statues on them. And not only are they plentiful, they are also ginormous. The statue of Alexander the Great (apparently from Macedonia) in the main square is 14.5m tall, and stands on a 10m high plinth. A saddening fact is that out of these 100s of statues, built only in the last decade, there are 0 which are women. The only woman featured is in a group statue. One reason for the recent city centre renovations is that 70% of the city was destroyed by a huge earthquake in 1963. The old train station has a large clock on its front and this stopped during the earthquake. It hasn’t ever been fixed, so still shows the time from this. Something that survived the earthquake is the Old Bazaar, which is the second largest in Europe.
Skopje is a city of quirks, another of these is the double decker red buses you’ll see driving around - a nice reminder of London and home. In the 1950s Britain gifted Skopje the infamous buses and the people loved them. The Yugoslav government decided the people loved them a bit too much for something that was from a capitalist country (with Yugoslavia being communist) so they slowly removed them from the streets. As part of the 2014 renovation program the government brought them back in.
