By means of an Introduction

As a child back in the UK in the 1960s and 70s, I always loved the thought of living near a border. There seemed to be a strange romance to the idea of crossing an imaginary line and finding oneself among people whose common language, experience, culture and history was very different to one's own. That feeling may have come from living in the UK, where borders with other nations were very much more clearly defined by the sea, and from my love of foreign languages. So it is rather ironic that I now live near a border which, for many local residents, may as well be a prison wall. Few people in this area go across the border from Greece into Macedonia, and the majority of those who do rarely advance any further than the 100 metres or so they cover before parking at the casino just inside the Republic of Macedonia. If we go back to the time when the present republic of Macedonia was part of Tito's Yugoslavia, it was not uncommon for Greece's borders with the then Yugoslavia to be busy crossing points, and I remember well travelling across Europe on a number of occasions on the "Magic Bus", latterly Euroways, from the UK to Thessaloniki and the queue to enter Greece at Evzoni, the main entry point. Customs officials in Greece manically looking for bananas, which it was illegal to bring in, lest the market for local bananas be affected. Greek bananas from Crete were a sorry excuse for the real article. Following the break-up of Tito's state, the Republic of Macedonia declared its independence and gave itself its new name, which immediately caused indignation in neighbouring Greece, where it was believed that the tiny state had great visions of extending its territory southwards. Before the break-up, the name of Macedonia had been used in the southernmost area of Yugoslavia for decades without problem. Tensions now increased, and those who are influenced by what the media spouts developed a negative stance towards the fledgling state which became pervasive. In the years of strife in the more northern ex-Yugoslav states, the traffic across the border dried up to little more than a trickle, and the once busy motorway-style road south from the Greek border with Macedonia emptied.

Nowadays, traffic taking the route north towards Austria, Germany and beyond through Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia has picked up, yet it seems that few people actually visit Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, or the surrounding areas.

Thus it was that I made a snap decision to spend a long weekend in Skopje. It seemed madness to have lived in Greece, within half an hour's drive of the border with Macedonia and within three hours' drive of Skopje, and never to have visited the capital. It was time to make amends...

Naturally enough, there were a few things to be done first, such as booking a hotel and getting a Green Card for my car to ensure it was insured for travel across the border. A quick search on the web produced a map of Skopje and a list of hotels, ranging from luxury (Holiday Inn, Best Western, Continental) to small family-run hotels. In the end I chose the Hotel Imperial, which was described as being located in a quiet neighbourhood high up above the city. A quick telephone call booked a double room for eighty euros a night - more than I had intended paying but the hotel was a four-star establishment and did offer wireless internet access.

So, come the morning of Saturday 12th August, we set off. The trip to Skopje went well. The road from Dojran (Greek/Macedonian border) through to the main road (Gevgelija-Skopje/Belgrade) is a small country road, and once you have joined the main road the route remains one lane in each direction until the village of Demir Kapija, but after that it opens up into European-style motorway, with a speed limit of 120kmh (75mph), and very little traffic. We had been warned by a friend who had been to Skopje to have with us plenty of small denomination euro coins, as there are tolls on the motorway and if you provided the tollbooth with a euro note you would receive change in denar, the local currency. This wouldn't have really mattered, as the denar would have come in handy, but still we took a glass jar filled with 10-cent, 20-cent and 50-cent coins. The tolls were much cheaper than in Greece, between €0.50 and €1.50, and in total we paid about three euros on tolls between the Greek border and Skopje itself. In Greece the tolls on the main haul down to Athens are two euros at each toll station.

Upon arrival in Skopje, we set about finding the hotel, which turned out to be down the end of a very small road in a high district of town, called Crnice, on the lower slopes of Mount Vodno, the mountain lying to the immediate south of Skopje. Not speaking more than a few words of Macedonian (as in “a bottle of beer, please”!), we had a little difficulty communicating with the locals in asking for directions, but eventually, after resorting to German and English, we found the hotel and booked in. It was a smartly appointed, small establishment, and would do nicely.

We then walked down into the city, stopping off at an exchange office to change 40 euros (£25) into denar.

Skopje turned out to be a very attractive small city, which did not have the feel of a capital city to it but more that of a friendly provincial city. Through the centre, west to east, flows the River Vardar, and in effect it forms a borderline between two very different halves of the city - a Christian half on the southern side and a Muslim one on the northern. Four or five bridges cross the river, one of which is the stone bridge which is a traditional symbol of Skopje. The other bridges are road bridges. Traffic in Skopje was fairly light compared with, say, Athens or Thessaloniki, and the cars and buses rather older than in those Greek cities. The buildings in Skopje ranged from communist-style concrete affairs to modern blocks, probably post-dating the Yugoslav break-up.

What really struck us about the city was that the people there were so chic in their attire and that everything was so quiet and civilised - no shouting, little or no blasting of horns and swearing drivers and no deafening mopeds with broken or modified exhausts, the bane of Greek towns and cities. In fact, had it not been for the age of many of the vehicles, this could have been a city in northern Europe. Another thing which struck us was the quality of the places which in Greece are known as kafeteries, which are (in summer) open-air bars-cum-coffee places, with seating ranging from bar stools around circular tables, through normal chairs and tables to large comfortable sofas around matching coffee tables. A common phenomenon in Greek towns and cities, the ones in Skopje were superb, beating anything I have seen or visited in Greece. Without fail, the service was superb, too - something such places in Greece could do a lot to improve. The waiters were uniformly dressed, making it dead easy to spot one, and at each kafeteria there was high table at the entrance to the outside area where one waiter sat or stood, similar to the way in which a maître d'hotel is positioned in top restaurants, and his job was to scan the seating area and ensure that any customers arriving or requiring further service were quickly served. Again, Greek kafeteries have a lot to learn in this area. Prices generally in Macedonia were far lower than in Greece, by about half, and the kafeteries were no exception. A pint of Skopso beer cost between 80 denar and 110 denar (€1.20 and €1.90) compared with €2.50 to €5.50 or €6 in comparable places in Greece - where you are more likely to get served a piddling little 330ml bottle of Amstel anyway. An espresso was €1 or less, compared with the common €2.50 in Greece. And wherever we went for a coffee or a beer, a till receipt was automatically forthcoming - yet another feature that Greek kafeteries would do well to emulate. It was recently revealed that many bar and kafeteria owners in Greece declare an income lower than that of a pensioner, despite their bars and kafeteries being full to bursting almost all year round. Till receipts, gentlemen, please!!

The majority of the kafeteries in Skopje, most of which were to be found on two streets, one parallel to the River Vardar and one adjacent to it, both meeting in the main Macedonia Square, served ice-cream. We are not talking the peel-off-the-wrapping chocolate ice lolly here. They had a vast selection of flavours in large freezers, as many as thirty or forty different flavours in some cases, and you could either buy a cornet to take away or have a glass bowl of ice-cream at the kafeteria itself. Again, the price was minimal - 20 denar (€0.30/£0.20) per ball of ice-cream. And it was absolutely delicious ice-cream...!!!

On the first day there I bought myself a Macedonian-English-Macedonian dictionary, as on a previous visit to the country, to Ohrid in the south-west, I had discovered that the contents of my Serbo-Croat dictionary bore only a passing resemblance to the words and phrases I was seeing and hearing around me, and I quickly realised that Macedonian and Serbo-Croat are not one in the same. I also got a street-map of Skopje and a road map of the whole country.

We wandered across the river to the northern half of the city, in search of the Pit Bazar, a district of the old town in Skopje recommended to us for its kebab restaurants. This district contained minarets and mosques, and the Muslim population was far more in evidence than on the other side of the river. The roads in the Pit Bazar were mainly pedestrianised, and the little shops sold a variety of more traditional goods, such as leatherware, jewellery and the like. We found a tiny square, shaded by a huge tree, with a small fountain in the centre, around which tables were arranged, and decided to sit there and eat. The food was good, apart from some extremely tired chips, which were replaced immediately when we commented on them. We were busy tucking in, sipping some excellent Alexandria white wine, a long favourite of mine, when an argument started up between the owners of the two restaurants in the tiny square. It seemed that one of the waiters had persuaded a threesome to move from a table belonging to the one restaurant to another belonging to his own. The shouting led to fisticuffs and a bottle was broken, and it got rather lively (see videoclip below!). One man was thrown to the floor and kicking set in, but the attackers were eventually restrained and the man on the ground retreated. Some minutes later, however, he returned, and it all started up again...! Finally, when a state of tense peace had returned to the square, the police arrived in a battered unmarked white Volkswagen Golf and went from restaurant to restaurant, before finally taking the one owner with them and having the other follow in his own car. Our waiter did his best to assure us that it was nothing and that we should come again! Well, I for one enjoyed the spectacle, but I suspect that it was something more than a one-off, and that there has long been some sort of rivalry between the two restaurants.

We had left the car up at the hotel. I was not sure how safe it was to park my car, with its Greek number plate, in the city itself. This is, I suppose, just another of the insecurities built up by years of negative propaganda about the country. If enough people state a fact, however wrong it is, in the end you start believing it... But as it turned out, the city centre had many cars parked in it with Italian and German number plates, although it has to be said that we saw no Greek number plates - again a sign of how few Greeks actually visit Skopje by car? Besides, if one is worried about parking Skopje city centre, there is a car park by the Holiday Inn which costs 100 denar a day - an incredible €1.65. Compare that with €6 per hour (yes, per hour) for parking in the Assos Odeon car park in the centre of Thessaloniki...!!! One point of warning, though, and that is that if you remove your car from the Holiday Inn car park and re-enter it later, you pay another 100 denar. But the main thing, if you are worried about parking in Skopje (which you shouldn't be), is that the Holiday Inn car park is watched by a security guard. We used taxis to shuttle back and forth between the centre and the hotel and the fare was generally around one euro (60 denar) for the one-and-a-half kilometre (one mile) ride.

On Day Two of our trip, we decided to take a trip out of Skopje in the car and headed for the border with Kosovo, which was some 15 kilometres (10 miles) away to the north-west.

Skopje has a wide pedestrian street with lots of greenery and abundant cafés, leading to its main square (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	A statue of Mother Teresa, who was born in Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

"Kamen Most" - The stone bridge which is the symbol of Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The Vardar River, which flows through Skopje, and the stone bridge (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

The old town in Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	A little square in the Old Town, where we ate and witnessed a punch-up between restaurant owners (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Christina at St Patrick's Bar (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	Skopje has some modern buildings, as well as many old ones (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Looking down towards St Patrick's Bar (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	Skopje is famous for its wonderful ice-cream - of which there are many, many flavours (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

The Vardar (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The Vardar and the stone bridge (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

The steel cross on Mount Vodno above Skopje - the largest in the world (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	In Kaçanik, Kosovo (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

A train passing through Kaçanik, Kosovo (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	Young boys on donkeys ride through Kaçanik, Kosovo (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Kaçanik, Kosovo (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	In the centre of Kaçanik, Kosovo (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

On the road back to Macedonia from Kosovo (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	Sveti Panteleimon, Mount Vodno, above Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Looking down on Skopje from Mount Vodno (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	Our meal at Sveti Panteleimon, Mount Vodno, above Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Sveti Panteleimon, Mount Vodno, above Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	An Albanian-speaking group of Macedonians on their way to a wedding at Sveti Panteleimon, Mount Vodno, above Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

A view over western Skopje from Mount Vodno (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The cross on the summit of Mount Vodno stands 85 metres tall (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

The railway station in Skopje, from Mount Vodno (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	Central Skopje, with the large white curved roof of the stadium visible left of centre (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

A closer view of the railway station in Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	St Patrick's Bar, Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

The cross at the summit of Mount Vodno, as seen from central Skopje. The cross lights up at night (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The railway station in Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Macedonia Square, central Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The Telecoms building, central Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Kale Fortress, Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The pedestrianised area alongside the Vardar heading towards Gradski Park, the city park (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Kale fortress, Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	A monument in honour of those who fell in the struggle for the liberation of Macedonia (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

A monument in honour of those who fell in the struggle for the liberation of Macedonia (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The path leading to the city park in Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

A small park before the huge city park begins (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The city stadium, Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

A well-frequented cyclepath leads alongside the Vardar from the city centre to the city park (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The city park in Skopje has many lovely small lakes (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

A view of the city park, Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	A view of the city park, Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Near the city park there are various sports facilities (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The city stadium in Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

A small lake by the Ezerce restaurant on the outskirts of Skopje city park - with geese and turtles (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	There are large fish in the lake (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

At the Ezerce restaurant on the outskirts of Skopje city park (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	At the Ezerce restaurant on the outskirts of Skopje city park (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

The Ezerce restaurant and neighbouring lake on the outskirts of Skopje city park (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The pedestrian road leading towards central Skopje from the city park (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

The entrance to the Sofka Park hotel - a very nice hotel in a quiet part of town near the city stadium (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The café-restaurant adjoining the Sofka Park hotel (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

The pedestrian road leading to the centre of Skopje from the city park is a very nice walk (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	The stone bridge in central Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Skopje is home to some extremely pleasant cafés (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	Old buildings and modern in central Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

A pint of Guinness for yours truly at St Patrick's Bar, Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)	Inside St Patrick's Bar, Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Inside St Patrick's Bar, Skopje (click photo to enlarge in separate window)

Bryan Hollamby, 21st October 2006