"What I wouldn't doBaby, but what I'd do
in your land of
milk and honey.
So sweet, open up
and let me in."
— Jimmy Jam &
Terry Lewis, 1994
One of the many advantages of living in Europe is having the opportunity to conveniently travel to vastly different countries within just a few hours span. And, yes, I am well aware that one can also travel within the United States and feel some differences from state to state, as well — for example, Texas and Louisiana may differ slightly in terms of accents, climate or maybe even one or two specialized cuisines — but for the most part, both states are pretty much the same in terms of culture. Where as in Europe, from state to state, a traveler just might instantaneously feel as though he's landed on an entirely different planet with each visit.
And surprisingly, in most cases, the contrast can be between two neighboring countries just a mere border line away — where one might discover a completely different culture of inhabitants speaking a different language, worshiping a different religion, abiding by different laws and in some cases, looking quite different — in terms physical features. And for the record, Bulgaria, a country famous for earthly things, like rose oil, yogurt and sunflowers, has been one of the most unique and outer-planetary-like countries of the 20 or so European States that I've visited so far.
However, throughout my two-year stay, I couldn't help but take notice of a constant rumor circulating around town regarding a nearby neighboring country and its identical status to Bulgaria. In fact, despite it being 10 times smaller in size, some native Bulgarians have even stated that when visiting this so-called twin country, at times, they'd forget that they were not in Bulgaria.
Well, you might have guessed by now that the identical twin in question is none other than The Republic of Macedonia, a landlocked country in the central Balkan peninsula, bordered by Kosovo to the northwest, Serbia to the north, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south and Albania to the west, and one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia — from which it declared independence in 1991. And in 2005 it became a potential candidate for joining the European Union.
It's also a country that I can now scratch off my long list of travel destinations in recent times after, me, Sarah and our friend Kamy, a native Bulgarian you might remember from a couple of previous episodes — most notably Episode 17, that involved her saving Sarah from food poisoning — recently enjoyed a wonderful weekend stay. Originally, the trip to Macedonia wasn't planned as a threesome. But by chance and coincidence, Sarah and Kamy conveniently planned the trip around Kamy's friend's wedding which was taking place during the same weekend that Sarah and I originally planned to go to Macedonia.
Still reeling on my Germany Journey from Episode 23, where I enjoyed one of the biggest shopping sprees of my life at the great Saturn, an electronics, CD and DVD outlet store, I was anxious to do more shopping. So during the very early morning hours, right before gassing up Xena Bubalechka for the trip, I made sure to take some extra shopping cash in hopes of finding another great Saturn-like store in Macedonia. And although the 4 hour picturesque drive from Bulgaria to Macedonia with the girls was simply wonderful, recent learnings of the legalities of the use of the name 'Macedonia' weighed heavy on my mind.
You see, ironically, the heaviness came just days before the trip after meeting Sonja, a fellow painter and ex-pat from Macedonia now residing in Sofia. One evening during tea and cheesecake at Le Salon Aux Fleurs, my new favorite cafe in Sofia, to originally discuss art and me joining her figure-drawing studio, she gave me some much needed 411 on her country.
First off, she reminded this ol' American boy that, technically, Macedonia, a name derived from ancient Greece originally believed to have meant "the tall ones," after the physical character of the ancient Macedonians and their mountainous land, is actually pronounced — mack-e-donia — a pronunciation that humorously reminded me of The Mack, a classic 1973 film that respectively stars fellow D.C. native Max Julien and the greatest stand up comedian of all time — Richard Pryor. The film centers around the ultimate pimp named Goldie, who, during one of the most memorable and humorous scenes from the film, is crowned Player Of The Year at the Annual Players Ball, which, might I add, has also inspired real life copy-cat ceremonies currently taking place throughout the U.S.
And don't worry, this ol' American boy dared not mention this rather silly and unrelated Hollywood movie memory to Sonja, instead he moved his mind toward a more serious topic — one that resulted in a near two-hour discussion revolving entirely around the controversy surrounding Macedonia. Which, as a result of a dispute with Greece over its name, has generated a great deal of political and academic debate on both sides, that resulted from the ambiguity and adjacent Greek region of Macedonia and the use of the term Macedonian for the neighboring country's main ethnic group and language, The Republic of Macedonia was admitted under the Prince-like provisional reference of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, sometimes abbreviated as FYROM.
Before parting ways that evening, to ease the serious tone dragged on by our intense conversation, Sonja left me with some not so controversial information regarding her country. After learning about my tremendous love for castles, she told me not to dare miss The Skopje Fortress, one of the city's most central attractions. This also helped free my mind from the naming dispute issue that had been weighing heavy on my mind during the road trip.
When we finally reached Skopje, the capital and largest city of Macedonia, it took a surprisingly good amount of time to get through border control. But after a quick check inside Xena's hatch-back and a little smooth talking from Kamy, the patrol guards waved us through with no problems. This more comprehensive searching of vehicles at the border line from the Macedonian authorities would mark the first noticeable difference between Macedonia and Bulgaria. And in a short matter of time, I would soon discover why. But first — on to our accommodations.
The three of us stayed at the Hostel Hostel, a homely little hut-like house with a very relaxed atmosphere located about a mile from the city center. It was Kamy's first hostel experience, and upon arriving, I could sense that she was a bit nervous and hesitant of the whole idea. But just as soon as we came through the doors, we met a cool dude named Chris, a former Peace Corps volunteer and fellow expat and teacher living in Turkey, who embodied the typical friendly backpacker and hostel-dweller. And like Kamy, he had a tremendous love for scuba-diving. An accolade that seemed to make Kamy feel right at home.
And between you and me, the fact that he was rather easy on the eyes might have done the trick, too. So much so, that Kamy opted out of having dinner at a local restaurant, insisting instead that we dine right there at the hostel. But before we could even discuss dinner options, Kamy had a wedding to attend and Sarah and I had some exploring and castle hunting on our own agenda. But after noticing some obvious close similarities between Macedonia and Bulgaria, particularly a similar language, climate, cuisine, dangerous drivers and my very favorite stray dog issue, on the way to the wedding chapel I would soon discover a big dissimilarity in the identical status rumor.
But before I continue on with this Episode, I must first pause to make one important matter crystal clear to my readers. During all of my past and future travels, please note that I am never observing an underdeveloped country to poke fun or look down on it as if to imply that the U.S. or other developed countries are better in any way. In fact, I find underdeveloped countries to be far more interesting and fascinating than developed countries. And for the most part, when visiting an underdeveloped country, I tend to get far more mental nourishment from the experience.
As I walked the semi-westernized, non touristy city streets, I made note of some fascinating observations. First off, the majority of the native people, which, consisted of Macedonians, Albanians, Romanies, Serbs, Turks and Aromanians, were fashioned in handmade-like clothing that made them look quite unique in appearance. And that wasn't the only thing that seemed handmade and unique. At times, I would observe various men driving what appeared to be giant-sized go-karts! And during our exploration the city's main shopping district, where, for example, the big featured toy on display was a Minnie Mouse doll or the latest swap-meet version of the classic Adidas track suit or shopping bins filled with tons of bootleg CD and DVDs, I just knew my chances of finding a Saturn-like store was null and void.
But I wasn't disappointed. No way. Like I said, underdeveloped or non-westernized cultures like Macedonia truly fascinate me. It took my mind completely off of shopping. Sarah and Kamy said it was, "nostalgic and reminiscent of Bulgaria some 10 years ago." The county's economic underdevelopment might also be a possible reason why the border guards found it necessary to put on a more comprehensive search, perhaps to prevent smuggled goods from entering or leaving the country.
After Sarah and I dropped Kamy at the chapel, we headed out on our first exploration around Skopje. And the first thing we decided to do was hunt down the Skopje Fortress. So, out went Owen Davis, mild mannered school teacher, and in came The Brave And Fearless Castle Hunter and his trusty companion named Sarah — who just might actually be far braver and fearless than the Hunter himself.
But that's up for debate.
Speaking of hunting, after we arrived in the city center, we would soon discover that there really wasn't very much hunting to be done after all. You see, the Skopje Fortress' grand height and length could be seen from just about any place in the city, making it the very first thing we saw upon entering. But unfortunately when we got to entrance, the interior section was closed off to the public due to construction — which wasn't positively confirmed, considering that we received various other reasons for its closure from surrounding Macedonians.
Soon after taking a stroll and shooting photographs around the outer sections of the 6th century fortress, Sarah and I would discover another big dissimilarity in the identical status rumor. The main religions within Macedonia were about 65% Orthodox Christianity and 35% Islamic. Where as in Bulgaria, the most dominant religion is the former, with about 10% of the latter.
This rather large religious difference to Bulgaria was quite crucial and made the identical status rumor seem pretty ridiculous. Oh yeah, and I definitely knew I was not in Bulgaria after walking through the Islamic side of Skopje near The Old Bazaar, the largest in the Balkans outside of Istanbul, observing over 30 beautiful mosques and several exquisite caravanserais with Islamic and Turkish-styled architecture, where the majority of older muslim women wore traditional hijab. In fact, during this moment of the trip, I would say that Macedonia was perhaps more reminiscent and similar to Bosnia rather than Bulgaria.
But on the other hand, after crossing over the gorgeous Stone Bridge across the Vardar River, a symbol of Skopje connecting the Old Bazaar to Macedonia Square, where we got a magnificent view of the Vodno Mountain holding The Millennium Cross, the largest in the world constructed to commemorate 2,000 years of Christianity in Macedonia, I started to become a little more understanding of how this identical rumor might have gotten started in the first place.
You see, besides the countless number of construction sites going on throughout this section of the city, that included a new triumphal arch, various government buildings, and a monument dedicated to Saints Cyril and Methodius, the inventors of the cyrillic alphabet, the Macedonia Square side of Skopje did somewhat resemble parts of Bulgaria — particularly that of Sofia's iconic and swanky Vitosha Boulevard, mainly for its atmosphere, shopping malls, cafes and live music.
And before I stop boring you with more of Macedonia's dissimilarities to Bulgaria, I'd like to share just one last and most interesting difference that concerns my ever-so-present celebrity status, which, as you might have already guessed, like Bulgaria, was quite prevalent in Macedonia.
But this time I wasn't the only celebrity in town.
Yeah, for the first time in all of our European travels, Sarah and I shared an equal amount celebrity status from the inhabitants in Macedonia. This would mark another big dissimilarity to Bulgaria — a country where Sarah can pretty much blend into the crowd, sometimes to the point of being mistaken as a Bulgarian.
And if you know me well, then you'll know that I take it as a compliment to my (clears throat) exquisite taste in women when a male or female peers in admiration towards the woman I am dating. And in Macedonia, this open minded like attitude of mine was put to the test after the attention toward Sarah, which mainly came from the male species, became quite frequent. Dudes were even coming up to me and politely asking if they could have a picture with her. Sound familiar? Yeah, I know what you're thinking, I finally got a taste of my own medicine, right? But like I said, I really didn't mind. And I'm sure it was a nice change of pace for Sarah — coming from a country such as Bulgaria, where the men, who are pretty much immune to having the world's most beautiful women, rarely stare at them.
Speaking of beautiful women, as we strolled through the city center's popular Macedonia Street in the Centar municipality filled with cool bronze statues abound, Sarah and I got quite a surprise. You see, neither of us were aware that the beautiful Mother Teresa was a native of Skopje until we stumbled upon The Mother Teresa Memorial House, dedicated to the humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The glorious and colorful house was built on the very same location of the once Sacred Heart of Jesus Roman Catholic Church — where Mother Teresa was baptized.
The final day in Macedonia would prove to be a real strange one. After spending a fun night at the Hostel Hostel hanging out in the late night hours with Chris and two more hostel dwellers, Sean and Justine, a cool couple from Australia touring the Balkans, we soon realized there was only a few hours left to spare before hitting the road back to Sofia. So after we got a good nights' rest, the very next morning the three of us decided to take one more final stroll through Skopje where we would soon discover a rather small problem with all of the construction taking place throughout the city.
And excuse me if I seem to be jumping the shark for a second time during this third season of the Blog-O-Daria series, but when we got around to revisiting the Stone Bridge, we happened upon another unbelievable scene somewhat similar to the dog attack from the previous Episode that reminded me of the The Pack. Only this particular incident was more reminiscent to The Swarm, a classic 1978 disaster film about killer bees invading Texas, with a stunning all-star cast featuring the legendary Olivia De Havilland, Michael Caine, and the Late great Henry Fonda.
It all came about after we got closer to the bridge from the Old Bazaar side. While discussing Kamy's wedding fun and the good times we were having in Skopje, the wannabe entomologist inside of me took curious notice to an unusual number of flying bugs busily
buzzing
around us.
"Have any of you noticed all these strange looking flies?" I suspiciously asked.
"Oh Owen, just relax. It's not really that many." Kamy quipped.
"I don't know. They seem to be growing in numbers by the second." I nervously replied as Sarah promised, "they're harmless, O — trust me."
And although Sarah was absolutely correct about them being harmless, Kamy was just slightly off about there not being very many. Because just as we got to the center of the Stone Bridge, right out of the blue we were struck by an extraordinary swarm of more of these unusual looking flying creatures that I still have not yet determined from what insect species they are derived from. Besides their two wings, all I can really tell you is, they sure as hell didn't look like any kind of bug I'd ever seen.
But never mind what species they were, in a matter of seconds, the aberrant scene became quite unbearable for everyone. Stunned and confused people passing over the Stone Bridge tried their best to walk faster and cover their heads, batting at them, using whatever they could — but nothing seemed to keep these pesky creatures away! One reason was that there were far too many of them!
As fascinating as the whole situation was for me, I was still worried about one of those little suckers flying into my eyes, ears, nose or throat! So I covered my eyes and facial passages with my hands. But this, of course, made it difficult to walk. So I eventually had to sacrifice my eyes. And when I slowly took my hand away from them, that's when I humorously discovered that I was the only one left alone in the swarm on the bridge. The girls and everyone else, including Kamy, who originally said there wasn't that many, intelligently made a mad dash away from the bridge as quickly as they could.
After I finally smartened up and raced back to the girls and everyone else at the safety zone, we all tried to determine where in the hell did all of these insects come from? And again, like with the closing off the interior section of the Skopje Fortress to the public, none of the native Macedonians seemed to know or give a definitive answer. In fact, as I stated earlier, they seemed just as stunned and confused about the whole situation as we were. So we came up with our own theory which is related to the construction going on under the bridge, where it looked as though the workers had plowed-up soil from beneath the Vardar River to widen it, which may have either, produced the insects, or some strange chemical brewing from the plowed-up soil could have attracted them to the area.
Nevertheless, after the Macedonian Swarm, we took that as a good sign to head back to Sofia. And when we returned to the Hostel Hostel to gather our luggage and gas up Xena, Chris, who we'd promised to drop off at the bus station on our way home, was patiently waiting for our arrival.
On the way back to Sofia, the girls spotted a cool looking castle in ruins
a few miles from Skopje
just off the side of a curvy mountainous road near the Pchinja River. Anxious to do some real castle hunting this time, I hurriedly pulled Xena onto the shoulder and reached for The Brave and Fearless Castle Hunter's most treasured weapon — a camera. Unfortunately, when we approached the large and menacing-like steel gate surrounding the creepy looking castle, there was a sign attached that simply read — "KEEP OUT." Kamy and I had no problem obeying this sign. But Sarah on the other hand...well...uh, let's just say that she chose to ignore it. Like I said, she might just be far braver and fearless than the hunter himself.
But that's still up for debate!
Anyway, fearing that my girl from the north country would end up that dead blonde girl from a typical horror flick, Kamy and I were somehow able to convinced her that it was best to obey the sign this time — just seconds before she could completely climb over the gate. But before we headed back, I, of course, snapped a few pictures of the castle to add to my growing castle hunting record book.
Which reminds me of something, if you're interested in seeing more photographs, that tell a far better story than I can,
from my Sweet Macedonia Weekend
, please feel free to click on this link.
Okay, during the ride back to Sofia, my mind was almost completely free of the heaviness regarding the naming dispute between Greece and The Republic of Macedonia. However, there was just one lingering question remaining. After everything is said and done and the two countries will no longer
— just who will be crowned the real Mack?
Well, we all know that's a pretty tough and controversial question to answer right now. A
nd to be quite honest, I think both sides have a legit argument for wanting to keep the name. So, not to come off as picking sides,
let me leave you with this to ponder on.
Webster's Online Dictionary defines the word mack in three simple ways. There's the "conspicuously successful pimp," the "slick womanizer," and my favorite meaning, "one that is best."
So, keeping in mind my occasional visits to the beautiful Macedonia region of Greece
and my recent visit to
The Republic Of Macedonia, where I observed some pretty awesome things to assure both sides a bright future —
I think it
won't be too long before the one that is best gets the crown.
Be seeing you.
O
