Aleksandar Palace Skopje

I got off the bus at the wrong stop but it ended up being closer to the town centre. Kumanovo is the second city but it just feels like a small town in the countryside.

The people were really helpful in giving directions. I ended up bumping into the cousin of one of the coordinators and so he took me and phoned people and made sure I was ok. It turns out that I was the second person going to the conference who had asked ...

Skopje must be the poorest and ugliest capital in Europe, but it does have a claim to the fame: Mother Teresa was born here, for whom the city erected a 2.5 m statue. As usual, it also has its share of 1 castle; several old churches and old mosques. I covered most of them in a few hours, but found the market place in the Turkish Square the most interesting. It's almost like a bazaar in the Middle East. My CS host, Hans, is an Austrian working for Organization for Security and ...

... nicked some maps from a higher budget place. I tried the AMG café first and ended up being the proud consumer of yet another bottle of Skopsko. Bollocks. It's like they have complete market saturation. By this point I was getting bored, and I never thought I'd say that when it came to drinking beer, so I decided I'd try one more place before retiring to bed. I chose a drab little café just around the corner on the other side of the hotel. It quickly ...

... ehri tanımaya çalışıyoruz. Makedonya'nın başkenti Üsküp eski Yugoslavya'nın önemli kültür, sanat, tarih merkezi.Yahya Kemal, Memet Akif Ersoy ve Mustafa Kemal Atatürk'ün dedesi Hakkı Efend i gibi büyük sahsiyetlerin çıktığı topraklar. Vardar nehri şehrin ortasından geçiyor ve köprülerle süslenmiş. Modern caddeleri, Arnavut Kaldırımları, Cafeleri ile kaymaçinasi, simit pogaçasi, paçası, böreği ile meşhur. Arnavutu, Makedonu, Türkü, Sırpı, Boşnağı 500 yıl Osmanlı kültür ...

... Pulling focus is also a big chore because of my lack of compatable equipment. the follow focus barely works on half of the lenses, the focus marks are inaccurate, and juding focus by the monitor is really tricky (especially since there is only one and myself, the dp, and the director are all scrunching in front of it. We shot alot. 80 gigs actually. we ...

... had a **** shower whihc could remain at a constant heat and met the macedonians. They took me around all of the big sites and surprisingly it took more than 5 minutes. there was the art gallery which i quite like and theturkish bazar again which i quite liked and an old castle which i quite liked. it turns out that looks can be decieeving and what at first looks really **** isnt. also an old castle. they then took me to the local restaurant and ...

... most part, until twenty kilometers from Skopje. The first smog we saw was very obvious. A fourty story smokestack let something black off into the atmosphere. Nearer still it looked like a fog had descended on the city. Only as the bus was enveloped in it (visibility went from perfect to less than a kilometer) could we see the the fog was thicker atop chimneys and open fires. From the bus station to the hotel S- with our reservation we quickly moved, trying to ...

... different places, and even life in the different sides of the town etc. That must be normal in many places, not only in Macedonia, but for me some things are just difficult to understand. Our group leader Daniel for example said, that if his children had to learn Albanian at the school, they would become Albanians. Yeah, sure. In this logic i would be Swedish after learning Swedish for 6 years. Well, maybe i am, but just don't know it. ;) The idea of nation and ...

... soon... My primary aim of this trip was to visit the rebel side of this war,and on my first morning I spied a face that I recognised from the Tetovo spring offensive 3 months earli**.His name was Hans,a Dutch photograph**.He was,as always,draped in expensive photographic equipment,including 2 cam**as with long lenses,and a safari hat.It transpired that he had arrived in Macedonia only the day before,and was intending to reach the rebel enclave in the ...