Skopje
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
60
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Skopje,
Macedonia
Saturday, October 21, 2006
The way there took us by the river Varda. Its bed has been turned into a canal, with stone work all the way up the bank. It is covered in graffiti in most places. Typical of a place with a lot of liter in the ground, we could see a lot in the water too. By a bridge some fellows were out fishing. The nutritional value of fish caught in such a river did come up in our conversation. But it also could have been that the fishermen were trying to catch plastic bottles to take into the bottle depot. Who knows.
The grass around the castle was neatly trimmed. On the other hand, someone had dumped a load of garbage at the base of a wall. Further along there was a plaque that was designed to inform the visitor about the history of the castle. But it was made of glass and someone had the idea of smashing it. We could only read a bit of the french translation of the history. But from the castle the view was pretty good. Local leaders have brought the 80's idea of the space age down to earth. The post office and the parliament look like they came from outer space.
Next on our list was a visit to the church of the Virgin. The church foundation was built way below street level at a time when no church was permitted to be higher than a mosque. The builders got around it by starting lower! The church grounds also contain a museum on Gotse Delchev, the IMRO and the Ilinden Uprising. The museum has many artifacts from that turbulent time before modern Macedonia's birth, and along with Macedonian text is an English translation. A woman who spoke French invited us to take our time inside.
The translation was a bit rough. Essentially, we were able to discover that this fellow, Gotse, was instrumental in leading a movement trying to get a Macedonian state in the late 19th century. What was not clear from the translation was exactly how they went about doing this. I called in the French speaking woman for help when without context, the text talked about the kidnaping of an American nun and the "Turkish Assassinations" in Thessalonika. Exactly what they had to do with Gotse didn't make much sense.
She was able to clarify it for me: she translated it from Macedonian. In brief, the Macedonian nationalist movement was having trouble raising enough money to buy arms to fight against the Turks (who ruled at the time) so they kidnapped the nun to raise enough money to buy guns. Then, they rose up and killed as many Turks as they could in a bunch of bombing attacks on Turkish ships. The Turks called in the French for help and the French shelled the rebels. The rebellion was crushed. Gotse was actually killed before the insurrection began, but he was still their hero.
We met some Germans who were driving around the Balkans in a camper van and chatted until the church closed. Unfortunately for us, that was at three when everything else in Skopje closed too. We were a bit bummed out so we walked around for a while through some street markets before deciding to take the afternoon off. We weren't the only ones who made that decision, either. Walking along the riverbank, we passed a fellow who was sitting on a low wall (in plain view of everyone) shooting up his second hit. We were a bit more tame, though. All we did was watch tv and get an internet fix.
