Easter weekend is a four day holiday in this part of the world, so on Friday I met Ellen in Belgrade and we drove to Skopje, Macedonia, where she planned to visit some old friends. I'm getting to be an old pro on the Zagreb-Belgrade-Zagreb bus route. Every once in a while you see something on the bus you have never seen before. On the trip over to Belgrade there was an older couple sitting across from me. When the time came for lunch, the wife produced one of the plaid plastic carry all bags that are ubiquitous among the bus crowd. From the bag she took a sandwich, which she served to her husband on a china plate. Now that is class.
On Saturday, I took Ellen's car and drove to Ohrid, a town on the shore of Lake Ohrid (the deepest lake in Europe), which is a UN World Heritage site. Ellen's friend, Sonja, who is Macedonian, mapped the scenic route for the drive down. It took me via motorway west through Tetovo and Gostivar. After that it was mostly twisting, winding two-lane track, not in great condition, through some incredibly gorgeous scenery in Mavrovo National Park, skirting the edge of the man-made Globocica Lake.
Though Macedonia's beauty equals anything I have seen in the former Yugoslavia, it is noticeably poorer than either Serbia or Croatia. The roads are in much worse condition. On the bridges, which are many, you see crumbling cement and rusting guard rails, which doesn't inspire much confidence about what is going on below. Even at the most dramatic scenic overlooks, there are mounds of trash scattered about. The streets are dusty, the buildings and people are dirty. The agriculture looks primitive. There are half-finished buildings everywhere, some of them with black rectangles where the windows should be, others just foundations with tentacles of rusting rebar poking out of them. Minarets, which I had seen only in southern Serbia, are commonplace here. There are sometimes two or three in what looks to be a very small village.
Eventually, I arrived in Struga, a shabby town on the northwest corner of Lake Ohrid. The roads were poorly marked, so I drove right through the crowded center of town and ended up on the old road to Ohrid. At first, Ohrid looks much like any other small city in this part of the world. The streets are lined with cookie cutter, non-descript apartment buildings with laundry hanging from almost every balcony and satellite dishes jutting out at impossible angles. Soon, however, following the signs for "centar," brought me to the waterfront.
Around the docks, where there is a mixture of sightseeing and fishing boats, is a promenate/park, full of strollers and kids playing on the swings and trampolines and riding bikes.
Walking west, I came to a line of restaurants with open air cafes. Following the curve of the lake, I entered the old town, also crammed with shops and restaurants. I had a late lunch in a waterfront restaurant which Sonja told me had great trout caught from the lake.
After that I walked around a bit and found the handmade paper workshop. What a surprise! A man, whose name I later learned is Ljupco, was demonstrating how the paper is made. At first I thought that I must have inadvertently joined a tour group, but it turns out that he repeats this performance whenever people enter the shop.
The paper making process starts with shaving hard wood (the type of wood determines the color of the paper) into a vat of water where it marinates for a couple of days. Ljupco stirs the mixture and invites you to put your hand in, so you see there is nothing sticky or gooey, just dissolved wood. He then inserts a frame with a very fine mesh screen in it. When he lifts it out, it is covered with a thick layer of wood residue.
He gently peels it off, places it between two pieces of linen that he puts under a press to squeeze the water out. After two days of drying in the open air, voila, handmade paper. On the paper, he prints pages from illuminated manuscripts using a replica of the Gutenberg printing press. Each color requires a separate trip through the press, and each of the resulting pages is unique because, even if they are of the same design, the paper varies in color and texture and the images produced by the press are never uniform. I was attracted to one, which turned out to be the first page of the manuscript of the Gospel of St. Mark. That was a conversation starter, leading to the purchase of several pages. I thought they were a bargain at 10 euros each. The experience of the hand made paper workshop was easily worth the trip to Ohrid.
Easter Sunday, we walked around the old ("Turkish") section of Skopje. The old fort on top of the hill was closed. An old monastery, Sveti Spas, was open. It has a small chapel with an incredible carved prayer screen. There are several graves with interesting stone slabs in the courtyard. In the center is the large stone sarcophogus of Gotse Delchev who was one of the leaders of the Bulgarian-Macedonia terrorist group, IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization), which fought against Ottoman rule in the late 19th-early 20th C.
IMRO, or VMRE in Macedonian, is the inspiration for today's leading political party, also known as VMRE.
From the monastery, we walked down the hill through the dusty, cobblestone streets of the old town, which has a decidedly eastern feel to it.
After wandering around a bit and a snack, we crossed the old stone bridge. Ellen was appalled at the "renovation" of the bridge which covers much of the original stone work. On the other side, there is a large square which is the center of a massive public works project. The square is flanked by two large statues of the revolutionary leaders of Macedonia (Delchev again) on horseback.
To one side is a replica of the Arc de Triomph. Several enormous buildings lining the river are either under construction or renovation, including a museum dedicated to the ruling political party. But the centerpiece will be the statue of Alexander the Great, another hero whom the Macedonians and Greeks both claim. A large concrete plinth 15 meters high has recently been completed. It will be topped by the statue of Alexander, another 15 meters tall.
The day ended with Easter dinner outside at Ellen's friends' house. Lamb with all the trimmings and some very good Macedonian wine.
