Walking through enchanting Ohrid

Ohrid is quickly becoming one of the highlights of a trip to the Balkans, and for a good reason. Leaving quirky Skopje for quiet and pleasant Lake Ohrid made me feel as I had crossed yet another border of former Yugoslavia. Yet Ohrid, with its elegant ancient architecture, is in Macedonia, the same country as bombastic Skopje with its huge statues and its kitsch neoclassical architecture.

Sveti Jovan Kaneo

Let me begin from the best Ohrid has to offer. The church of Sveti Jovan Kaneo is like a perfect postcard. It's just a small 13th-century church on a cliff overlooking the lake, but what makes it so special is the quiet atmosphere. No wonder that in the past it was used as a place for meditation.  The beautiful roof shaped like an half-folded umbrella is one of my favourite features of this church and it indicates an Armenian influence. Just think of the mix of cultures in this small corner of the world. For example, the part of the town on the hill used to be Christian, while the part on the flat land was Ottoman. 

Another picture of Sveti Jovan Kaneo

I reached the church after a short and pleasant hike from the old town. After a gentle bend I saw the church appear in the distance. There weren't too many people (it really depends on the moment of the day) and I spent some time on the hill above the church looking at the perfect view and reading. A woman was painting and every now and then a small group of tourists would come, admire the church and leave after a short time. 



Sveti Jovan from the bend in the road

Nearby there is also a small beach with a couple of restaurants: just the perfect place to chill out. As Ohrid is dotted with monasteries and ancient churches, I kept exploring: I discovered that the church of Saint Penteleimon hosted the first students of the Glagolitic alphabet, which in time became the Cyrill script of Macedonian and other Slavic languages. 

I also ran into the ruins of a fortress, Car Samuil, with an  impressive view, and later into an ancient amphitheater. There is so much to explore that you if you like history like me you'll not get bored. The weather was exceptional and every two minutes there was something to stop for: a nice view, a historical site or a scene of everyday Macdonian life.

Landscape in the old town

The town itself is crumbling in places, but incredibly fascinating. Here old Ottoman traditions meet the Christian Orthodox world. Its cobbled streets all lead to the main square, with a huge tree that is said to be 900 years old. The menus in the restaurants around the square and the bazaar included stuffed peppers, shopska salata, sarma dumplings and other Macedonian specialities.

Charming Ohrid

Ohrid is a small town, so on the second day, having explored every nook and cranny, I decided to take a day trip to Sveti Naum monastery. There is a ferry that leaves at 10 in the morning from the pier and for 10€ takes you there, then comes back after lunch. I discovered that Lake Ohrid was one of Tito's favourite parts of Yugoslavia (he had a villa here) and in the meantime I observed the less developed Albanian side of the lake. 

When I was around Sveti Naum there was an important wedding and even the president of Macedonia was present. The entry to the monastery was 100 dinars (1,60€). It is tiny and dark, as it is inside Sveti Jovan Kaneo church, but the frescoes were somehow fascinating.



Sveti Naum monastery

There were peacocks in the courtyard and some girls were rehearsing a traditional folk dance for the wedding.  There is also another newer church that I liked, some hiking trails, a spring and a couple of restaurants and souvenir shops. It's a nice trip but maybe it would have been better to couple it with something else to fill up the rest of the day.

The newer church near Sveti Naum

I reached Ohrid with a three-and-a-half-hour bus ride from Skopje. If you're planning to visit this beautiful lake keep in mind that it's tricky to continue on to Greece, and in my experience it was easier to get a bus back to Skopje and then another one to Thessaloniki. If I remember well there is more than one company that servers the route Skopje - Ohrid, so one stand could not be able to tell you the timetable for the other company and try to sell you their ticket only.

A view from behind the fortress

The Las Vegas of the Balkans: Skopje

Skopje is probably the strangest city I have ever visited. Let's begin by saying that the capital of Macedonia is mostly new, because the city was almost completely destroyed in an earthquake in 1963 and also because most of its monuments were built in the last 6 years.

 

As a matter of fact, in 2010 many new statues, monuments and museum buildings were built thanks to a big project called "Skopje 2014". Most of them share a pompous neoclassical style that seems to mock Macedonia's neighbour, Greece. There are so many statues of famous Macedonians that local people laugh and say that every Macedonian by now has a statue somewhere in Skopje.

Statues in Skopje

The project was intended as a way to revitalize the city centre and make it more monumental, but it failed to gain consensus from the local population. Some of the new monuments (like the triumphal arch, a bad-taste imitation of the Roman ones) got hit by paint balls in protest against the corrupted government. The monuments and museum buildings intend to build an identity for a country that has almost never been independent in its history and whose name and symbols are not recognized by Greece.

 

Skopje's art bridge and the archaeological museum by night

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The most famous and controversial monument is a 22-metre statue of a warrior on a horse sitting on top of a marble column and surrounded by fountain jets that are lit up at night. Most visitors recognize him to be Alexander the Great, a historical figure claimed by Greece as its own and that Macedonia uses freely (even the airport is called after him). This politics, sustained by the political party in power, is known as "antiquization" and it claims that ancient Macedonians were not in fact Greeks. According to  this theory, modern-day Macedonians, even though Slavic in language and culture, descend from the ancient Macedonians who once had an empire that reached India.



The huge statue of the Warrior in Skopje

 

 

As a result, the modern part of Skopje is kitsch, a sort of Las Vegas reconstruction of ancient Greece gone wrong. There are so many statues that it becomes hard to pay attention to any of them. In spite of this, or maybe because of this, Skopje is a unique and interesting city to visit. Contributing to this amusement-park atmosphere are the Chinese-built red double-deckers that you can see everywhere, an exact copy of the London ones.

 

In Italy macedonia is another name for fruit salad, a mix of very different elements, as Macedonia is, a meeting point of different cultures and religions. While walking on the southern bank of the Vardar river and passing by these huge new monuments, I was in an unmistakably Balkan city, even though the façades of Socialist buildings have been cleverly covered to give them a new look. 

 

This is  the area of the city where you can find trendy cafés and shops, but also Mother Teresa's memorial house, built in the place where she was baptised. Born in Skopje in 1910 of Catholic Albanian parents, Mother Teresa of Calcutta embeds the cultural mix of this city. The memorial house is free to visit and a new church in a curious neo Byzantine style is being built here.

 

Memorial house of Mother Teresa

 

To add to this mix, everywhere in the city you can see Roma families, with children playing in the streets. As a matter of fact, Skopje hosts one of the largest Roma settlements in the Balkans. I realized how much more of a mix it must have been in the past with Macedonian, Albanian and Roma people living side by side with Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Jewish people, of whom little is left in present-day Skopje aside from plaques and small museums.

Statue of Mother Teresa

 

On the northern bank of the river lies Çarshia, the old bazaar, which is known by locals as the Albanian neighbourhood (here Albanian is almost synonym with Ottoman). 20% of the population of Skopje (and 25% of all Macedonia) is of Albanian heritage and all official plaques are in both Macedonian and Albanian. I wandered for a couple of hours through reconstructed caravanserai, old mosques and Turkish baths, some of them reconverted as art galleries or museums. The Çifte Hamam, for example, now holds the national gallery, with plenty of contemporary paintings and installations from Macedonian artists.

 

Çifte Hamam

 

The Kurşumli Han is one of the few remaining caravanserai (the roadside inns of Ottaman times) in Skopje and it now hosts the modest Museum of Macedonia. A world apart from the opulent new museums, this area is more traditional, even though little is left of old Skopje and all the shops sell modern goods. While you walk though its paved streets, you can always spot the minaret of a mosque.

 

Old Baazar, Skopje

 

 

The two worlds - the Slavic and the Albanian - run virtually parallel one to the other and sadly there is not much interchange between the two. To divide these two parts of the city there is the 15th-century Stone Bridge, one of the few things left from the time of the Ottoman empire.



View of Skopje and the Stone Bridge