We “slept in” a little bit, getting up around 06:30.  We got packed, then headed out to get provisions for our van ride to Skopje.  It was a nice morning, but a bit cloudier than yesterday.  The market that Crystal had gone to yesterday was either closed on Tuesdays, or not open yet.  So we walked into the city center and got more cash, as we’d be in Macedonia 3 more nights.  We saw a mosque (Ali Pasha Mosque) with some nice turquoise designs on the outdoor dome ceilings, and we also saw the Chinar Tree, an 1100 year old tree in the middle of a square. 

We walked into a market at 08:00, right when it opened, and got our stuff.  We then walked briskly back to the hotel on a parallel road that wasn’t nearly as photogenic as the one along the lake.  But then again, we didn’t have any reason to stop our walk to take in the scenery.  We got back to the hotel at 08:20, grabbed our bags and headed back downstairs, and were in the van by 08:30 when we all left for Skopje.

Our first stop was not too far away, in Struga, at 09:00.  Struga is at the northernmost point of Lake Ohrid, and this morning the town was very serene, with a placid lake, a handful of locals out and about, one café full of people, and not much more.  We walked around for 15 minutes or so, then got back in the van and continued north alongside the river (Black Drin).  There was thick greenery everywhere.  Eventually the river widened into a huge reservoir around Otishani, where we were very close to the Albanian border.  Around Debar, Lyubtcho pointed out a mountain made of almost pure gypsum, containing the second largest gypsum mine in the world.  Apparently there is a crystal cave in the area, and that would be worth going to if and when we return.

Not long thereafter we entered the Mavrovo National Park and arrived at the Bigorski Monastery.  It had a really gorgeous setting in the mountains.  It was gray and cloudy, but even with dark skies the green valley was very striking.  Inside the Monastery we couldn’t take any photos, but it was ornate exemplified, with so many shiny chandeliers with bright colors on the walls and ceilings.  We were told it took over 3 years of carving for the interior woodwork.  After seeing the inside, we had about 20-30 minutes to walk around the grounds.  We saw some tiny kittens in the lower part of the grounds; they were still very skittish of humans.  There was a huge throng of school children on some sort of field trip, and we did our best to avoid them.

Back in the vehicle, Lyubtcho gave us some history of North Macedonia, and some of the background material pertinent to the current issues.  Ancient Macedonia was split 1/3 between Serbia and 2/3 between Greece after World War I.  [The Brits and French seem to have done an absolutely excellent job and creating havoc all around the former Ottoman Empire by randomly drawing borders in 1918.]  After World War II ended, there was a Greek Civil War from 1946-1949, and many Greek Macedonians had to leave, and their property taken.  They’ve lived in “North” Macedonia for decades now, unable to return to Greece, but feel they are owed stolen land in Greece.  So, if and when North Macedonia becomes a part of EU, citizens would have a legal right to return to Greece, since it is part of the EU as well.  This a major part of the beef between the countries.

We also learned about some other more recent wars and their impact on the movement of peoples.  There was a Greek-Turkish war after WW1, and the Greeks took a part of Asia Minor.  But then Attaturk swung the tide for the new Turkish entity, and after the end of war, the borders went back to what they had been after WW1, and the Greeks in Turkey and Turks in Greece had to move for fear of persecution.  Separately, many expelled Jews from Spain in the 1400s went to Thessaloniki and in fact they lived there in higher numbers than Macedonians and Greeks.  But that area was occupied in 1941 by Germans, Italians, Bulgarians, and the Jewish population was wiped out.  Skopje was liberated in November 1944 without any assistance from the Allied Powers, one of the few places in Europe that liberated itself.

When Yugoslavia started to disintegrate, there was a referendum in Macedonia in 1991 to separate from Yugoslavia, and it passed overwhelmingly.  Compared to Bosnia and Croatia, the dissolution was largely bloodless.  Only Istanbul has a larger Turkish bazaar than Skopje, and Skopje, like so many other places we’d visited on the trip, is a literal and figurative crossroads.  We had lunch at a random restaurant in Mavrovi called Mal Odmor.  We were near a pass on the highway, meaning it would be all downhill from here.  We were at a table with Peter and Drago.  We joked (but also not) that we’d finish eating by the time the other table ordered their food.  Crystal had a minced meat dish called Ustipak.  Justin tried to order a lamb dish, but was told it would take too long, so he got some of the homemade sausages instead.

We did in fact finish well before the other table, and walked around the nearby lake a bit.  We also used a lot of the leftover food to feed a family of about 6 dogs that was around the restaurant.  They were remarkably well-behaved, and didn’t try to take each other’s food as he tossed pieces of meat to each of them.  It was very rainy as we descended through the mountains after lunch.  Lyubtcho continued to give us more information about the country, such as the fact that 99% of banks are foreign owned.  He also mentioned several current issues with country impacting the economy, such as low birth rate, longer lifespan, too many skilled laborers, etc.  Justin just went for it, and mentioned that almost all of these could be aided by allowing in more immigrants and refugees from the Middle East.  Thankfully he wasn’t met with a stinkeye, but the opposite – Lyubtcho said numbers of immigrants have increased 3x recently, and Martin said Romania is trying out letting in huge numbers of immigrants and refugees for exactly these reasons.  We slept the last little bit of the trip into Skopje.

We arrived a little bit after 15:00, and checked in at our hotel (Marriott) right by Macedonia Square.  We dropped our stuff, and wanted to go out to explore, but it was too rainy and windy for us.  So we sat in the lobby and waited 10 minutes, then tried again.  The rain was acceptably light at this point.  We went through the main square, then over the famous Stone Bridge built in the 1400s, into the Old Town, aka the Turkish Quarter.  There were so many statues everywhere, including ones of Alexander The Great, his Mom, his Dad, a bunch of Saints, and seemingly half of Macedonia.  Crystal was a big fan of a statue of two divers, one about to jump in, and one with only his/her feet still above the water.

On the north side of the river we tried to visit the Skopje Fortress.  We walked onto the wrong side (the west side) which had no entrance, then backtracked until we found an entrance on the northeast side.  The area was basically vacant and uncared for, but we could get up onto the tops of the walls.  It was still raining slightly whilst we were up there, but somewhere along the line it stopped.  We got some good photos of downtown from up there, but only with Justin’s big camera, as it was the only one with a lens hood to keep the mist out.

After we came back down we walked around the Old Town trying to find the Turkish Bazaar that we’d heard about.  Apparently it’s just a bunch of shops, not a full-on market, and we were walking through the Bazaar the entire time we were looking for the Bazaar.  Once we made that realization, we walked back across the stone bridge to check out some of the statues.  Then we scouted pubs for later tonight to watch the Man City v Tottenham match, which would – for all intents and purposes – decide the Premier League title.  We found St Patrick’s Irish Pub, on the north end of a mall near the riverbank.

We got drinks just after 18:00 at Drinkers Paradise, a little to the west of our hotel.  While the reviews had been stellar, the menu was not really our jam, more for a young 20s crowd, with a lot of shots and sweeter drinks.  There was an entire page of the menu dedicated to Long Island-ish drinks, which we’d never seen before.  We met the group at 19:00 for dinner in the hotel.  On the elevator down to the lobby, there was an attractive woman in her 30s wearing a bright purple pantsuit.  She met someone in the lobby, hugged him, and then the two of them went immediately back up the elevator.  We’re not experts, but we’re pretty sure we knew what that was all about.

At dinner, our group had two tables again, and we sat with Martin, Drago, and Bill.  We saw Martin negotiating with the chef, who was irked that a lot of people, at the last minute, didn’t want mushroom soup.  Martin held firm, and eventually the chef relented, but we hoped the chef wouldn’t spit in our food.  At dinner we mainly discussed Czechoslovakia and Prague, including how Czechoslovakia was Justin’s favorite country when he was a kid, and Lendl and Navratilova were his favorite tennis players.  Martin again mentioned we should hit him up when we visit in December.  Drago told us that we’d gone around 2000km so far in the van.  Martin gave us our information for going to Kosovo tomorrow, and then we split ways.

Crystal got a go-cup on wine and went upstairs.  Justin went with Peter, in the rain, to St Patrick’s to root for hated Tottenham – the enemy of your enemy is your friend.  The first half was back and forth, with several close calls, and 0-0 was a perfectly acceptable result.  But then, unsurprisingly, Man City went ahead early in second half.  Son had a chance to tie it on a 1 v 1, but Man City’s backup goalie saved it, and that was that.  City got a second goal during injury time, and then it was definitely over.  Rooting against City is like rooting against the house in Vegas.  At least it was dry walking back to the hotel.  Meanwhile Crystal stayed dry, enjoyed her wine, and went to sleep around 22:15.  She was out when Justin returned.