For those of you who don’t know, I am now living back in Sofia. This week, I had some time off work and took the decision to visit the neighbours over the border. Whilst in Skopje, I ate some delicious food, met some fantastic people and ended up at a house party. Here’s my story.

*

For perhaps the tenth time in my life, I was at Sofia’s chaotic central bus station. A mish-mash of many companies spread over two separate areas, no clearly visible central sales desk and taxi drivers hoping to take you to the city centre for a few lev more than usual. I’ve now learnt to navigate its less than charming ways.

Waiting at platform 41 for my bus to Skopje (and yes, there are over 41 platforms at this bus station), the sun was high in the sky, a sure sign of a positive trip. On the next platform a coach was filled with people heading to Prague, while the previous platform hosted a minibus destined to southern Bulgaria.

17:30 rolled around and I could see a couple of people nearby beginning to get a little nervous. Clearly they hadn’t travelled this route before. The bus is often a little late. A few minutes later a minibus rocked up, complete with a wagon at the back for our bags. A few of us ran to the back to get our bags in, while the driver seemingly disappeared. By the time we’d all loaded our bags and waited by the bus door for what felt like five minutes, he re-appeared, cigarette in hand, taking our tickets one by one as we entered.

I sat near the front, but it made little difference to my comfort – there was next to no leg room, but it mattered not: we were finally on our way to Skopje.

A couple of hours later we stopped at the border between Bulgaria and Northern Macedonia. After remaining motionless for five minutes, a border guard slid the door open, glanced at us all, then motioned us off to inspect our bags.

Remember how I said there was a wagon at the back with all our baggage? Well, some of it had slid far to the back. I took it upon myself therefore, to climb into the wagon to help get everybody’s stuff out. As we waited around, the guard looked at a few of our passports and in a few people’s bags, but he clearly trusted me a lot, as he walked straight past me. Either that, or he just didn’t care.

We got back in and waited ten more minutes before moving anywhere. Just to clarify, this is rather normal when taking the bus over the border. Eventually, we made it to the other side, where we had a short break to run to the bathroom, buy some snacks and for our driver to have another smoke. Already the sun had gone down and I was starting to feel a little tired.

The final ninety minutes were rather different: nothing to see out of the window, no Internet and I was sat in a different seat (near the aisle, so I had some legroom – woop woop.) Arriving in Skopje, I climbed back into the wagon to help get the bags out, then made my way to the hostel. On arrival, I checked in and almost immediately went to sleep – it really had been a long day.

*

My first full day in Skopje (and in fact the only full day I had planned) started with breakfast, which the hostel kindly laid out. The only other people at breakfast were three girls from Serbia and Croatia.

“So what are you doing here?” They asked me.

“Oh, I’m just visiting from Sofia – I have a one week break from work. What about you guys?”

“We’re going to a work conference.”

“Cool. What sort of conference?”

“Bats”

“Pardon?”

“Bats”

“Like Batman – bats?”

“Yes” they laughed. “Everyone always says Batman!”

We discussed the intricacies of bats a little more before they had to leave. I had some time before my walking tour, so I walked to the city centre, grabbed a coffee and sat at the main square to read a little. A few minutes later, a group had gathered around a gentleman I’d soon learn to be called Zoran and I went over to join the tour.

The Tour Around Skopje

Zoran, a geography teacher based in and born in Skopje was our guide for the day. A jolly fellow who was prepared in many ways to tell us about the city, culture and habits, the only question I had was why he wasn’t at work teaching!

We started in the main square and after a few introductions, the eight of us began our walking tour. I shan’t mention every single detail about what Zoran told us (you’ll have to visit Skopje yourself for that), but I will mention a few of my favourites.

Our first stop was the location of Mother Theresa’s old house, where now there is just a plaque and some gold plates to show where it used to stand. Much of the city was destroyed in an earthquake in 1963 which killed 1,000 people and 80% of the city was destroyed. We later visited the old train station (now the city museum) which was heavily damaged in the earthquake, including stopping the clock on the face of the building. Since then, the clock has not been restarted, as a way of remembering the horrific earthquake. Whilst standing here, Zoran was proud to mention that this was the first place that Soviet and US forces worked together for the first time since the end of the Second World War.

As we walked around, we saw many statues and monuments. It’s remarkable how many are in Skopje. Nobody is really sure how many now exist, but they really are everywhere. They have their own Arc de Triumph, Brandenburg Gate and a huge warrior on a horse on the main square. (Originally it was entitled Alexander the Great, but was changed to appease the Greeks. In fact, Zoran pointed out that many things were changed to appease the Greeks.) We stopped for coffee on the main square and somehow one of the topics that came up was orthography of a variety of languages. Zoran had wanted to teach us how to write our names in Cyrillic, but most of us already knew it, so he was left to drink his coffee in sadness.

As we were sat in the main square, more and more children began to gather wearing outfits one would usually only see at Hallowe’en. As it turns out, in Skopje (not even the whole of N. Macedonia), the 1st April tradition is to dress up in an outfit, though there was no trick or treating going on. For us however, there were more pressing issues, such as seeing the other side of the city, where there were, you guessed it, more statues. We went past the statues though, into the old bazaar, which has morphed into a hipster-village/tourist area/historic area/bazaar. It’s a strange mix of shops, cafes and restaurants, but all very charming.

Some dogs joined us as Zoran told us about the way Skopje had once been one of the largest cities in the area before a plague hit the area, drastically reducing the population. Our final stop was a lookout at the fortress, which looked on to the old and new city, the football stadium and up toward the giant cross of Skopje.

Alas, it was time to say goodbye to Zoran and have lunch. Here I was joined by Desi and Andre. As it turned out, Desi lived only a few metro stops from me in Sofia and Andre had also visited Myanmar (which you all know I adored.) In fact, Andre was taking an unconventional trip around the world, being sent from one place to another by a friend of his, not knowing exactly where his next destination would be. I on the other hand knew exactly what my next destination would be: the archeological museum of Skopje.

Thank you for reading Part 1 of my trip to Skopje. Part 2 is on its way, as are my tales of the rest of Asia! Stay tuned!