(written 15/12/2006 in Sydney, Australia)
Up in the morning for a last breakfast enjoying the amazing view from our balcony we packed our stuff, bid our hostess farewell and grabbed a couple of coffees at a bar also on the water front.
We moved our car from where I'd managed to shoe-horn it in the back streets a couple of days earlier, and decided against going back to the internet place, just wanting to get on the road towards Skopje.
Since Macedonia isn't that big of a country, we chose a back road to take in some of the farmland on our way to the next target - north through mountain passes to Kicevo then across west to Prilep. Here we wanted to hike up to
Treskavec Monastery, but after trying for a while couldn't find the road out of the village. Lonely Planet's directions are to ask someone for directions, then use a 4WD track or else walk from Dabnica. The latter was obviously our preferred task, but no matter how we looked we couldn't find Dabnica.
So, we decided to push on, stopping in a roadside-stop for a cup of tea. This, like all over parts of Eastern Europe, was completely filled with rubbish. For such a pleasant country with gorgeous scenery there is no easy way to get to it as a driver and actually feel like you are away from society.
We turned north towards Veles onto a faster but still crappy road, which eventually led us to
Skopje, the capital city (
official site).
This place looks pretty much like it is - a once-proud communist capital now mostly a crumbling ruin, but everywhere you look you can see how gorgeous it must once have been.
We headed for and found Feroturist Autocamp Park north along the river, but it was now a building development, with only a small cafe called Cafe Camping or some such to show for what it used to be. Another van had apparently tried the same and was just parked in a parking spot, having found nowhere official to do so.
So, we needed another plan. We drove around some more, stopping at a couple of highly-priced places and deciding they weren't what we wanted. In the middle of town each time we stopped at traffic lights local kids tried to and in some cases did wash our windscreens, despite us very obviously saying no. Again sticking to our principles, we drove away without paying. If they want to run a business, they have to at least listen to their "customers"! Sure we could have given them some money, but that would only encourage them to annoy everyone else in the same manner.
We eventually parked off a broken road, where Liz stayed in the car, while Tim headed off to the
i to find somewhere to stay. That wasn't far from the car, but walking over the crumbled surfaces made if feel much further. The girl there had no idea about anything of use. In fact, the tourist industry in general really hadn't started to grow at all in Skopje. Perhaps most others realised that there was nothing of great interest anywhere to be found.
Plan B was the Lonely Planet-described "best budget beds in town" at the
Ferijal Youth Hostel. We could park out the front overlooked by the staff - always a relief in unknown parts. We grabbed a passable twin room, dumped our stuff, and set off into town. The main part of town had a market where we spent a while wandering around, stopping for a very late lunch in touristy but nice-looking café. It was traditional food, but perhaps not prepared as nicely as it could have been, but we were hungry. Even worse was the dodgy ice cream we got nearby, which we survived a couple of licks of before chucking it. Communism may have managed to give most people what they want, but the sooner Streets or Peters set up shop in Macedonia, the happier people will be.
The Skopje Old Town has quite a bit of Turkish influence around, and we looked at the outside of old some old Turkish baths and wandered around the back streets generally, feeling like we were in a small version of
Istanbul. With less touts, less mosques, and far less tourists.
Eventually we wandered back to the hostel over a different bridge, admiring the colossal communist architecture, old apartment blocks, hotels, past outdoor bars set up so the more modern, discerning, more well-heeled, Westernised Macedonian youth could admire what their forefathers had built for the common good while sipping hyper-expensive scotch or other imported products.
We walked on, back through carparks containing terrible communist cars (one entertainingly emblazened with a Ferrari sticker), instead having some coffees at the restaurant under hostel where plenty of locals were enjoying card games and chatting the afternoon away. This was actually a reasonably nice part of town, mostly well looked after.
Our evening was spent in the room, our heads swimming a little at the changes we had seen in only a few days.