Eastern Europe -Skopje - Macedonia

The Saveguard
Carvings in the Synagoge

No14 Email – Skopje – Macedonia

The three hours trip from Ohrid to Skopje winds its way thru majestic snow-covered mountain scenery. We arrived in Skopje at a real bus station, and l guess we are back in the civilized world. It took a taxi (inexpensive) to the hostel. This is a real funky place where you can do yoga with one of the people in the morning. The furniture is of the “eclectic” style, but, the have a nice big table in a cosy kitchen/dinning room, and a great genuine wood stove that they keep going all day. It remainded me of the place I stayed in Doolin, Ireland. They had such a room were you just want to sit there all day, close to the stove, reading a book and drinking tea, or coffee (or beer!)

We spent lots of time in the kitchen/dinning room as we had a nice breakfast each morning and soup with bread each evening (all included in the price). This is a perfect set up, it gets me started in the morning, then I can buy a meal when I am visiting the sites, and then go back to the hostel for my evening meal.

Now for the other side of a funky place. The hostel is in a converted house and has several rooms that are shared dorms. They also rent another small house, very close by, where they offer two private rooms with one shared bathroom. It stayed in one of the two bedrooms. I am sort of glad I did as later that day, 15 people from different countries showed up for a 3-month seminar. They are performers, mostly dancers, and they do studio work together for three months in different Eastern Europe countries. They are in Skopje for about 10 days and then they are going to Sofia. There are people from Switzerland, Germany, France, Macedonia, etc…. This makes the atmosphere around the dinning table very congenial.

The next morning I discovered that there was no electricity anywhere in the small house. I went to the main building where, after a few ringing of the doorbell, one of the women caretakers showed up. I told her about the problem and she agreed that I could take a shower in the main building. Later, one of the caretaker started to look around for the problem, and eventually found a blow fuse. The same day I came back in the afternoon and found that we had lost the electrical power again. The caretaker decided to do some investigations and opened the room where the couple stayed. We were greeted with a strong burning smell. What had happened is that a big heather in the couple bedroom was very close to the bedspread. The couple left for a walk early in the morning when the power was off and left the heather on all day (which apparently is a bit much for the circuit), a potentially dangerous situation.

Skopje has an old quarter with several mosques, churches, one synagogue with amazing wood carvings, and two large Turkish Bathhouses that have been turned into museums.

Tomorrow I am taking a bus to Sofia, Bulgeria.