Американците се во СКОПЈЕ??

Every year during PST, the volunteers have an excellent tradition known as ‘Field Day’. Unlike what it would mean in the military, we get to spend the entire day in the capital, eat lots of food, and drink a couple beers. For several people in our group of MAK 17’s, this was our first experience to see the capital of Macedonia: a relatively quiet and small capital in the Balkan region with lots of history and great architecture.

Despite the massive cross on the mountain, this is not in Missouri. This is the view from the old bridge in Skopje, looking towards the Alexander statue in the old center. I like this picture because it looks as if Alexander is battling against the small tide of tourists who seem to be everywhere in Skopje.

History Lesson: Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, has a population of anywhere between 500,000 people and 1,000,000 depending on who you ask. During the 1960’s, nearly 80% of the city was damaged or destroyed during a massive earthquake. Apparently earthquakes can happen here, as Macedonia lies somewhere near a fault line and has a history of volcanic activity. Another interesting fact is that Skopje has the only Roma municipality in the world, a huge shock to me considering the general public attitude of Macedonians (and all other Europeans) towards this marginalized population.

Тhe most excellent part of field day is the fact that we as Peace Corps Trainees, get to walk around the big city and try to act as much like tourists as possible. Within our scattered groups, I think that people stopped every five seconds as to take another picture. I cannot judge what-so-ever since I was a serial offender in this action, constantly stopping in the street or busy thoroughfare to capture the precious moments on one of our only free days.

 Meet my good friend, Philip II, one of seemingly 1,000,000 statues that have been built in Skopje. The sign should say, 'welcome to Skopje! where construction is the flavor of the day!" but sadly, it does not..

Some of said precious moments included seeing a wedding procession crossing the bridge over the Vardar River. Weddings in Macedonia are excellent, if not only because the processions following the ceremony involve driving around the city with streamers, flags, and flowers on the car and literally laying on the horn entire time. Multiply this cacophony by 5-20 cars in any given procession and you have an absolute shitshow of noise. Other great photo opportunities included the million of statues that either have been or are being erected in the city as a part of the ‘Skopje 2014’ project that everyone from Kriva Palanka to Struga seems to have a differing opinion about. It is essential a project to ‘beautify’ Skopje by rebuilding many government buildings and adding statues of famous Macedonians and other worldly figures. I was relatively confused seeing statues of Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and author of ‘The Art of War’ who has absolutely nothing to do with the history of this region.

Congrats to the happy bride and groom waving from the back of the BMW. This was on one of the many bridges that cross the Vardar River.

Other fun memories included going to the brand new Skopje City Mall, which is a massive architectural project in and of itself, that much to my delight included a brand new Zara. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no money to buy anything from there so I had to resign myself to walking around the store in a state of catatonic depression, while the warm, chunky, wool sweaters I wanted to buy remained on the shelves. Also, hilariously enough, this mall had a really cool bookstore with Macedonian versions of Animal Farm and 1984, but also had a ‘sexual relations section’ at eye-level, directly above the children’s nursery books. It truly made my day to think about how the sheltering suburban American parents would be flipping their shit about ‘the sanctity of marriage and ‘protecting the children’ from what is CLEARLY such an obscenity. My only response is “lol”.

Another shot of the famous 'Стар Мост' or 'Old Bridge' in the center of Skopje. Notice my BFF Philip II in the background being a dude.

On a more professional note, the entire day gave us an excellent experience to meet the currently serving Peace Corps volunteers of Macedonia and to share stories of training, sites, home stays, and anything else possible. It creates an excellent support network as well as a working network to develop connections with people who are working on similar projects in other towns across the country. Many of us current trainees tried to glean as much information about our pending site announcements (only a few days away) as we could from the current volunteers. Unfortunately we could only determine a few sites that may be getting one of us trainees, but Тоа е Тоа. 

After leaving the capital, we had a lovely 2 hour taxi ride back to the mountains. For the whole drive, I had the luxury of riding shotgun with the potentially most bad ass taxi driver in all of the Balkans. While driving, a wolf ran out across the road in front of our van and almost literally scared the piss out of me. The wolf was at least 55 kg, and the thought of meeting one at night in the wild is not appealing in the slightest. This wolf sighting prompted the driver and me to have a 10 minute conversation (in completely fluent Macedonian of course), about different cities in the country and how the dialect of the word ‘wolf’ (“ВОЛК”), is totally different. Then the driver mentioned about how dangerous the route can be at night because of all sorts of transnational issues. At this point, after I had failed to read into what he was talking about, the driver produced a Colt 1911 from the door panel, along with a lengthy explanation and paperwork about how the police licensed him to carry a firearm for the protection of himself and passengers while driving to and from Skopje. All I could think about however was getting shot and thrown in a ditch somewhere around “Куклица.”  For a brief second, I felt like I was back in Oklahoma where at any given time, whoever I would be riding with could produce a pistol and a CC Permit from thin air.

Given the fact that I am writing this blog today, all turned out well and good, everyone survived and no one was left behind, (at least from Kratovo,) in Skopje. I made a new friend, took some lovely pictures, and shared 9 liters of Златен Даб пиво with some great volunteers. This upcoming week will be sure to be a busy and exciting one; we have development training, country director meetings, site announcements, and a Hub Day in Kumanovo, all within the next 5 days. Wish me luck, and cross your fingers that they’ll stick me in Bitola or someplace warmer!

 An evening silhouette of the massive Alexander of Macedon statue that is in the center. Ciao Skopje, its been real and I hope I can make it back soon.