Skopje – city of statues
It’s the cities that surprise me that I love. The bus dropped me off at about 6.30 this morning after a 12 hour trip from Budva. It was drizzly and I was tired and all I saw was yet more concrete and a huge dual carriageway which was already hazy with traffic fumes. The path was patched, pitted, cracked. The first thing to make me smile (a rare phenomenon at 6.30am) were the modern, red Routemaster-style buses roaring down the road.
Yes, there’s a lot of concrete and busy roads out there. They’re also still building this city – the centre was devastated by an earthquake in the 60s and they are still remaking it, thanks to the Skopje 2014 programme, which is designed to give the city back its classical feel. There are new neo-classical buildings housing theatres, government offices, museums. There are shiny glass office towers. There are concrete behemoths from the 1960s and 70s, including a large swath that reminds me a lot of the Gordon Craig theatre in Stevenage before they tarted it up. Sort of. What is it about English new towns and communist architecture?
Walk around only a little more and you start to notice the statues. I’d read that Skopje had a lot of them. At the time my thoughts were “Statues? I’ve been to Florence. Don’t talk to me about statues.”
These are something else, something modern, even if some are in the classical style. They’re everywhere you look. There’s what looks like a Henry Moore down by the river. There are giant men on giant plinths and giant men on giant horseback on giant plinths. The theatre is surrounded by theatrical statues. There is a pair of female statues in modern dress gossiping near the shopping centre. A statue of Mother Teresa just down the street from a statue of a beggar. Statues of groups of politicians politicising. Statues of revolutionaries, scientists, philosophers, workers, mothers, teenagers. There is a statue in a red bikini and swimming cap preparing to dive into the river, hot on the heels of another, only the feet of which show. I thought I spotted a statue fishing further down, but it turned out to be an actual person.
My guidebook says the biggest danger to travellers in Skopje are the old ladies on bicycles. It also mentions that stray dogs can be a bit of a pest. I haven’t seen any old ladies on bicycles, more’s the pity, and the only stray dogs I’ve seen have been tagged on the ear, friendly and placid. One crossed the dual carriageway with me, having obviously learned that if a human crosses it’s safe for a dog to do so too. He was like the best trained dog in the world. He sat next to me quietly while I waited for a gap, trotted at my feet while I crossed, sat down again when we got to the central reservation (I looked down at him and he looked up at me, all kind eyes and smiling, his tongue out), walked to heel when I walked and then trotted off happily when we reached the other side.
Another thing that had me grinning was the supermarket. Really. I hadn’t realised how much I missed actual supermarkets where everything is brightly lit and nicely packaged and all the fruit and veg is piled up in appetising mounds of produce. Where they sell everything you want. I haven’t seen one since Zagreb. Since then, it’s been small, dingy mini-marts a bit like Londis in the UK that don’t sell much. Consequently, I spent far too long looking at everything on the shelves in semi-wonder, a daft smile on my face.
Day Two
One of the main things I love about Skopje is the fact that it’s still under construction.
I love the mash of architectural styles, I love the old-looking new buildings, I love the old-looking new statues as well as the new-looking ones. I love the old Ottoman quarter, thankfully largely undamaged by the earthquake, where there is an atmospheric market selling anything you want. There are tiny shops there where artisans work, visible through the windows, bent over sewing machines, working leather for shoes, silversmithing. Cheeky salesmen try to get you into their establishments – “Hello! I think it is my shop you are looking for. Just here. Best price leather jackets, just for you.” Shoe shiners sitting on the pavements watching the passers-by, patiently smoking cigarettes.
In the new part of town, there are piles of rubble everywhere, hoardings, cranes, people drilling and hammering, stonemasons chipping away, but all this does is create an atmosphere of amazing potential.
Anything and everything is possible. They are planting large trees in the pavement all along one of the main pedestrianized streets. Newly dug flowerbeds are stuffed full of pansies. The Macedonian flag flies everywhere. It may be the cheeriest flag of any country – bright yellow sun on a red background.
The people here are incredibly friendly and helpful and they have an enthusiasm for their city that almost bubbles over. A young couple stopped me earlier to ask if I could take a photograph of them together. They were local and asked me where I was from and what I thought of their city. When I told them, they nodded, smiling. “Yes,” they said, “This past year Skopje is much more interesting. It is very interesting place…” They smiled at me. “…although not like England. England is the best place,” the man added, shyly. They gave me tips on the best restaurant to go to before saying goodbye.
There is an air of excitement out there, an air of possibilities. I can’t wait to come back when it’s finished to see those possibilities realised.
Day Three
Skopje on a Sunday is a peaceful place. Birds chirp all around. There are second hand book stalls along many roads. All the other shops are closed. Fishermen stand quietly in the shallow river, people sit on benches in the sunshine of the main square chatting quietly or reading newspapers. People stroll, they drink coffee in the cafés. There is a huge advertising screen burbling to itself in Macedonian, but that’s easy to tune out.
The quiet, peaceful, restful feeling reminds me of something. It takes a while to work out what. It’s that sunny weekend morning feeling I have when I mooch around my small garden at home while I’m waiting for the click of the boiling kettle. It’s the feeling I have when I sit on my back doorstep in my pyjamas, sipping coffee and reading my book, listening to the birds sing.
Then the Call to Prayer drifts across the river from the old Ottoman quarter.
I like Skopje.
Ohrid
Olli, one of the two blokes running the hostel in Skopje, told me that there are 365 churches in Ohrid; one for each day of the year. Other than that, all I know about this place is that there is a massive lake – one of the deepest and oldest in Europe.
My dorm-mate Marguerita and I set off through tumble-down, narrow streets past tumble-down ancient houses to find some churches, the lake twinkling through the buildings down the steep hill. The first one we find is The Holy Mother of God Perivleptos, an 11th century Orthodox church with very, very old and incredibly intact frescoes.
The lady at the entrance charges us half price, for reasons I don’t quite understand. Possibly something to do with cats, but that doesn’t seem to make sense. She is unremarkable looking – short, with long, curly black hair, black sparkly eyes, pink socks poking through open toed high heels of a different pinky hue. Plush, pink tracksuit bottoms and a fluffy jumper. Her wrists jangle with bracelets.
She comes into the church with us and explains each fresco in detail; the story it tells and the symbolism it holds. She has a theatrical voice as well as a tangible interest in the paintings and is keen to tell their story. The frescoes are among the oldest in Europe. She explains that the paintings were not only made for the glory of God, but so that the common man might comprehend the biblical messages. She explains how to ‘read’ churches – like a cross, she says. East, west, north, south. If you can read one church, she says, you can read all churches. She shows us each fresco in turn, explaining the stories they tell – Jacob’s ladder, the crucifixion, the last supper. This church is dedicated to Mary, so there is also a series of frescoes telling her story. The pink fluffy lady has a doctorate in theology and speaks often of her professors and the things they discuss. She has a kind and calm intensity to her and she draws you in with her eyes, which hold all her love for her fellow man.
I am struck by the same thought I had when I was visiting the Memorial House of Mother Teresa in Skopje – or rather, a memory of a thought.
I am not religious. I am not totally sure what I believe. I’m not atheist, but I’m not a believer as such. I don’t believe Mary was a virgin (I mean, come on… really… but what a genius cover story to escape being stoned to death for being an unmarried mother – ‘It was God, honest…’)
I do believe that a man did exist who may well have been called Jesus and may well have been born out of wedlock and that perhaps he did have a good message to spread. Whether he was the son of God, I’ve no idea – if you call the spark of life God, then we are all sons and daughters of God, surely.
I don’t believe the bible is anything other than tales told by old men with beards round a fire, which may have had a basis in truth but got augmented down the years. Hundreds of years later, priests who wanted to tell us how to live picked the stories that best served their purpose and put them in a book, leaving out the rest (there is evidence of that – old scripts outdating some of those included in the bible do exist – the gospel of Judas and the gospel of Mary Magdalene among them). Men who had strict ideas on how we should live picked the gospels that supported their ideas and left the others out. Nothing more, nothing less.
Does this make me agnostic? I’m never sure.
ANYWAY. The thought of the memory of the thought was something like this: We are all one people – rich, poor, gypsy, Jew, Muslim, Christian, black, brown, white, pink. We all came into being from the same spark of life and we all share DNA. We all descend from one of just five matriarchs from Africa. That’s scientific fact. Therefore we are all related, somewhere down the line. So yes, we should love our fellow man, rich or poor, gypsy or Jew because they are our brothers and sisters. We should help our fellow man, because part of our DNA is in them – to help them is to help ourselves.
Is that the basis of the Christian message? I’ve no idea. During Sunday School, I was too busy running round the church causing havoc with my sister and my next-door-neighbour to pay attention to what the teacher was saying. I just know the world would be a much better place if we all remembered that we are all the same, all related. Maybe that’s what they call heaven – a world where we all get along and help each other instead of blowing each other up.
Both Marguerita and I are silent and contemplative when the lady leaves us to look around the church on our own. We come out into the sunshine with the same thought. What an incredible lady. ‘One of a kind’, Marguerita says.
We wander up the hill to the Basilica, then further up to the fortress. After walking the walls, we wind down the cliff to the church of St Jovan, shut because it’s a Monday. We stumble across the giant-sized, crumbly and ancient Church of St Sofia and then find a café with a terrace overlooking the lake. It has steps down to the water so you can swim. Come here in summer, it would be fantastic.
There are a lot of churches, but for there to be 365 there would have to be one every other building.
Marguerita asks the waiter about the churches. It turns out to be a legend, but there are still a sizeable 22 here, which is a lot for a tiny town. Some of them are smaller than a garden shed. Maybe I’ll put a cross on my garden shed when I get home. Perhaps it will remind me to remember that the scrotes on the estate who vandalise my car are my brothers and that I should help them.
Perhaps…
…but then, I’m no saint.
Skopje photographs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13535953@N03/sets/72157642109636793/
Ohrid Photographs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13535953@N03/sets/72157642207795983/