Amazon, Set Thy House in Order

A recently recieved email:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Dust have also purchased MACEDONIA IS GREECE on DVD. For this reason, you might like to know that MACEDONIA IS GREECE is now available. You can order yours for just $33.00 by following the link below.

MACEDONIA IS GREECE Prof. Paul A. Kapetanopoulos Price: $33.00

No, Amazon. I would not be interested in your Greek propaganda. Good lord, I've become a Macedonian partisan. . . .

Highly Recommended

Christopher Deliso, often referred to as 'the Lonely Planet Guy' in my various adventures in archaeology, has a really terrific interview here with Prof. Viktor Friedman on various Macedonian issues.

Prof. Friedman, of the University of Chicago, is the towering figure of Balkan linguistics, the adviser and mentor of Eric, and an all-around wonderful human being. He's spent the better part of his professional life studying the languages of Macedonia, and touches on almost every major political and cultural issue being thrown around today. Excerpt:

CD: From what I understand from different stories, this is because it is not helpful to advancement in Greek society, and can even be a strongly negative factor-

VF: Yes. The Greek government is effectively carrying out ‘linguicide’ on the Macedonians of Greece. And it has been a long-running policy. For another example, I have a photo of a sign in Greek, from the 1950s, printed up in blue-on-white, urging people to forbid anyone from speaking in ‘Vlahika, Makedonika etc.’ There used to be many such signs in Greek Macedonia.

CD: Really! That is quite compelling. Do people know about this?

VF: I don’t know-a friend sent the photo to me, I am finally getting around to publishing it in a review article in the journal Balkanistika next year.

But the Greek policy was always trying to kill the language. It was especially horrible in the 1930s. Macedonian kids would go to school, and if they spoke their language, the language they learned at home, numerous ‘corrective’ methods were used: teachers beat them, or stuck their tongues with needles, or rubbed a hot pepper on their tongues; anything to make them stop speaking Macedonian.

I really suggest you read the whole thing . . .

How Tito Killed Christmas . . . with Santa

When winter first rolled around, I noticed that the McDonald's in downtown Skopje began to put up a large, American-style Christmas tree. I just assumed that, since McDonald's is the unofficial American cultural embassy, they were just following the corporate line.

Since that time, Christmas shops - Western, Santa-and-sleigh, Rudolph and all - have been popping up all over Skopje. There is now a Christmas tree in the main square, and one in the main shopping center. People are selling Christmas cards (which say Mary Christmas - close enough) for charity.

This is all extremely unsettling - our American-style Santa isn't even that prevalent in Western European countries, as they generally have their own Santa-like traditions (or, in his place, a frightening goblin-demon that eats terrible children). So how did our over-commercialized, Holiday TV-special, Bing Crosby Christmas transplant itself wholesale to the Balkans? A professor at my institute was able to provide the answer:

The communists did it.

Communism is, of course, a materialist, atheist sort of philosophy that stomps out religion wherever it can. Yugoslavia was no exception. So imagine you are the communist dictator of a country full of deeply-ingrained religious and folk beliefs. Christmas, with all its traditional neo-pagan folk connotations and overt Christian meaning, is going to be tough to take down. You could pull a Stalin and just start shooting people out behind the barn, but that isn't your style. You need some help. Has anybody else successfully undercut the religious aspects of Christmas, and turned it into a completely secular, materialist holiday?

Can you see where I'm going with this?

The Yugoslav government adopted our secular Santa, our materialist 'X-mas', to help knock the Christ out of Christmas. Traditional Orthodox practices and folk celebrations were discouraged, subverted, or absorbed entirely into a new set of holiday 'traditions' in which good old Kris Kringle played a large part. He's known as Grandpa Frost here, by the way, since the real St. Nicholas was martyred in Turkey - a little too close for comfort.

Obviously, I find this absolutely hilarious, and not just because a nominally communist nation adopted the symbol of the most commercialized, capitalistic time of year in America. I find it very amusing that, in doing so, they were able to strip our Santa tradition down to the most fundamental elements - secularism and materialism - and use him to undercut a real religious tradition.

Because, after all, this is something that was put upon the people here by the communist government. We created and adopted this sort of Santa ourselves . . .

How does that reflect on us?

(Full disclosure: I'll be spending the evening at the British Ambassador's Residence, eating mincemeat pies, drinking port and mulled wine, and enjoying some Victorian Christmas caroling . . . the perfect start to the expatriate holiday season.)

Greece, again

I was reading this extremely interesting commentary on the Greek riots in the Telegraph today. In it, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard suggests that while the rioting may have been initially triggered by the shooting death of the teenager, it is being fueled by the tremendous debt pressures that most of Greece is under, due to the Euro. To summarize: Greece has the highest proportion of public debt in the Euro-zone, and while this was ignored for awhile due to the housing bubble, now that the bubble has popped everything is going to hell.

This confirms most of what Prof. John Younger told me during my time in Greece. The country hadn't been on the Euro for very long, the housing bubble was in full swing, and there were as many new Mercedes on the street as there were day-laborers waiting on the corner, desperate for work. It didn't seem to match up. Turns out that everybody was doing the whole 'mortgage + hope' equation, sinking themselves into debt, and expecting the rest of Europe to help fix things if they went badly. There are a lot of economic conditions a nation has to meet before it joins the Euro, and it's generally acknowledged that Greece fudged their numbers to join the currency before they were ready.

It's going to be interesting.

In case you're interested. . .

. . . in reading an excellent article providing an overview of "greater" ethnic areas spilling over national borders, here it is.

And Eric has yet another interesting post up, this time on the relative value of money.

Greece

Greece is rioting, again. The details seem rather sketchy, but apparently two police officers shot and killed a teenager in the Exarchia neighborhood in Athens, which set off Greece's very large anarchist community. Now, there are molotov cocktails being thrown about, the Christmas Tree on Athen's main Syntagma Square has been burned down, and there are pitched battles with police in Larissa and Thessaloniki.

I don't want to downplay the violence, or the death that sparked it. It's all terrible. But since it is getting play on CNN, perhaps American is getting just a glimpse of our not-so-friendly southern neighbors, beyond the beaches and feta. I'm always irked by the idea that Greece is a sunny bit of Western Europe, and across the northern border is the Slavic 'Dark Heart of Europe'. Greece is a Balkan country. It may have escaped communism, but at the expense of a bloody civil war and subsequent military dictatorship. Of course, this was during the Cold War, so the USA - and specifically, the CIA - was extremely supportive of those uniformed clowns. Combine that with a few hundred years of overly-romanticized Hellenism, and most people have an image of Greece that is very far removed from reality.

I should also say that the Greeks tend to riot and protest quite a bit. Greece has a very, very long political tradition of communism/leftism/anti-establishmentarians/anarchy, which eventually helped to bring down the military government in the 70's, after several bloody protests. These groups didn't fade away, though; there were terrorist attacks throughout the 80's and 90's by small leftist cells, usually without much injury. Every now and then they would torch a diplomatic vehicle, or launch a rocket at the US Embassy. No biggie, right?

Even during my brief stay in Athens, students staged a bloody riot on Syntagma, and lobbed a molotov cocktail at a bank building near the Polytechnic University. An interesting note on this Polytechnic University - the riots that eventually brought down the military government started here, after a few students were gunned down. When the Greeks brought about their new government, a law was passed that no police officer could ever enter the grounds of the Technical University, as a sort of token protection for that revolutionary spirit. Therefore, during these riotous times, students or other protesters tend to occupy buildings on campus, without fear of arrest. It also means that quite a lot of drugs are peddled on campus . . . more so than a normal university, anyway.

Greece is a beautiful country with an amazing history. I'm happy to be in Macedonia, partially because I can take an easy vacation to Greece. And these riots are really terrible, and I hope they settle down soon, with minimum damage. But the media coverage - the English language coverage, that is - has an underlying premise of - "Riots? Christmas trees burned? How could this happen in sunny, white-marbled Greece?!"

Well, there are riots in Greece because there are always riots in Greece, because it is a complicated country of 10 million people, where there is a long history of violent protest against any and all types of authority. Hotels, package tour operators, and the Greek tourism industry are pretty careful to ignore that part of the country, for obvious reasons. Greece tries very hard to separate itself from the idea that it is 'Balkan'; it wants to project itself as just another EU country. This can make problems like political instability or riots seem like unexpected, surprising, unprecedented events, especially when reported piecemeal by the Western press. They puncture through a false - or, at least partially false - image, and that understandably makes people nervous.

Context, though, is key.

Stalked by the Ghost of Elvis

I have heard the Elvis song "Suspicious Minds" more in my two months here in Macedonia than in the rest of my 23 years combined. To be honest, I don't think I had actually heard the song at all until I arrived.

I have heard this played by cover bands, on Euro MTV and Euro Vh1, on the radio in taxis and grocery stores, on bar playlists, and most recently sung by an overweight Northern Irishman in a British pantomime play. I think it also made an appearance on the playlist for the after-party for that same play.

Of all the songs - no, just of all Elvis songs - why "Suspicious Minds"? Why is this song following me around the country?

It's like a disturbing recurring dream, that must have some greater significance. Time will tell.

All I know is, I can't go on forever with such a suspicious mind.

These tiny pieces of paper confirm me as an adult.

I've been very busy over the past few days with actual work - meeting with archaeologists, traveling around Macedonia, assisting in drafting grant proposals - which is the reason for a lack of posts.

I'm off tomorrow to a conference of Macedonian archaeologists in Kicevo, and may be out of communication for a few days because of this. This is the reason I finally got around to making business cards, as you can see above, as it is far more professional than the little pieces of notebook paper with my email address that I previously handed out.

And there'll be a new Adventure in Archaeology when I get back . . .

A Belated Happy Thanksgiving

As may have mentioned before, as a Fulbrighter, I get treated really, really well by the staff of the American Embassy - including an invitation to Thanksgiving Dinner at the residence of Ambassador Phil Reeker and his wife. It was difficult to find the place, because I told the taxi driver to look for a house, and he refused to believe that anybody could live in the fortress-like mansion that the Ambassador calls home.

Dinner was traditional and delicious. The only confusing point was the dessert list; nobody at my table could figure out what exactly "Maple Pie" could be. When I asked the Macedonian guests, thinking it to be a mistranslation of a local specialty, they shrugged and said, "It must be like apple pie, but made with maples." Explaining the difference between a fruit (the apple) and a tree (the maple) seemed like too much effort. Luckily, the pumpkin pie was spectacular.

In case you're interested . . .

Balkan Insight has a lot of excellent, English-language coverage of Balkan politics, etc. The link is for the Macedonian page, and believe me, there are a lot of interesting things going on.

For instance, Macedonia is taking Greece to court.

Snow Day

It's wintertime in Skopje. Temperatures have dropped, and hover around 35-40F during the day. Lately there has been an icy wind sweeping through the valley.

It's nothing like Indiana in January, of course, but it'll take a bit of adjusting since it happened so quickly. We even got a bit of snow this weekend; it melted down here in the city because the ground is still very warm. But for the first time in my life, I have a view of snow covered mountains from my window, and I can't really complain about that.

Speaking of riding donkeys . . .

The last Yugo has finally rolled off the line.

Of course, if anyone in the US is desperately nostalgic for a Yugo, send them my way. I'm nearly hit by one or two of these rusting hulks on a daily basis, not that it would do much damage.

To take a picture

Everybody hates tourists, I think, but no one hates them more than an expatriate, long-term foreign resident. Stumbling through the city with their nose in a map, getting swindled by every street-seller around (and enjoying it), desperately seeking anyone who speaks their language, finding respite at McDonald's, and ending most nights drunkenly stumbling through the streets back to whatever overly-expensive room they've booked . . .

Alright, I can't say that I haven't been there. I've been that tourist, through multiple countries, and I enjoyed it a great deal. There's something to be said for that stereotypical study-abroad Euro-trip, swapping blandly similar travel stories with other obvious Americans on the train from Brussels to Paris, hoping that your next hostel-mate will be British or Australian- you know, something different - and not just another kid from Ohio on a weekend excursion from his "totally cultural pottery-making course" in Florence. Passport stamps, bottle caps, and Irish pubs in every damn city on the planet . . . I'm happy it happened, and even happier it's over.

And now I am that cranky expatriate (having skipped a step from 'tourist' to 'traveler'), and a significant part of becoming that expatriate is rejecting everything about being a tourist. The biggest problem with this rejection, so far, is photography. When I was a tourist roaming through Greece, I probably took 2,0000 pictures of everything from temple ruins to villagers drinking ouzo. It was expected, I think, andＩfelt no shame doing so. I was protected by a dozen other Americans doing the exact same thing. I was there for five weeks, had no idea if I would be back, and wanted to capture absolutely everything.

Living in a place changed my perspective. Macedonia really lacks tourism, especially in the late fall, so anyone snapping photographs stands out. Moreover, people quit becoming just part of the scenery. When I was a tourist, my goal was to find as many "authentic" pictures as possible:

Look, an old man in a cap and sweater drinking a Guinness in a pub! That is sooo Ireland! *click* An old Greek woman in a shawl in front of the church! *click* People sitting at a French cafe! *click*

And so on, and so on, until now. There are a lot of things that I would love to take pictures of here, and I haven't. Old villagers riding side-saddle on a donkey down a mountain trail, shopkeepers in the Old Town selling their wares . . . but I don't. It feels wrong. Maybe I'll move past this, into a more analytical, journalistic, documentary way of thinking that allows me to take pictures of everything once again. For now, though, I can't.

That villager isn't a postcard, he's a person. I could speak to him in his own language (a little), perhaps be invited into his home to share a little rakija. I'm living in this country, not hopping on a tour bus to move along to the next stop. That shopkeeper isn't just a bit of quaintness in his run-down shop. He's someone with a family to support, with a job to do, whom I'll probably pass numerous times as I walk around that part of the city. And I am not trying to say that they would be angry to be the subjects of a photograph; far from it, they would probably appreciate the novelty: "Why on earth is this silly foreigner taking my picture? Odd". Like I said, there aren't many tourists in Macedonia.

I just can't bring myself to it. It's like saying "You are foreign, curious, completely alien from my way of life." And that's probably really more of a comment on me, than anything else - I want to integrate, I want it all to be so normal that I don't feel the need to take a picture of it. It's all very conscious on my part, and probably all a foolish way of thinking that I'll come to regret. I usually have to waffle between two extremes before I settle in that happy middle.

So, to summarize:

I apologize for the lack of villagers riding donkeys. They'll be coming soon, I hope.

"What is it that you do here?"

Whenever people ask me what it is that I am actually doing here in Macedonia, I either default to saying "archaeology", or explain that it's complicated, and leave it at that. More and more, however, this scene from Office Space starts playing in the back of my head, although with slightly different dialogue:

Bob&Bob: So you physically dig the archaeological site?

Me: No. . . no the archaeologists do that.

Bob&Bob: So you much physically examine the sites and report on the data.

Me: Well, not exactly.

Bob&Bob: So what is it, would you say, that you actually do here?

Me: (nervous breakdown)

I don't even think my own family has any clue what I'm doing over here. So, lest anyone think that this is strictly a US State Department funded vacation, I will attempt to explain what I have been doing and what I hope to accomplish.

I am no archaeologist - let me make that clear. I have an undergraduate degree in Classics, and absolutely no formal training in archaeological method. Through my studies, however, I have always wandered about on the periphery of the archaeological world, and that is where I remain. I know a bit about archaeological ethics, the international art market, and looting; my Honor Scholar thesis dealt with these topics. I worked as the assistant to the Book Review Editors of the American Journal of Archaeology, and I absorbed quite a bit of information about archaeological publishing efforts during that time. But I have never picked up a shovel, dusted off a pot sherd, or broken down an ancient booby-trapped tomb door to rescue glittering treasures from Nazis, Communists, or any other existential threat to American liberty. Yet.

My original proposal was, as I said in my introductory blog post, necessarily vague. I had no idea what I would find once I arrived in Macedonia. Now that I have been here for a month and a half, I have a much better idea of the state of archaeological affairs, and therefore, what I might be able to accomplish. Right now, my activities can be grouped into Research, Networking, and Academic Aid. Allow me to explain:

1. Research: I am affiliated with the Institute for Ethnology and Anthropology at Ss. Kiril and Methodius University, and I also spend time with the Faculty of Archaeology. At the Institute, I am giving myself a crash-course in anthropology, while reading as much as I am able about Macedonian ethnography and history. My main project here, however, is trying to figure out what sort of sociological factors affect views of archaeology and archaeological looting here in Macedonia. Do folk stories of cursed Turkish gold keep villagers from digging around sites? Alternatively, are stories of wild treasures too enticing to keep them away? Macedonia has a problem with archaeology fading into nationalism (through Alexander the Great, etc.) and affecting present-day political issues. I'm interested in how all this came about, and in where it may be going.

2. Networking: I've been spending a great deal of time traveling around Macedonia, meeting with archaeologists at their dig sites. Despite being a tiny country, many archaeologists really don't know or talk to each other. There isn't much ongoing conversation between state archaeologists working for the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and archaeologists on the University faculty; neither of these groups has much communication with the archaeological community outside of Macedonia. Political, professional, and personal problems have all combined to keep Macedonia insulated from the wider academic world. I'm doing my best to connect people, share information, and pass along contacts.

3. Academic Aid: This is fairly broad, and mostly just involves the skills that come with being a reasonably competent American university graduate. I'm helping professors and students with their English conversation abilities. Later in the semester, I will be editing, proofreading, and correcting the English translations of academic papers. In America, we really take for granted our access to resources like JSTOR. Everyone in my generation just knows how to use Google to find other resources (NGO's, academic information, etc.).

Things are obviously a lot different here. Some archaeologists have never heard of the American School at Athens; none have access to the most common academic journals in the West. They don't know how to write grant proposals, or have absolutely no idea how to find out what grants are available for their research in the first place. I feel odd, as a 23-year old recent graduate, showing professors some of the basic research methods that we use in America to locate these sort of resources.

And additionally: In conjunction with all of these activities, I am working as best I can with a few other Americans who are interested in promoting cultural heritage tourism in Macedonia. I am trying to get a privately-published Macedonian academic journal as wide of an audience as I can. And I am meeting some wonderful people and some bizarre characters along the way.

And, having written all that, I'm afraid I actually can't say precisely where all this is leading. The bigger picture is still forming in my mind, so for now, I just need to stay focused on the details. Next week, I'll be meeting with the Director for the Institute of Folklore, visiting a young archaeologist who's doing some great work in a village to the east of Skopje, and trying out a village home-stay. I'll also be helping students with English conversation, pouring over outdated anthropology text books, and working on my Macedonian. If I'm lucky, I'll get to see the photographic archive of over 500 Macedonian fortresses that a professor has on an Apple G5 in his basement.

Something ought to come of all that, right?

Ohrid #1

Normally, I would provide a little bit of the history of each place that I visit. I'll just leave it to Wikipedia to explain Ohrid, because there's really just too much to say. And this trip to Ohrid was really more of a vacation than an "adventure in archaeology”, so I really don't have too much to say beyond what I've read on Wikipedia. I know, I know. Shame on me.

It's really just a beautiful little city, packed during the summer with Serbs, Macedonians, and the Dutch swimming in the lake during the day and clubbing all night long. It's the off-season now, and very quiet. I prefer it that way.

Sunrise breaking between the mountains and the clouds over the lake, with a view from the Old Town (where the hotel was located) towards the quay and newer part of Ohrid:



A view from the hotel balcony, overlooking the lake and the Old Town:


St. Jovan Kaneo, one of the more famous churches in Ohrid:


Walking around the walls of Tsar Samoil's fortress, which rings the hill above the Old Town:

It's been awhile

A good friend from back in my university days has been visiting for the past week, and I apologize to anyone who thought that I had disappeared into the Albanian border country. I was mostly aware of my location throughout the week, and was probably never in any danger.

I have a camera full of pictures - mostly the same scenes of Ohrid in varying stages of sunset - and little time to put them all up until the weekend. We've been roaming around the Old Town, climbing to monasteries, playing with 4th century AD gold coins in the archaeological vaults of the university, baking stuffed butternut squash, relaxing in Ohrid, and rubbing elbows with the idle elite at the Macedonian Wine Club. Things have been busy.

So, expect a number of upcoming posts and more pictures (per my mother's request).

Until then, I'll share this wonderful, purely Macedonian anecdote:

My friend and I were visiting another beautiful old monastic church in Ohrid, and the ticket-taker/frustrated academic offered to show us around the church. In truth, she wanted to evangelize a little for the Orthodox church. Our guide, on the topic of Christian love and tolerance:

"Real Christians must love and be tolerant of everything - even dogs, snakes, even Greeks and Muslims. Everybody."

Ah, Macedonia.

Ohrid

I'm off to Ohrid for a few days, so I'll probably be out of regular communication.

But there'll be some great pictures when I return.

The Pride of Macedonia: Women

(Macedonian folk dancing at the Skopje Wine Festival . . . I have no clue what's going on.)


I wandered down to the post office to pay my utilities bill today, aided by a man named Bratislav. I had told him that I needed to pay my utilities bill in Macedonian, though I'm sure what he heard was "bill to me is needed I pay where water electricity". As gave him my thanks, he slapped me on the back and said, "What are you doing here? You must find a beautiful woman, to teach you Macedonian!" This is the most recent in a long string of conversations that all center around the theme "Macedonia has the most beautiful women in the world".

This is very interesting, because in many respects, it is the only consistent source of national pride. People will go on and on about how the government is corrupt, only the mafia gets rich, no one has a job, they are oppressed by everyone, Albanian issues, etc. Casual conversation often brings out a terrible series of complaints that make Macedonia sound like the worst place in the world. Perhaps I hear this more than most, because nobody in Macedonia understands why I would ever want to come here. "What, you study here? Why did you come from America to study here?" This is usually followed by a suspicious glance, because I must have more sinister motives. No one could ever possibly want to come to Macedonia to study. But I think they would nod approvingly and give me the names of villages and families if I said I were "bride-shopping" or some equivalent.

Because at the end of every tirade, they will say, "Yes, but we do have beautiful women. The most beautiful." The most professional, official people I know have made statements like, "My got, Set. Have you a woman yet? What? You must! Deese Macedonian women, my got, Set." Cab drivers tend to only know the English for "American Good!" and "Here Women Beautiful!".

I need to clarify that this is not the same as talking about beautiful women in America. I'm not trying to convey some sort of lewd, high-fiving frat-boy sentiment about, say, a bar where the hottest chics hang out. When a Macedonian tells me that the women are beautiful, it's like an Indiana University fan talking about having the best basketball team. The Greeks have the Parthenon, Italians have pizza, the French have wine . . . and, according to the locals, Macedonia has women. It's a national pride type of thing.

I'm sure there are numerous anthropological and sociological reasons behind this relating to all sorts of horrendous practices like bride-theft and such. I'll leave that to the feminist scholars at my Institute. But with the convoluted politics of this tiny patch of Europe, it is nice to know that there's one thing that everyone agrees on.

Post-Election

Nearly everyone who communicates with me on a regular basis has asked me about the Macedonian reaction to the American election. I have been begging off answering this for two related reasons. Firstly, despite being an avid politics-watcher, I didn't support either major candidate this year and am generally a cranky, cynical old man when it comes to national politics. I can hold a reasonable conversation, but more often I deliver a crusty, sarcastic, and sometimes incoherent rant of epic proportions, and I've been trying to avoid that. Secondly, I am still very American-centric in my observations. I've only been here a month, my language skills are lacking, and conversations with most Macedonians don't stray too far outside of archaeology, Albanians, and "we have beautiful women, yes?". This is a pretty big failure on my part, I think. It's incredibly interesting to be in another country during our national election, and I haven't been nearly as curious as I should. As long as there aren't any riots in the streets, I stay tuned to my CNN portal-to-America.

That being said, other Americans here have done a much better job at explaining the rather curious Macedonian position. I would suggest that you read Justin and Eric to understand the basic issues here. And elsewhere in the region, Chelsi has had some interesting experiences.

In summary, however, the Macedonians were supportive of John McCain for two reasons:

1. The Bush years, as bad as they may have been for everyone else, have actually been pretty good for Macedonia and for the Balkans. The Albanians love Bush for NATO efforts in Kosovo, while the Macedonians appreciate that he has recognized them under their constitutional name, The Republic of Macedonia. The US has also poured quite a bit of aid into the country.

2. Barack Obama has expressed support for the Greek position in the hilarious-if-it-wasn't-hurting-Macedonia Name Dispute.

Regarding #2, however, the Macedonians are fairly realistic. As Justin and Eric both noted, most of Obama's support for the Greek position probably arises from the large Greek population in Chicago, and their position as a traditional Democratic constituency. It's not as if Obama ran on a platform of health care, Iraq, and FYROM, and in terms of importance this is a minor issue at best. The Macedonians understand this. And that, as far as I can tell, is that.

Update:

In lieu of a cranky rant on my part, I'll just recommend Will Wilkinson. I won't say that am as content as he sounds with the results (not that I would be any happier with McCain), but the second half strikes of his post sounds about right to me.

Today was very pleasant.

Sure, they have beaches, but . . .

Alright, alright. Skopje isn't Dubrovnik, but I haven't seen anything blow up while I've been here.

Halloween Party

On numerous occasions here in Macedonia, I've remarked to Eric that with globalization and all that, I feel like I've never left home. He corrects me each time, and rightfully so, because what I'm experiencing is actually just American cultural imperialism. If I were from Botswana or Indonesia, I wouldn't be able to find my music or food in a pub around the corner. So for everyone who might hear "Macedonia" and think of peasants carrying bundles of sticks, funny-costumed folk dancing, and the gypsy fight scene from James Bond . . . well, most of that is fairly apt.

But there's also an English pub behind my apartment where I can watch the Colts play on British satellite television and listen to an Eric Clapton cover band. American television, movies, and music are everywhere - I can watch Frasier subtitled in Macedonian. And I can also spend Halloween at an Irish pub, eating onion rings, and listening to a Macedonian band covering the likes of Eagle Eye Cherry.

It was a hell of a good time, and I recommend you stop by if you ever find yourself in Kumanovo.

(Me with the obviously Irish owner)

This can't just be a coincidence.

Eric has a lovely series of shots of Ss. Kiril i Metodij, the main university here in Macedonia. This sort of brutal, concrete, communist-modern wretchedness is all over Skopje, because the socialist dreamers had a wonderful opportunity to rebuild an entire city after the destructive 1963 earthquake. Take the post office building on the main square, for instance:


And every time I see one of these aesthetically unpleasing structures, I hear the echoes of my youth . . . .

Go Go Power Rangers . . . . Whoa!


I'm contemplating readjusting my research proposal to determine the links between Power Ranger Command Center architecture and Tito's utopian Yugoslav vision.

Well said, sir.

I just noticed this in the sidebar of Eric's blog, and though it worth sharing:

"Macedonia is a jagged, frustrating, pristine, decrepit, pragmatic, fantastical, brain-bendingly beautiful place. It exists in the borderlands between several sovereignties and spheres of influence, but it is distinct and independent. It often feels clumsily cobbled together, but its history is ancient, complex, and sometimes startling in its continuity. Nothing goes smoothly, but the jolts and bumps remind me I’m along for a ride. Macedonia is polysemic. And polysemy is where I feel most at home."

Adventures in Archaeology: Strumica #2

I got to meet a special guest at Zoran's site. The previous night we swapped stories of looting over Skopsko and skara, and Zoran told me about his continuous confrontations with one particular individual. I'll call him Donovan, because he's the enemy of archaeologists and also desires immortality (maybe).

Anyway, Donovan was a bit of a football star in his youth, and never amounted to much afterwards (to the extent that he still wears his football jersey and shorts EVERYWHERE). In his spare time (which is all his time), he works out fantastic theories about history and archaeology, and apparently has discovered evidence of several new civilizations in his mind. I don't think he's quite right in his head, and he would be nothing more than a harmless eccentric, if he didn't sneak up to Zoran's site at night and dig holes everywhere. He can also be a bit violent at times, and has apparently assaulted one of Zoran's colleagues witha large staff he carries around.

Well, luckily enough for me, Donovan wandered up to the site while I was visiting. He took me aside and explained something in Macedonian to me, which sounded very conspiratorial. Zoran later told me that whenever he brings a visitor to the site, Donovan usually offers to sell them the bits of broken pottery and figurines he's dug up for millions of euros.

On the bright side, Donovan was in a cheerful mood, and there were no assaults. And I got to meet my first looter!

That wasn't the only special treat, however. As Zoran showed me around the most recent trenches he had sunk into medieval foundations, I started poking around in the dirt and found an irregular chunk of iron. It actually looked like a corroded grenade, but I had actually discovered the head of a mace, as Zoran explains:

Adventures in Archaeology: Strumica #1

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I spent this past weekend in the southeastern Macedonian city of Strumica. It's home to about 35,000 people, predominantly Macedonian, but with large Turkish and Roma neighborhoods. It's a lovely little down nestled against a mountain, and is known for beautiful women and for a great nightlife. Naturally, I spent all my times climbing around old things instead.

My guides were Zoran Rujak, the chief archaeologist of the area, and his friend Atsev, who works for a local tourist agency. Zoran speaks excellent English, and looks like a young Jeff Daniels (think Arachnophobia, not Dumb and Dumber), and loves classic rock. There's really something special going on when two Macedonians start singing "The Night The Drove Old Dixie Down" as you barrel down a mountain in a Fiat.

Anyway, our first stop was a monastery off to the east of the city. The chapel there was built in 1080, but badly damaged by fires in 1913 and 1968. One of the remaining undamaged frescoes is of Jesus as a 12 year old, which is fairly unusual. I didn't take pictures because I was afraid my guide, Sister Nauma, would give me a dirty look. After we wandered around the monastery, Sister Nauma served us cake and a special homemade walnut rakija. This is probably the most delicious liquor I've ever tasted - it was like ingesting autumn. They soak green walnuts, cinnamon, sugar and cloves in the local brandy - delicious. I bought two bottles. Here's Sister Nauma speaking with Zoran on the left and Atsev on the right:


We then headed to rebuild Orthodox church with foundations dating from the 6th century AD. Oddly enough, it was connected to a bath complex, where I guess all the monks took bubble baths:


We then headed through the Roma neighborhood to yet another church, the Church of the Holy Fifteen Martyrs. The Fifteen Martyrs are the protectors of Strumica, and while I can't recall the exact story of these particular martyrs, I think they were Roman soldiers who refused to denounce their faith when Julian the Apostate rolled in and tried to bring Jupiter and Mars back to the party.

There's a great story to this church, as well. The local people had always though that particular area holy, though no one remembered why; a shrine made from the hollowed trunk of a tree in the 19th century still stands there. In 1913, a Serbian officer decided to dig around the shrine and see what he could find. He discovered the foundations of a Late Antique chapel, buried it again, and built his own shrine on top of that. Modern excavations have uncovered a very elaborate cathedral complex that dates to even earlier periods. Here is the 1913 Serbian shrine, as seen from the excavation of the earliest cathedral:


We then took a frightening dirt-mountain track two miles into the mountains above Strumica to visit Zoran's current dig site, known as the Tsar's Towers. . .

Adventures in Archaeology: Cacev Kamen #2

I'll start this out with a video I took from the very top of Cacev Kamen, with a lovely view of the surrounding countryside:




But for now I'll work my way up from where I left off. That rock-cut cross was in a sort of entry way, with visible foundations cut into the rock. Following a rebuild road between two remaining rock door posts, you wrap around the the rock, head up an old stairway, and end up in this:


It's a giant shallow cavern, partly natural, partly man-made. Sashka is sitting in the middle, and above her you can see a horizontal line of post holes that held platforms. Behind her are three rectangular pits cut into the rock, bathtub-size, with drain channels leading down the rock. The Lonely Planet writer stands above one:
This is on the far left of the cave looking in; the far right is flat, with post holes in the ground that reminded me of some Mycenean 'throne rooms' I had seen in Greece:



Moving on (and up), I followed the good professor and scrambled up this rock face, using neolithic post holes as hand holds:


Above the large chamber, there was a man-made basin for water. it was huge, double-chambered, and there were dozens of holes for the pulleys and ropes and buckets that would have been used to fill it up. The Professor had some story about water pouring down and people dancing and all that. I really have no clue. But it was really cool:



The water pit is obviously on the right, and this semi-circular channel would have held wooden retaining wall, like the end of a barrel. It's a sheer drop straight down on the left side; behind me is another one of these water-pits.

And that was Cacev Kamen, or at least according to the pictures. I wasn't able to take a lot of my own photographs. My writer friend (the Lonely Planet Guy) dubbed me Indiana Jones for the day, which meant I had to scramble to all the places he couldn't climb and take pictures for him. Ah well.

A pint of Guinness in Kumanovo

After climbing all around Cacev Kamen (the second update will come as soon as a computer with a working USB port opens up . . .), the writer and I stopped at an Irish pub in the town of Kumanovo.

Kumanovo is a large town for Macedonia, but it's fairly small - let's say 15-25,000, maximum. (correction: Kumanovo actually has about 75,000). Interestingly, it was the base for defense contractors Brown&Root when they were supplying workers for the NATO operation in nearby Kosovo, and a large portion of the adult male population in Kumanovo is now working for Brown&Root in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was also quite a bit of fighting around Kumanovo when terrorists from the Kosovo Liberation Army slipped across the border and tried to stir things up in 2001 (thankfully without much success).

And, for reasons unknown even to him, an ex-Irish Army Special Forces officer decided to open up an authentic pub downtown. He and the writer are good friends, and the pub owner bought us a few rounds and told us some engaging stories in an accent that was harder to understand than Macedonian. Most involved struggles with the Albanian mafia and the Macedonian bureaucracy.

My favorite:

On the first night he opened his pub, neighboring bar owners attempted to intimidate him by throwing a Molotov cocktail through his window after closing. He walked out casually with a fire-extinguisher, doused the flames, and screamed, "You'll have to try harder than this, boys. It's just another f***ing day in Belfast!"

Well said.

Adventures in Archaeology: Cacev Kamen #1

Macedonia is a small country, so if you make a few phone calls and meet the right people, you can see some pretty interesting things. I contacted an American writer living in Macedonia, and after introductions over coffee, he invited me to visit a neolithic observatory in the Macedonian countryside with the archaeologist who had discovered it.

It took us several hours to get to the site - first a bus to Kumanovo, where Professor Dusko Aleksovski of the World Rock Art Institute and his lovely translator, Sashka, met us in his car. We then drove for another hour on sign-less back road, parked the car in a field, and hiked for another half hour through a beautiful valley towards what appeared to be a giant rock. Professor Aleksovski in is the lead, with Sashka and her velvet jumpsuit following:


Cacev Kamen, as the good Professor explained, a giant neolithic observatory. It looks like a big rock outcropping from far away, but up close, the whole thing has been hacked and dug and shaped by a prehistoric civilization predating the ancient Greeks and Macedonians. It is riddled with postholes, which once supported platforms, and stairways carved directly into the rock.


The post holes run horizontally across the middle of the rock:


These holes made convenient hand holds as I daringly scrambled across the rock face to view some painted symbols from 6,000 BC that hadn't quite been destroyed peasants seeking Turkish gold. They didn't quite show up on my camera, unfortunately. Numerous markings, which represent or reference who-knows-what, are all over the rock as well:


And as interesting as all these little carvings might be, there is a giant man-made theater, some sort of water-tank contraption on top of the rock, and creepy stairways all over the thing. There's also the 'magic basin' and the 'throne' . . . . but I'm running out of internet cafe time, so that will have wait. Stay tuned.

The Kale

The Kale is an old fortress that saddles a hill in the middle of Skopje, overlooking the river, the old town, and the modern city. There was recently a fairly large archaeological dig on the site, which produce mounds of artifacts that are currently on display in the city museum. It is also undergoing a sort of restoration.

And it offers some lovely views. Entering the Kale through the old fortress gates:




A view of the tiled roofs of the old town. Those spires are mosques; the old town was predominately Turkish, although it has a large Albanian population now:




Still from the Kale, but overlooking the modern city:

Mob Bar

Last night was one of the more surreal I've had so far here in Skopje, and that's really saying quite a bit. I spent most of the evening at the Skopje Wine Festival, meeting various members of the Peace Corps who work for NGOs and teach English in the villages around Macedonia.

A few of the group thought it would be a grand idea to show the rest of us a place called "Studio Pub", which they described as a velvet-covered basement mafia hangout. Now, I mistakenly assumed this was an exaggeration. I've been to a few bars around Skopje, and there is usually a clustered group of mean-looking, Armani-clad whom that I assume are members of some sort of organized criminal group. I figured that this was the extent of the mob affiliation of Studio Pub.

I was horribly mistaken.

After wandering off the main street, through a parking lot, and then down a back alley that was seemingly in the middle of a forest (this is in Skopje, mind you), the group leaders stopped in front of what looked like a warehouse, with a bit of light leaking out below two metal doors. "STUDIO PUB" was spray painted in tiny black letters (military M*A*S*H style) on the concrete blocks above the door. I have no idea how they ever found it, given the state of sobriety they were all in.

We opened up the doors, which lead to a long stairway. There were three middle-aged, very confused tough-guys in suits at the bottom, wondering why a loud group of idiotic Americans were heading down the stairs. I shared their confusion.

Aside from the three door guards, the only people in the wood-paneled, red velvet clad barroom were the bartender and a male-female duo playing Eric Clapton covers. If anyone can explain to me why everywhere I have gone in Macedonia has a live band playing Eric Clapton, I would love to know.

So we ordered our drinks and I sat there, bewildered, while everybody else continued having a good time. I finished my drink quickly, left a large tip, and got the hell out of there as quickly as I could. It's not that I felt I was in any danger, or that the other Armani-clad Macedonians that eventually entered the pub were staring at us in a menacing way. And I think it was worth it, just for the experience.

But an underground, velvet-clad Macedonian Mafia hangout really is a long way from Indiana, and I think I should probably work my way up to it.

Apologies

I have found an apartment, and while it sits above an internet cafe, I have no way to upload pictures of my most recent adventures until I get my own internet set up.

Hopefully this will occur in the next few days. I have quite a bit to write about, and many pictures to prove that I'm not making up outrageous stories. A taste:

1. Saturday was spent climbing a neolithic temple (out in the middle of Nowhere, Eastern Macedonia) with the President of the World Rock Art Institute, a writer for Lonely Planet, and a French-accented translator.

2. Saturday night was spent in an Irish pub in Kumanovo, owned by an ex-Special Forces Irish Army officer, who bought us drinks and told us stories about his dealings with the local Macedonian and Albanian mafias.

3. Sunday night was spent in an English pub owned by an ex-Liverpool goalie, listening to a Macedonian Eric Clapton cover band and drinking with the Peace Corps crew.

4. Today I spent three hours navigating the barely post-Yugoslav Macedonian Police bureaucracy to get myself registered.

Like I said, I'll prove it with pictures. Soon. I hope.

There is no Craigslist for Skopje

I've been in the thick of an apartment hunt for the past few days, which has mostly consisted of wandering around downtown Skopje for hours, trying to find real estate firms that only advertise their location with a small sign in an upper window of whatever apartment they have crammed themselves into.

I have several factors counting against me here:

1. I am an American. Unlike, say, Paris or Prague, where you can probably find poor American students in abundance, Americans in Skopje are generally businessmen, diplomats, or work for NGOs. That means they have considerably more money than I do, and causes Macedonians to think that I'm fairly wealthy myself.

2. In Macedonia (as in most European countries) university students do not live in dorms. Dorms, if they exist at all, are wretched concrete communist hellholes where no one wants to live. The students at the university here have already snapped up most of the cheaper apartments.

3. I have to work with real estate agencies with English-speaking staff. Macedonians have the advantage of being able to pick up the classifieds in a newspaper and find a cheap apartment; if I did the same thing, there's a very good chance I would end up accidentally purchasing some sort of warehouse in a bad part of town. These real estate agencies tend to deal with higher-priced apartments, and have relatively few listings which are as cheap as I'd like.

Until then, I live in the hotel. It's nice enough, and the staff have been sympathetic, but only to the extent of a few free espressos.

Downtown Skopje

I sat on a park bench in the downtown today, watching an armless old man in a suit kick nuts from the grass to the side walk, crush the nuts, and apparently not finding anything worthwhile within them, repeating the process. For an hour. Add in the kittens playing around him and the garishly dressed 'fashionable' youth, it all made for quite a surreal scene. That was the highlight of the day, for the most part. Here are the promised pictures:

The view from outside my door:


You may think that this is absolutely beautiful, and it is. But please keep in mind this steep drop off begins three feet from my door. There is also a strange rotating key-hole cover and an all but invisible drop in the floor level of my room of two or three inches, which makes this a hotel room that was probably designed with malice towards anyone who might enjoy a bottle of wine every now and then.

Here are a few shots of the downtown Skopje sights - the old Stone Bridge, and Macedonia Square:

I'm here.

I braved a theological argument between a Finnish Mormon and a Norwegian Lutheran in Munich (and in English!), the burned out post-communist factory shells of rural Bulgaria, and two taxi races through narrow streets full of the bravest pedestrians imaginable, but I'm here in Skopje.

I would say safe and sound, but having been on the streets for an hour or so, there is obviously a different definition of 'safe and sound' here. I'll have to investigate that.

Anyway, the hotel internet is out, so if you'd like to contact me, you can reach me at this creepy back-alley basement internet cafe full of Redbull-swilling Macedonian Counterstrike addicts.

In case you're interested . . . (Updated)

In this obligatory post-graduation travel blog, I have decided to acknowledge and support the obligatory post-graduation blogs of a few of my friends. If you're ever bored with the Balkans (or just my take on the region), might I suggest you check out:

Eric at Polysemic.org -he's on a Fulbright grant studying linguistics in the Macedonia. While I might tell a funny joke about mixing up the words for 'poop' and 'cheese' - they are quite similar - he'll be able to explain it in a way that puts me to shame.

Harper at BumblingMumbler.com - an old friend of mine who has somehow stumbled into a job teaching adorable children in Japan to speak English. Check in daily for updates on how to inadvertently offend provincial bureaucrats and meet interesting naked Japanese men in saunas.

Tim Fox at Grace with Taste - another old friend, and an anglophile Anglican. In another time he would be tipping his hat to elderly ladies outside the Main Street barber shop, but modernity and the lingering effects of John Rawls have forced him to barricade himself behind volumes of Eliot and Newman in a last-ditch effort to save the Protestant mainstream. This blog is his only way of communicating with the world.

Jesse Bright's Merry Amer-Adventures - another old friend, Jesse has decided to forgo the bourbon-and-cigars fatcat lifestyle of a graduate student in the sciences for a bit, and participate in the Americorps program. Between fire watching, storm chasing, and other manly charitable pursuits, Jesse may grow the mightiest beard imaginable.

Update

One more:

Chelsi in the Land of Eagles - Chelsi West is another Fulbrighter who will be wandering around neighboring Albania. She'll probably turn one of Hoxha's old pillboxes into the most stylish pad this side of Tirana. It should be an interesting blog - Albania is a rough land where the men are still manly, and the women are, well, manly as well.

Urgent News

This just in:

The BBC Macedonian News Service is reporting that that on Wednesday, September 2nd (or 20th?), the minister of ? will ? to the ?, which the ? and ? ?-ed the ?. The problem, they said, is that ? ? ? ? ? to/for the ?.

Also, I think the word children was involved. Something with minorities?

Stay tuned for more prepositions and basic adjectives with definite article suffixes.

The Countdown Begins

September 1st has arrived, which means my relatively unproductive buffer month of August has ended. I leave for Macedonia on September 30th. 

That means that I no longer have any excuse for an extreme (or so it feels) lack of preparation. And one of the most important aspects of international-post-undergrad-preparation is the establishment of a blog. I think it ranks just below purchasing plane tickets, and just above finding housing, though that may be particular to my own case. 

If anyone reading this doesn't already know why I am off to the Republic of Macedonia, here's a brief rundown: 

The official story is here, on my alma mater's website:

Seth Elder '08 to Research Economic Development and Cultural Heritage in Macedonia with Fulbright Award

The unofficial story differs on the following points: 

1. While the story offers a lot of lovely, academically verbose quotes from my proposal (enough to make Orwell rise from the dead and reprint "Politics and the English Language"), I actually have very little clue what I'm doing. I'm being hosted by an institute that doesn't know what to do with me,  my language skills are limited, and my area of interest is incredibly broad. 

2. I have nowhere to live when I arrive, and the visa situation is murky, to say the least. Also, I am arriving not in Skopje, my future-home city, but Sofia, in neighboring Bulgaria. How I will get from one to the other with my luggage and without getting ripped off is anyone's guess. 

3. I am purchasing a new computer with half the memory of my current machine. That means that my blues, bluegrass, country, southern rock, and 90's pop music collection will have to be whittled down to only the most important tunes. I'm facing some very tough choices: Will I best be able to connect to Macedonian youth through Sugar Ray's "Fly", or "Folsom Prison Blues"?  Will the native drink rakija lend itself to my "Scotch Drinking Music" playlist, or will I have to create a completely new late-night musical atmosphere?

These problems are not insurmountable - for instance, regarding #3, I'm sure I can buy scotch in Macedonia. They make for more of an adventure, which is really what this is all about. And by that, I mean that this entire year is really just to pad my resume in order to reach my true vocation as a member of the world-famous Team Phaeton.

In the meantime, I recommend this site, written by my fellow-Fulbrighter/super-linguist who has already been in Macedonia for some time.