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

l
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.