Skopje: beauty, brutalism, and unpopular propoganda

I can't get to my SD card so will have to make
do with crappy cellphone pics for now.

You can’t come to Skopje and not talk about the monuments. Everyone in the city has an opinion. And I mean that literally, an opinion. The same one. Not a single Macedonian I talked to disagreed about the massive urban development, er, beautification? Statue-ization? Neo-classical building barrage? Not sure what to call the $80-500 million project that’s been renovating downtown Skopje since 2010, but they all hate it. Or rather, in keeping with the Macedonian character, it’s more of a bemused ridicule mixed with an acidic disgust in their government.

For starters, how about that price tag? Quite a tally, especially for a country with high levels of poverty and about 30% unemployment. And how about that range? Hard to pin down numbers, especially when no one quite knows what they are and the opposition says it’s ten times what it needed to be.

So...why? Why is Skopje doing this?

Friday morning at 5:17 AM, exactly 53 years ago today, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake in Skopje killed over a thousand people, injured upwards of three thousand, left 200,000 people homeless, and destroyed about 80% of the city.

80% of your city destroyed in 20 seconds. Can’t begin to imagine. One local I talked to said “We were just glad it happened during summer when many people were on vacation. If it had been in October or something, it would have been worse.” Now that’s dedication to the silver lining. Nazdravje! (Yes, they say that here too.)

The Triumphal Arch.
Let me get back to you on the paint job...

Kennedy and Kruschev both sent help, and in the demolished streets of Skopje, Soviet and American troops could shake hands for the first time since 1945. Maybe they should have stayed.

Downtown Skopje was gradually rebuilt under a plan that was half Japanese architect Kenzo Tange and half Yugoslavia. The aesthetic bummer (if you ask me) was that Tange offered neo-brutalism, and Yugoslavia added the sort of concrete blast-wall atmosphere that we associate with Communism during the Soviet age. A tad bit bleak. Who do you know who raves about Macedonia? (Unless you’re Dutch or Australian, in which case y’all’re so well traveled you’re exempted from rhetorical questions like that. Sorry.)

So why not pep it up? Except there are those pesky issues of funding. And then there’s the style. Oh mama, the style. Ancient Rome meets the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A heroic guy who is officially not Alexander the Great because of the ongoing dispute with Greece (but totally is) looms over the main square, anchoring a lattice of marble-columned buildings for such exalted institutions as the Agency of Electronic Communications, whose temple reminded me of Ephesus.

It’s quite a spectacle. Rather...monumental, you might say. And to be honest? I loved it. It’s ridiculous, yes. Perhaps obscenely expensive and criminally irresponsible. But in a day and age when so many places seem to not give the slightest thought to how they look (Athens isn’t standing behind me, is it?) it’s nice to see a city giving it a go. A bizarre festival of propaganda and thinly veiled ethnic discrimination, but still, a go.

In fact? I’m going to rave about Macedonia. Back me up, Aussies and Nederlanders.

Beefy blues and birthday bliss

I blame the teenager for the first part. He was just so likable. I’d worked all day to stay aware of the tidal pull towards a bad mood, unnecessary and outdated, and here was this teenage waiter in a backstreet cafe, that same Ronaldo haircut they all have. But instead of finding him annoying, I was talking to a super sweet, shy, all around likable kid. Unconscious sink towards negativity be gone.

“Where did you learn to speak English so well?” I asked him. “Was it just in school?”

“No,” he glanced down and to the right past a cautious smile, “I watched a lot of cartoons when I was young.” Well praise be to the Ninja Turtles.

Can't get the camera SD card to read, so the
only pics I have for now are from the phone.

When I asked him if they had anything with vegetables, he kind of demurred, then suggested a mysterious sequence of Slavic vowels and Cyrillic letters on the menu, saying it was his favorite. I just had to agree. And when he delivered the plate with fries scattered next to a paving stone of ground beef, glistening with oil and fat, I could only say thank you. “Fala.”

And I just kept smiling when it turned out the heap of meat was stuffed with cheese and ham. “No really, fala.” I feel asleep and woke feeling like one big sausage.

So last night, birthday night, when I went looking for something non-meaty, my hopes were not high. But again, as with most of the Macedonians I’ve met, the (grown-up) waiter was downright genial, and I almost took his suggestion of the best thing on the menu.

Until I realized it was the same beefbeast I’d had with the teenager. No, fala.

“Do you have anything….maybe rice? Vegetables?” He looked dubious so I offered my compromise. “Maybe just a little meat?”

He nodded and disappeared to the kitchen, and I mentally wrote “Vegetables” in thick black mental ink on top of my shopping list for the next six months. But he delivered a plate of thick savory rice, lightly fried zucchini and mushroom, and a few perfectly cooked twists of chicken. Add the big Macedonian beer with the visually improbable name CKONCKO, and I had a meal. And a moment.

All around me washed Skopje conversation and laughter, local lives and stories, while a Macedonian moon looked comfortable in the warm night air, no bugs, no car horns, no need to rush or know the time. Music of nostalgia to make toes tap, songs not heard in years with lyrics you remember anyway, about half of the mixed tape my girlfriend made me, freshman year of high school. High school. Love me love me, say that you love me. Because we’re never gonna survive, unless, we get a little...crazy.

Okay so I'm terrible at selfies.
This is my first try! Little preview
of the color revolution.

Yes, I lost the love of my life. The relationship I thought would carry me through old age. And yes it’s almost time to return to my unaffordable apartment, made empty now that her stuff is gone from her couple drawers, and sure I don’t know where I’m sleeping tomorrow night, but I’m traveling, it’s my birthday, and to be honest, the world feels steady in its orbit. My stunned grief and guilty disbelief don’t change that. They don’t even matter.

Out here, I have no expectations. No preconceptions. No requirements or preconditions. Only vulnerability and therefore gratitude. Where a good meal tastes like bliss, in a place that sounds a bit like heaven, with people who feel rather like friends.

Not a “perfect” way to start a year, because perfection is a myth. But something to be grateful for. I am not in control of my life. But I’m surfing it. And it’s all good.

Greece, and a benediction on the eve of judgment day

I confess, my 1st impression of Athens was of spray paint.
Ugly tags on buildings once splendid, scattered splatters on
shells that used to be homes, and chemical layers on
anything that used to have a purpose. Kinda dark, I know.

Democracy, theater, and literature. Mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Olive oil, feta, and loincloths. Greece is the birthplace of so many of western civilization’s highest achievements. But I had bandwidth for none of it.

All I could think of was the unthinkable, the pending, ongoing, seemingly unstoppable personal disaster that I somehow needed to fix. The right combination of words, the proper demonstration of the emotion in me, the right something to fix what was wrong. My lady’s flight would land in a few hours, and I had no idea what to do.

Okay so some of it was fun

My pen was useless, journal didn’t want to listen, and voices inside couldn’t agree on what to talk about. It was like Spain in there, everyone talking, no one listening. So I let my feet take over, step by step, looking for something to find.

Found a church. Went inside. Met a man who looked at me from the other side of our linguistic divide. Built a bridge of gestures, smiles, and a half-heft of my camera out of my bag, and he waved his hand in permission.

“Please. Yes. Photo ok.” He grew stern. “Please, five minute only. Then is… Greek economy.” He shrugged and I pretended to understand, until he moved a tapestry to reach the circuit breakers and flipped the lights on.

The Church of St Demetrius Psirri
Athens, Greece

Ah. No money for the electric bill. But economic concerns are no match for Greek hospitality and generosity, possibly part of what got them in the current mess, and certainly fundamental in what will get them out of it.

But I wasn’t thinking about the politics of unity or separation, the psychology of blame and castigation, or the economics of exploitation by the wealthy of the poor and by the poor of themselves. I was in a church. And what a church it was, this neighborhood chapel too unremarkable to show up on any maps.

Glittering chandeliers hung from fresco'd ceilings where angels watched over a gold-leaf landscape of heaven. Censers dripped their residual aromatic prayers, and the paint of ages flaked off the arches of history, all illuminated in the defiantly boisterous light of the electric lightbulb.

Don't you do it. Don't you
start humming Smooth Criminal

I was raised in Protestant simplicity, white walls and minimalist iconography, but here was a density of shining saints slaying dragons and offering their benedictions from behind ornate layers of polished silver. Saints with knowing eyes. A black madonna with a silver hand, and I tried desperately not to think about Michael Jackson’s glove.

It was impressive. But I still had no use for established gods, all of which still looked political. What I found holy was the smile of that man. His desire to show me something he found beautiful, and to give me a positive experience, no reward asked, no sinful motivation, just human kindness.

Now that’s an altar where I would light a candle. Even if it doesn’t solve my problems.

Happy birthday, America, from elsewheres

Roman stroller

That’s Athens out there in the haze. Spread outside my room like too much hot peanut butter, chunky with concrete and creamy with Mediterraneanity. In my camera it’s Italy on the rare moments when I had the leisure to photograph, and in my pockets it’s Paris, a metro ticket, receipt for coffee, l’addition si vous plait.

But somewhere, on this 4th of July, it’s America out there. Maybe everywhere. We’re all living in Amerika, sang a German band to my tour members while we waited in a Swiss traffic jam behind a Ford truck. Kool and the Gang came next and everything made sense anyway.

So happy birthday, America!

And what better place to be, for me you see, on the 4th of July than the birthplace of democracy? That least-worst approach that we’ve so publicly endorsed. Because from here, in the fugue and fog of travel and border crossing, where I wake at night not knowing where I am (but downright positive that I didn’t tell the group when dinner starts), from here I can see what being American is to me today.

I wonder why they call it "Painter's Corner"?
Bacharach, Germany

Being American means I can do this job, helping my brothers and sisters of privilege come to see the places where our culture came from, and learn that the divides that separate us are either fictitious or delicious, and in neither case important.

With my American passport I can move around nearly freely, taking advantage of the modern age of peace and gadgetry, perhaps before the Fall or maybe on the cusp of Transcendence, either way it’s a damn fine stage at the moment.

My citizenship can be a looming shadow behind me. Protection in many places, a liability in a few, and a cause for concern in most, where they like us so much they try valiantly to conceal how much damage this election cycle has already done to a country that was working so hard to regain the world’s respect. (And in that flux, from intelligent leader for the past 8 years to the possibility of lunatic demagogue, I fear we run fault lines through the future either way.)

Paris, where even the shopping malls look good

It means I can talk like this, say plainly that Donald Trump is a profound threat to the future of my nation, and add that I think Brexit was a huge mistake, whose price the English will pay worst, but which all of us will share a little. (And I have to wonder if Athens was a more somber city after the results came in.)

And it gives me a perspective, from where I can look at Brexit as England rejected the taxation and foreign governance through the ballot, on the day that commemorates the time when my country did the same, with musket balls and dead humans. Progress!

Looking out over Rome

And finally, my homeland gave me its culture, so much of which I choose to keep, even if it doesn’t always fit in. Because if Parisians think I’m touched in the head for smiling as I walk down the street, that’s fine with me. I’m going to do it anyway.

Because they smile back.

So I’m smiling at you today, America, over there visible through the haze. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.