The Dutch woman in Macedonia who helps me with Trump

The Dutch lady was barely paying attention to our conversation. “It’s Bitola, not Bitola” she said, putting the stress on the first syllable instead of the second. BEET-ola. Grateful for the correction, I couldn’t fault her for her distraction. Greek bus stations are a lot to process, even without your 15 year old son getting on a bus to Macedonia by himself (previous post about him here). But eventually even the peregrinations and perturbations of buses grow dull, so we talked about her family’s relocation to Macedonia.

Waiting for a captain on Lake Ohrid, Macedonia

“We’ve lived there a little over a year now, it’s a remarkable place. We like the people, though they’re a little hard to get to know at first.” I took that with a grain of salt. After all, she was Dutch, perennial co-champions with the Canadians for World’s Friendliest People. “But it’s funny, they don’t know how good they have it.”

She trailed off, watching her son wander in search of a WC. But you can’t just say something that interesting and stop! “What do you mean?” I prompted.

Macedonians haven't figured out the cure for this either

“Well, sure the economy is shit, which they all complain about, but it just means they don’t work very long hours. So they have a lot of time to spend with family and friends, eating on the street and singing and things. The wages are enough, or not quite enough, same as everywhere. They just earn their Not-Enough faster than everyone else.”

I remembered my Macedonian colleague back in my immigrant-job days in a Belgian call center. “A lot of Macedonians go west into Europe for work though, right?”

“Oh yes, many of them do. They almost all want to. We’ve already lost some great neighbors. I’m constantly wondering that they don’t write back and tell their family to stay. Tell them that when they move, they’ll just work more and relax less. The country is beautiful! And safe. They should stay, appreciate what they have, savor the food, be grateful for their loved ones! Relax and enjoy life every day, as they have it!”

This guy knew how to enjoy the fountains in Skopje

That made sense to me then and it makes sense to me now. Here I sit, ignoring the scrolling list of Trump’s latest outrages, feeling like It’s All Over but the burning…

But then that Dutch mother’s voice comes back. Appreciate...be grateful...relax and enjoy. Yes TrumpCo is a disaster. We know that. And we know that we’ll do whatever we can to oppose his horrors, every step of the way. The worst harm will come to the most vulnerable, and that is fundamentally not okay, is soul crushing for those who care, but one can care...and not be dragged under. We can still smile. We can enjoy the food. We can appreciate what we have.

Thank you, Dutch mother. You’re helping me with a problem we never would have believed, those six months ago.

What is Skopje?

Skopje, Macedonia, from the ancient Kale Fortress

Skopje has nothing to do with the Italian verb scopare, which technically means “to sweep,” but just as “to screw” has a bit more oomph than inserting a light bulb, scopare is that favorite vulgar verb of the angry, horny, or adolescent.

And they don’t speak Dutch in Macedonia, so Skopje has nothing to do with the diminutive -je in that language, which makes things smaller, cuter, cuddlier. If you have a dog in Holland, you have a hond. If you have a puppy-wuppy, you have a hondje.

So while Skopje might sound like a quick little lusty interlude to me, and now to you (you’re welcome), no one will have any idea what you’re talking about when you try to explain why you’re giggling in front of the heroic statues. (But feel free to try anyway.)

So that’s what Skopje is not. But what Skopje is?

It's a neolithic settlement already 4000 years old when the Romans got there a bit before 0. Then centuries of chaos calming to empires that crumbled back to chaos, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Ottoman all getting to fancy themselves eternal on the banks of the Vardar River. After six millennia, Skopje is a powerhouse arena of history, culture, and pride...that currently hosts a Las Vegas style showroom of propaganda mayhem like I had never seen. It’s bizarre. Surreal. Kinda hideous. And I loved it!

It was mostly men, but these ladies were lurking near the opera

Statues of scholars in robes, kings in crowns, and the odd barbarian looking perplexed and aggressive over a big lumpy club line every bridge, lurk in arcades, and loom like suicidal squadrons on the edges of prominent buildings. Don’t jump, toga-clad men! We’ll get you some modern fashion!

I gave some background here (click to open), but why all the classical imagery?

Macedonia declared independence in 1991, and 27 seconds later was feuding with Greece over ownership of the name and Alexander the Great’s legacy. The quandary continues, as Macedonia struggles between Classical or Slavic origin, bashing out an identity for its ethnically diverse population in a region where such questions have been soaked in blood for centuries.

Just slightly a mother and father national
foundation story going on here.

So some say the classical theme is anti-Greek, part of that dispute. Others say anti-Bulgarian for much the same ethnic reasons. But a former adviser to the Prime Minister reassures us on both those counts.

“No! It’s not anti-Greek or anti-Bulgarian!” Says Shmuel Ben David Vaknin. And we pause for a quick sigh of relief before he adds “Antiquisation has a double goal, which is to marginalize the Albanians and create an identity that will not allow Albanians to become Macedonians."

Something of the Romans must have lingered in Skopje, because it doesn’t take an Australian playing a Spaniard in an American movie about Ancient Rome to tell me that if you win the crowd, they won’t ask questions. Bread and circus, man, bread and circus. (Except without the bread.)

So is it working? Are the people placated? Blood-red handprints on shiny new marble say no, but we’ll talk about that next time.

Because even though the towering statue of a warrior on a horse is the centerpiece of an international dispute, it is also a great fountain, spraying water from a variety of jets, at unpredictable moments from unexpected places, shifting colors as grandiloquent music piped into the square on pigeon-pooped speakers.

And the kids loved it.

And I loved that.

Small-minded men have been picking fights since we climbed out of the trees, but as July heat emanated from the stones after dark on a calm Macedonian evening, the laughter of happiness was enough.

And that's what Skopje is.

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.