Skopje

One of my main goals for my travels this year is exploring more of Eastern Europe, a region that I haven’t visited enough. Eastern Europe has a large cultural wealth and a tremendous amount of history. It’s very distinct from Western and Central Europe. There’s plenty of direct flights from Zurich to cities all throughout Europe. When I found cheap tickets to Skopje, I took the opportunity to explore the Macedonian capital for a few days.

Wednesday

Got up at 4 AM in order to make it to the airport in time for my 6:45 AM flight with Edelweiss to Skopje. I usually need roughly an hour in the morning when I’m leaving for a trip. There’s always still stuff to pack (toiletries etc.), in addition to getting breakfast and a shower. I usually don’t need that much time at the airport in Zurich, but since I was leaving the Schengen Zone I needed a bit more time for a passport check. There’s plenty of flights to Eastern Europe early in the morning. I figured I’d get to the airport 15 minutes earlier. There were no lines at the passport check, so it turned out I had gotten up much too early. Oh well, rather be there on time than miss the flight. 

The flight itself to Skopje departed and arrived a little on the late side as a passenger needed offloading in Zurich. That’s what the captain said anyway, I didn’t see anyone getting off. Maybe this decision was made at the gate? No idea. 

At the Skopje Airport, I wanted to withdraw some cash. It seemed that none of the ATMs accepted my debit card (V Pay). They had stickers on the machines for most other cards, but not that type of card. Not wanting to incur larger fees for withdrawing from a credit card, I asked a bank employee. She assured me their ATM would definitely accept my debit card. It sure did.

There’s an infrequent bus that connects the airport with the city center, as the only public transport option. I didn’t want to wait two hours, so I took a taxi to my hotel, where I arrived at 10 AM. Hotel staff informed me the room was not yet ready, but as I was in the lobby packing stuff into my day bag, the room became ready. The floor in the room was still wet from the cleaning service as I entered and left my suitcase. Afterwards, I was off to explore the surrounding area. The hotel was near Carsija, the old Turkish bazaar.

One of the mosques in Carsija.

My first stop became the Museum of Macedonia, which houses an exhibit on the history of Macedonia from the 20th century. The museum also has an ethnology exhibit in a separate, relatively old building. The museum gives you a decent idea of the recent history and Macedonian culture.

A map highlighting the area of Greece also referred to as Macedonian.

Traditional Macedonian clothing.

It’s safe to say that the building itself and its facilities look a bit neglected. The museum could definitely do with a refurbishing, and the low visitor numbers probably aren’t helping the cause. In both exhibits, museum staff had to turn on the lights for me. 

I continued towards the nearby Mustafa Pasha Mosque for a brief look inside. It’s nothing like what you would find in Istanbul, particularly in terms of size, but it is one of the more important mosques for the Muslim community in Skopje.

Built in 1492, the mosque has been repaired since an earthquake in 1963. 

My next stop was the Sveti Spas Church, a traditional Orthodox Christian church that is partly underground, inside of a courtyard.

You wouldn’t necessarily know there’s a church here because of its partially submerged design.

The reason for this was a rule during the Ottoman Empire era that churches could not be taller than mosques. 

For lunch I stopped by the Pivnica An, which translates to Beerhouse Inn. I had piroshki for an appetizer, which is best described as large croquettes filled with meat and different veggies.

For my main course I picked the sarma, which were stuffed grapevine leaves. 

Two relatively similar dishes actually. I ordered the piroshki simply because it was one of the only appetizers with an untranslated name. That’s usually a good indication that it’s a local dish. 

I continued towards the south and across the Vardar River towards Skopje’s central square, Plostad Makedonija. On the way I stopped by the 19th-century Sveti Dimitrija Church to have a look inside.

Plostad Makedonija is surrounded by several monuments, including a triumphal arch. The centerpiece is the statue dedicated to Alexander the Great.

Alexander is by far the most famous Macedonian to have ever lived, having been crowned King of Macedonia in 336 BC. Until his death thirteen years later, he built an empire stretching from Greece and Egypt across Persia to Northwestern India. Alexander the Great’s Macedonia was one of the largest land empires in ancient times.

A few blocks south of the Plostad Makedonija is the Mother Teresa Memorial House.

Mother Teresa did most of her work in India, but she was born in Skopje in 1910, and the city is very eager to promote this fact.

Further towards the south is the Skopje City Museum. It is housed inside the old train station. The clock is still standing still at 5:17 AM, the exact time when Skopje was hit by a devastating earthquake in 1963.

The Museum has an exhibit dedicated to the earthquake, its destructive impact and the rebuilding process afterwards. There’s also a small archaeology exhibit in the basement.

For a much more extensive archaeology collection, I headed back to the riverside Archaeology Museum. The museum is located in a shiny new marble palace, which is one of the government’s prime construction projects meant to boost national pride.

Inside are two floors of archaeological finds from as far back as 50,000 BC. There’s plenty of Iron Age objects, as well as a vast collection of ancient coins, mostly from Roman, Kingdom of Macedonia and Ottoman times.

Roman coins.

The collection is a great indicator of Macedonia’s lengthy history and the many empires that have ruled the area.

Just next door to the Archaeology Museum is the “Museum of the Macedonian Struggle for Independence and Statehood”. Another new riverfront building, the museum’s exhibits are only open to tours carried out by local guides. As expected, the museum offers a rather one-sided view of the history, starting during medieval times. The main focus is the prolonged fight during the Ottoman occupation, then Serbian rule and finally the years as a part of Yugoslavia. Macedonia finally gained independence in 1991 after the Cold War was over and Yugoslavia was divided.

The museum guide also repeatedly mentioned the currently ongoing political conflict with Greece over the right to use “Macedonia” as a name. The museum promotes the idea that there is a much larger area that is culturally and ethnically Macedonian, a large part of which is the Greek provinces also referred to as Macedonia. There’s additional parts inside Bulgaria and small areas of Albania that all combine to form the region that is considered culturally Macedonian. No pictures were allowed inside the exhibits, but there are some large paintings as well as the independence declarations from 1991 in the lobby.

The next stop on the to-do list was the Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia, but it was closed as the exhibits were being rebuilt. Instead I went to the Kale Fortress just west of the Carsija neighborhood. This 6th-century Byzantine/Ottoman fortress provides nice views of downtown Skopje from its hilltop location.

There’s however not much else to do other than walking the ramparts and enjoying the views. There are no signs about the history of the place anywhere. Still definitely worth the hike up there.

With some time to spare until the sunset, I pondered visiting the Vodno Mountain’s Millenium Cross. I had originally planned that for Thursday. I was close to my hotel and walked back there to check the operating hours of the cable car. There was no definitive answer online, so I asked the reception staff, who told me it would run until 8 PM. There’s a bus going from the central railway/bus station to the cable car’s departure point halfway up the mountain. The last bus had already departed though, so I needed a taxi to the cable car station.

When I got to the cable car station at 5:45 PM, I found that it was no longer running. The 8 PM closing time is during its May-September schedule. It is possible to hike to the top instead of taking the cable car, so I set off on foot. I realized that it was going to take much too long to get up to the Millenium Cross on top of the mountain. Even if I did make it up there before sunset, I would have to hike back down the difficult trail in the dark. I turned around ten minutes after I started uphill. Back at the cable car station there were no taxis in sight, so I hiked further downhill to the outskirts of the city and took a bus downtown.

My last stop for the night became the Cifte Hamam, an old Ottoman hamam in the Turkish neighborhood. However, it’s no longer a bathhouse, but has been converted into a gallery. It was open until late in the evening, so I figured I’d drop by for a chance to check out what I thought would be an atmospheric old bathhouse. It had however been painted all-white inside except for a few corners near the ceilings. The gallery hosted a very factual exhibition about Muslims in Poland, with inscriptions only in Macedonian and Polish. Needless to say, I didn’t quite see what I expected.

Being in the old Turkish neighborhood, I went to a popular kebab place where there’s no menu. They just serve beef kebabs with bread and onion, salads optional.

It was incredibly cheap too, as I only had to pay 6 CHF/USD (37 DKK) total including a drink and the not-pictured salad.

Thursday

Got up at 6:50 in order to have breakfast when the hotel’s buffet opened. The plan for the day was full of half-day trips. I walked to Skopje’s train & bus station, but trying to find the regional busses proved difficult. I wanted to take the bus line 60 out to Lake Matka southwest of Skopje. Theoretically I could have gotten on it from a bus stop near my hotel, but you need to buy a rechargeable ticket card somewhere else first. Allegedly, the bus leaves from Транспортен центар (Transporten Centar, the regional bus station) by the train/bus station, but was this clearly signposted? Take one guess.

The bus runs once every 90 minutes, and I arrived at the station complex 5 minutes prior to its departure time. What’s even more difficult to find are ticket sellers, as there are no machines, only ticket booths. The bus vehicles themselves are quite interesting though. Some of them are red double-deckers, some are old Soviet busses, others are newer Yutong (Chinese) busses, and some look like they have been bought or donated from Germany.

One of Skopje’s red double-decker busses, photographed at the cable car station on Vodno Mountain.

Walking around the bus terminal, it’s not uncommon to see a white citybus going to “Hamburg Hauptbanhof” (Hamburg Central Train Station). Obviously that’s not the destination, the Skopje stop will be written on a piece of paper placed in the windshield. I have no idea why they can’t rewrite or just turn off the electronic displays.

At the bus terminal I found the bus to Lake Matka as it reversed out of its parking spot. I ran over and waved at the driver, who waited for me to get on. Phew. So obviously I had no ticket, but I have absolutely zero remorse about riding public transport without a ticket in this situation. There’s only manned ticket booths that aren’t marked, half of them aren’t staffed anyway, and you can’t even buy single tickets from the bus driver! Come on, you’re not even trying to get my money. There’s obviously no controls either. So eventually I made it to Lake Matka for free.

Lake Matka, or Canyon Matka as it is also known, is one of the favorite day-trips for Skopje residents.

It gets packed on weekends, but I was there on a Thursday morning, so it was definitely more quiet. It’s a lake created by a dam, but found inside a beatiful canyon. The mountains have plenty of medieval Orthodox churches. One of these, constructed in 1389, is the Church of St. Andrew, situated right next to the Canyon Matka Hotel. No pictures were allowed inside the church. This location also happens to be the main boat stop and starting point for most sights and adventures in the Canyon.

Speaking of boats, I took a boat trip down the lake to the Cave Vrelo. This cave is one of the more important sights in the Canyon.

The accesible part of the cave isn’t actually that large. There’s some stalactites and stalagmites here, in addition to a fairly large bat colony. The cave is however impressively deep.

A blurry picture due to the lack of light, but those reflections are made on the water inside the cave. Divers have explored the Vrelo Cave down to a depth of 212m/640ft, which makes it the 3rd deepest cave in the world. They are however yet to find the bottom, which leads some to speculate that it could be the deepest cave in the world.

There’s plenty of more churches in the surrounding mountains which you can hike to, but most of these are simply ruins. I decided to have lunch at the Canyon Matka Hotel. After that, I started going back towards the city. I did however stop by the Bogorodica Monastery first. It still functions as a monastery, but I didn’t see anyone there.

The current living quarters are from the 18th century, the chapel in the courtyard dates back to the 14th century. There’s been some sort of a church building here since the 6th century.

There’s about 6-7 busses between Matka and Skopje daily, with the next departure that I was aiming for being at 1:05 PM. I was at the bus stop well beforehand. At 1:20, there were still no bus in sight. At 1:30 a different bus heading in the opposite direction of Skopje passed. A Turkish traveler and myself eventually decided to take a taxi back to Skopje and split the cost.

Having been unable to get up to Vodno Mountain’s Millenium Cross the day before, I decided to make a second attempt. At the central bus station I found the right bus to “Middle Vodno”, where the cable car takes off from. A friendly local, Ergin, asked if I needed help. He accompanied me to the Millenium Cross as he was also going up there.

The Millenium Cross is a 66m/217ft tall steel cross on top of the Vodno mountain. You can’t enter the cross itself, but the views from the hilltop are great on a clear day.

With two hours left to go before I had to leave for the airport, I wanted to get to the Sveti Petelejmon Monastery and it’s neighbor, the Macedonian Village. The Macedonian Village are 12 houses built in a traditional Macedonian style, and it’s part boutique hotel, part museum. Ergin recommended a bus from the downtown bus station and told me its departure time. Ergin got out of the bus from Vodno at an earlier stop near his home, and I continued to the railway/bus station. I realized due to traffic jams I wouldn’t make it to the station in time for the second bus, so I got out earlier and hopped in a taxi.

I then realized just how bad the traffic was, as it took us sometimes 5 minutes to pass every block. It became increasingly unrealistic to make it to the monastery and back down before I needed to go to the airport. So I got out, and paid what was on the taxi meter. A taxi ride for nothing. Yay…

Instead I simply walked back to my hotel for another chance to check out central Skopje.

A monument in a park in downtown Skopje.

I picked up my bag, and then I was off to the airport. Much earlier than necessary, but oh well, I don’t mind spending time at airports. The last bus out to the airport had already left the city centre by the time I returned to my hotel. So it was time for yet another taxi out to the airport, but fortunately these trips are not too expensive. A trip from the city to the airport costs a flat rate of 1000 Macedonian Denar, which is equal to 20 CHF/USD or 120 DKK. The ride takes roughly 25-30 minutes, depending on traffic. For that price, I could maybe get a 5-minute trip in Zurich. Maybe. 

Speaking of Zurich, my flight back home departed shortly before 8 PM. Another trip on an Airbus A320 with Edelweiss.