Freestyle Vlogging From Downtown Skopje

Might you wonder what its like to stand in Skopje’s central square? The open space at the center of town where everyone meets, greets, and begins their social scene for the weekend?

Luckily, during my hectic scrambling from one meeting to another with Eight Shoe Sue, I paused in Macedonia Plaza long enough to give you a taste of urban living in Southern Europe. From this plaza, famous for the Stone Bridge over the Vardar River, where you can have a noon-time epiphany, a myriad of walking streets spiral off in every direction.

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Be Quiet in Sveti Jovan at Kaneo

It’s so quiet, I can hear people talking father up the hill. I strain to tune them out. Why? Because I am sitting on the precipice of Sveti Jovan at Kaneo, a tiny, beautiful 13th Century Orthodox Church perched on a cliff overlooking Lake Ohrid.

This location is spiritual even if you are an Atheist. Protruding out into the air above the tectonic lake, it unites man with nature in ways few places can. And brings you back to the struggles man has with her when from the left you hear church bells , while from the right, an imam’s call to noon prayer.

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Macedonia: A Russian Waltz Down Memory Lane

Stepping off the plane in Skopje, Macedonia, I get a feeling o déjà vu. A feeling I’ve been here before, though I know I haven’t. My parents came through here in the time of Tito, but that was years before my birth.

Still, I could not shake the feeling of déjà vu. It was so strong, I felt I was having an out-of-body experience, until I realized what was happening. I was time-warping and place-shifting myself back to Russia, circa 1999.

The signs in Cyrillic that I could read like they were in English. The language, which spoken slowly sounds way close to Russian. The people, they even look and act Russian. And of course they do, they are Slavs, just like the Russians.

But this is not Russia. This is Macedonia.

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