I was thinking to write about this several weeks ago, but I didn't have the time to do it..and also there are too many things that I love about Macedonia and I cannot comprise them all in one post.
When I wake up in the morning, first thing I see is the huge green wall in the living room. I open the door to go out on the balcony and the heat hits me all the time. Almost all the time, there are more than 25 degrees at 9 in the morning, but seeing the vineyard covering the balcony takes the heat away.
The bus. It's the same old bus from my home city, from 5 years ago, which barely moves and where you can barely hear each other because of the sound it makes. People in the bus. They are simple people, dressed in a simple way, without too many brands. They are also very quiet. You can see they are worried about their day and their work, but in the same time I feel them happy all the time.
What I see from the bus? Fields with tobacco, fields with water melon, small houses transforming into big buildings as the bus gets closer to the big city. You can see all over the place big trees, platanes, linden, and other strange trees which look like growing beans on it. The trees are shading the streets, the houses, the small stores, the mosques, the cars parked irregularly and the people suffering for heat.
On the streets. It's amazing! From huge fancy buildings all from glass, you see small houses colored in nice colors, then from fancy supermarkets you see small stores where you can find anything. One street can be like a string of small stores and what is very weird is they are very various, from car parts and electronics to food and vegetable stores, to places where actually you can eat. The traffic is a mess, and on the heat that never goes away, people are buying vegetables from the small store from the edge of the street, same edge where people are eating kebab on plastic tables, same edge where people are walking, same edge where you can see clothes strung on hangers outside of the clothes store, same edge where people are waiting for the old bus, same edge where old people are selling sun glasses, sockets, necklaces.
Nobody looks worried and every day you see the same ritual on the same street: same people walking, same people eating, same people smoking. Here is like the time is not passing. The only moment when I feel people change is when the mosques start to play.
Then I go to the center, and things start to be different. Here you see more occidental people, young people dressed up, and they are like ants, and is like the center is a big swarm. But when you get closer to Vardar, the people are calmer. When you get to the city square where Alexander the Great reigns and you can hear the river passing, I get the same feeling as in the Albanian street, that time is stopping. It's like you can feel the force of nature stronger than the force of human. Alexander the Great, Vardar and the Clock from the old rail stations are like the guards of the city square.
And then, in the same city center, the human force is struggling to defeat the nature force: from several years Macedonians are rebuilding the center and huge and fancy buildings are rise from the ground.
It's hard to describe Skopje in words. For me is a city which represents Macedonia, a city where you can find many diverse things, from people to buildings, from places to food and clothes. In here, you can find the west and the orient. It's somehow unorganized and this shows me the simplicity of Macedonian people. The city is like me. And every different place is special for every state of spirit that I have.
