We made it safely to Skopje and hopped onto the slowest public trans bus in the city towards my friend, Rachel’s, apartment. Rachel and I served in the same Peace Corps group and did Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World- the girls’ camp that I ran here) together. She loved it in Macedonia so much that she found a job at a private American primary/high school where she hopes to stay for a few more years. She lives in a beautiful apartment in a great part of Skopje and was generous enough to let us crash at her place while we were in Skopje. After settling in, she took us to the one Mexican restaurant in Skopje. Had I still been a volunteer and hadn’t been home for a year and a half, I’m sure I would have loved it. But, seeing as I’ve been Americanized again, I found it a little bland and didn’t see much difference between a taco, burrito and enchilada. But, for Macedonian standards (a country far from Mexico or any other country with similar food), it was really good. We grabbed some ice cream and headed back to Rachel’s to crash.
We woke up Wednesday and headed to the center to meet my friend, Dejan, for “early” coffee at 10:00. Dejan and I worked together briefly at my school and the fist time we met, we had a pretty extended conversation about American music. His English is amazing due to the fact that he spends a lot of time watching American movies and films and listening to American music. His knowledge of American pop culture is also pretty amazing. We’d hang out often and watch movies and trade music. He now lives in Skopje and is finishing his English degree. We went to a café along the river after I protested his first suggestion of the Irish Pub. I think the Irish Pub in Skopje is great if you’re an ex-pat looking for fellow ex-pats and a pint of Guiness. However, I’m not in Skopje to be an ex-pat, and I’d like to consider myself less of a foreigner then your average American in Macedonia. After a good couple of hours of conversation, music and movie suggestions, we parted ways and met up with Michael, another volunteer from my group in stayed in Macedonia and found a contract job with USAID. We met at one of the typical Peace Corps Volunteer lunch spots, Del Mat Fu, an Italian joint right in the center with tons of pizza and pasta options and female servers with extremely tight miniskirts. This was also the first restaurant I’d ever been to in Skopje, so it’s got a little bit of sentimental value as well. Michael and I caught up and it looks like he’s headed to Return Peace Corps Volunteer Central (aka Washington, D.C.) to grad school. It was great catching up, and hopefully we’ll see each other again stateside.
Continuing with our busy day, we then stopped by the only open LGBT organization in Macedonia, MASSO (Macedonian Association for Free Sexual Orientation. Robb and I talked to a bunch of the members about the state of LGBT affairs in Macedonia and Robb took tons of notes for what will hopefully be his first story in the Windy City Times. The state of affairs here is pretty rough and they hope to get sexual orientation included in the anti-discrimination laws within the next few years. As it stands, only one staff member (the president) is openly gay while the rest are out to most of their friends as well as on the organization’s website, but none of their parents know. They’re opening two regional offices in other cities, but the state of affairs is much different in Skopje than it is in other cities, and the other volunteers in other cities are afraid to even go to an internet café to access MASSO’s website for fear that the runners or others in the café will see which website they’re on. Skopje is one thing, where people are much more accepting of that which is different, as is seen by the number of different groups of people you’ll see walking down the streets (obvious foreigners, fashionistas, punks, businesspeople) as opposed to the one basic look you see in most other cities. But MASSO has done some great work on making the LGBT community more visible through festivals like Love is Love Week as well as photo exhibits, and they are now working to get sexual orientation added to the anti-discrimination laws in the country. They also hope to make those in the LGBT community more comfortable in coming out in Macedonia, then get Macedonia more comfortable with the LGBT community. They’ve been around for just a few years, but have made great strides already.
We had one more person to meet up with- Viktorija, one of my “GLOW girls” who was first a camper at Camp GLOW and then returned the next year as a junior counselors. She also taught English lessons at the school where I took my private Macedonian lessons in Kocani. We caught up at the New Age Café, an earthy café hidden on a windy street near the center that serves tea in terra cotta kettles and cups and has great hot spiced wine in the winter and that cozy “pillows on the floor” feel to it. After that, we headed to Rachel’s to recharge and then headed to my favorite sandwich stand in the country, Nino, which not only serves veggie burgers and hummus, but also has veggie sausages, spinach burgers, lentil burgers and seitan. A true haven for us veggies. While at the stand, I asked one of the counter women if the taxis in front of the stand were trustworthy. When she said they weren’t, she immediately offered to call a taxi for us instead, which was extremely nice by normal standards and practically unheard of by Skopje standards.
We made it an early night at Rachel’s and got up early Thursday to make a leisurely morning before we headed back to Kocani. After dropping the bag at the bus station and buying our tickets, I took Robb to Broz Café, which is the one Starbucks-like café in all of Macedonia. Instead of your typical Macedonian café fare (Nescafe, macchiatos, powder cappuccinos and Turkish coffee), this place offers white chocolate mochas, caramel macchiatos and frappuccinos. I was pretty psyched when this place opened up near the end of my service, but their drinks were pretty mediocre by American standards, although fantastic by Macedonian standards. That was not so much the case this time around, as it seems they’ve improved immensely in the past year and a half. After Robb grabbed some souvenirs from there, we headed to a quick breakfast place and then went to the park by mall to take pictures of probably one of the most creative protests I’ve ever seen or heard of in Macedonia:
Due to the privatization of many formerly state-owned factories, a lot of people are losing their jobs. Even worse, many of them have been working in these factories for 25-30 years and are just five or so years shy of being eligible to receive pension checks and too old to start working again, plus most of them have college-bound children. So, they decided to camp out in the park that is directly across the street from the Parliament building in hopes of either getting a pension or getting their jobs back. They’ve been there since March and nothing’s happened yet, so we’ll see. But, in a country where the only other protests I’ve heard of are roadblocks or good ol’ fashioned strikes, this really stands out.
On the way to the bus station, I was finally able to get some burek, which is a pastry here that’s usually filled with cheese or meat. It’s pretty oily, and I tried to stay away from it while I lived here, but it’s sinfully good, especially at the end of a long night of drinking. The burek stand is Macedonia’s answer to America’s late-night Mexican joint. The bus ride home was fine, although by the time we hit Stip, the stop before Kocani, the bus was jam-packed with absolutely no room, which made me very grateful that we got on in Skopje and secured two seats. We made it back to Kocani and took a cab home.
