Skopje - The Dark Horse

In a half-empty bus grooving DJ Koze, heading to Tirana, Albania. 40H ago we were still tucked in our hostel in Kosovo, so much seems to have happened since then. Voilà.

Woke up into early, foggy Pristina and left the hostel 6am to catch the once-a-day 7am train to Skopje. The cab driver left us by this little pink house, that turned out to be the Pristina main railway station. The place was of the size of Berlin Hauptbahnhof's toilet facilities, with two sets of rail tracks. The station was closed when we got there, until this red-capped blue-collar officer with an aura of the size of the whole station emerged from nowhere first to greet us & later to sell us the 4€ tickets to Skopje. He was a truly pleasant acquaintance. We hopped on the three wagon train, and we soon found out a surprising fact. Judging by the signs “nödbroms” & “kasta ej ut föremål, som kan vålla brand eller annan skada”, the train once upon a time (somewhere in the nineties I guess) belonged to Sweden. Indeed those confortable, stirring benches made our rear ends tickle.






The trip (once again) was supposed to be of four hours. However, the one-and-a-half-hour wait on the Macedonian border delayed our arrival at Hostel Hostel, our hostel of choice in Skopje. What a good call that turned out to be. The second we set our feet in the front yard of Hostel Hostel, on Ognjan Prica 18, we knew this place had good karma.

There had been some problems with our booking. We had booked the place the night before from hostelbookers.com, and somehow Hostel Hostel had received info of us staying two nights, instead of one. On some other places this might have been a problem, especially because we hadn't managed to print the reservation. But here, no worries. The owner even offered us breakfast that was still on the kitchen table; it was 12:30pm! All-morning-on breakfast, flexible check-out, clean premises, wi-fi, internet, laundry, helpful & friendly staff & cheap (9€ for a dorm), what else can you ask? On top of that, there was a daily 7pm local light dinner offered, sweet. The atmosphere was of a healthy hippie-commune, with the open kitchen & the cosy, sofa-filled front yard setting the pace. Staff had no uniforms, no timetables. Hostel Hostel is hands down the most pleasant hostel I've ever been to. As the name suggest, it really has twice a hostel in it. Ever go nuts & reach Skopje, you know the place to go. The only minus I can come up with was the smelly, snoring, over-weight Romanian role-player who bunked in our dorm, but that was just tough luck..





Skopje is one nice-looking town, full of intriguing history, lively people & some funny-looking guys. Situated between two mountains, with Vardar river flowing through the city, the setting is pretty epic. Add pedestrian boulevards, historical statues, ample squares, a 6th century castle, a 5th century stone bridge, the Old Town, cosy cafes, huge bazaars, cheap kebab-stalls, crazy drivers & red busses, and you get an idea of Skopje. The prevailing Western idea of all capitals in the Balkan's being rubbish, is total rubbish. With the Old Town's little streets (full of jewelry stores, seriously, on this one street in particular there was nothing else than “gold” shining through the windows), the Macedonia Avenue's hub & Kale Fortress's imperial character give the city a face of it's own. That's one fancy face, I'll tell you.










The only downside being railing is that every day can't possibly be Friday, because then we'd see the best in every single backwater. It was Tuesday, we were in pleasant jazz cafe along Macedonia Avenue sipping espresso & asking for tips to go out. “Not much tonight, Friday's big”. An answer we've gotten used to since we got out of 24/7 party-mecca Berlin. Never mind, we started the night by heading to the Old Town on the other side of Vardar to this kebab diner we saw earlier full of locals having late lunch. 10 delicious kebab sticks about the size of Napoleon's (with naan-like bread, onion & jalopenos) cost 115 denars, with the exchange rate for one euro giving 61 denars. Fearing dehydration, had a local beer called Skopka, not bad. Headed back over the illuminated Stone Bridge back to Macedonia Avenue, and that's when we saw one of the most memorable sights of the trip. Looking high up towards the top of mount Vodno, there was an illuminated gigantic golden cross, that seemed to float in the middle of dark night sky. It was kind of a scary sight. Good PR for Justice, though. Right there we decided to trek Mount Vodno right to the top to check out the cross.



We were planning the hike at T-Club, a good-vibe bar frequented by locals, accompanied with the cheapest (2€) & most disgusting GT's ever. Suddenly, this girl just drops two invitations for a party at Papaya club, & vanishes. Even though the streets were full of strolling people (for a Tuesday night), we hadn't a plan A at all, so Papaya club served as our B-plan. Got there 00:30am, nobody. We scanned the club, only finding two girls behind the bar and one grey-haired ex-surfer-looking guy, heading towards us. He was the owner, persuading us to stay with the argument “it's still early, people will come, crazy time soon”. Yeah..whatever.. we thought, could be fun talking to the guy. We even helped the owner put some candles all over the place, not that it mattered..soon his entourage got in & started an intriguing conversation about music. We discussed every rock band from Velvet Underground to Echo & the Bunnymen, why Rolling Stones is better than Beatles & how's music changing in 20 years. The club owner, who later turned out to be a real tycoon owning five clubs in Skopje, went wild: latino music will conquer the clubs all around the world. Watch out dubstep, Pedro is coming. We had a fun time talking to these youngish old farts, they were the kind of guys you want to have as your uncles. Good times.



So the next morning, after check-out (left our stuff in Hostel Hostel), we did the first sweat-sport related activity in our trip. We climbed all the way up to Vodno mountain, just southwest to the capital Skopje. Because the trail only started at 500m (the mountain was 1066m), we took a cab to that medium point, and trekked the remaining. The obese cab driver (his belly literally leaned in the steering wheel) drove the whole journey up all on second gear; poor ramshackle Ford. The trek was awesome: these narrow, rocky trails in the middle of deep forest leading us step after step higher towards our goal. On the top, there was this gigantic cross I mentioned before, the Millenium Cross. This 66 meter high ornament has been since it's construction in 2002 the biggest Christian cross in the world. Now they're even constructing a panorama elevator, along with a restaurant & a bar into the cross. It's really some sight, as well as whole Skopje from that height. Pics:





After that kind of physical strain, it was time for the long planned eight-euro-challenge. A few years ago, we wondered with a few friends what was the biggest amount of food/calories you could buy from a restaurant with a Finish lunch coupon of the value of 8€. In a few minutes, everybody came up with McDonalds. The menu? Seven cheeseburgers & a small milkshake (at the time a small soda was 1,20, versus the 1€ milkshake). Since Berlin, we've had in mind doing it somewhere in the Balkans, to see how much cheaper it gets. So once again, we were in the middle of this calorie-fueled lard-smelling feast of obesity, and we were happy again. Even with our rail-shrunken stomachs, it wasn't a challenge at all. Yummy yummy. The cost? 7€, so not much difference between Macedonian & Finish Donalds, even though rest of the prices are really low. We should've made the challenge in Belgrade, where it would've cost us a mere 3,6€, with two cheeseburgers for 90 cents. With our tummies full of shit, walked with our newest Skopje-acquaintance to the station, and hopped in the 7pm night bus to Tirana, Albania. So it goes.