louiseinlimbo

After a week in and around Skopje, I took the bus down to Ohrid, apparently one of the oldest settlements in Europe.  It’s beside Lake Ohrid, which is one of the oldest lakes in the world, almost certainly the oldest in Europe, and also among the deepest.  It was a lovely area to explore at leisure – with some beautiful views across the lake (still with snow-capped mountains around), and a lot of historical stuff from different periods. To give an idea of that history, this picture above, of the Church of Saints Kliment and Pantelejmon - the world's oldest Slav monastery, with 5th century Roman ruins in the foreground - was taken from Tsar Samoil's fortress, dating from the turn of the 11th century (when this was the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire), but built on the site of an earlier fortification dated to the 4th century BC.  I can't pretend that I even began to get my head around the history in the town - too much for my ageing brain! - but it was all very nice ...

I have to admit that this country was not on my ‘must visit’ list, but having decided to visit Albania before a return visit to the UK in July, it seemed to make sense to also visit the neighbouring countries. I’d heard that North Macedonia – or at least its capital, Skopje – was a strange, rather ‘fake’ place, and could quickly see why it provokes that response.  Situated in an earthquake zone, large parts of it (apparently some 80% of the buildings) were destroyed in a huge earthquake in 1963.  Some of the subsequent re-building was in the modernist, or ‘brutalist’ style, together with plenty of pre-fabricated apartment buildings erected hastily to house those made homeless by the earthquake.  The picture above shows the brutalist Central Post Office and Telecommunications building. But then in 2010, the government launched ‘Skopje 2014’ – a big, expensive, and pretty controversial, project to add some grandeur to the city.  Apparently, more than 120 buildings...