By the early afternoon, we made it all to the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid, to another World Heritage Site: Ohrid, in southwest Macedonia. More than a few friends recommended Ohrid... and, though we were running short on time, we decided to make the push and agreed it was well worth the effort.
Ohrid is a gorgeous city with a cool disposition. The steep cobblestone streets are filled with galleries, gardens, cafés, old-school barber shops, fortresses, and a mess of churches... once upon a time Ohrid had 365 churches, one for each day in the year.Already a hot bed for tourism, we were lucky to get there in early spring (when there is no queue for straight-razor shaves, because they are sweet).
We left Ohrid at sunset, and we were getting really short on time (being that we had to make the long haul through Serbia to get back to Hungary the next evening)... but, my good friend Tanja (from Slovenia) has a friend in Skopje; I had heard great things about him and the city, so I really wanted to pay him a visit and see what we could of Skopje at night.
Well, we met just the guy... Goce is a great dude - very open-minded, flexible, intelligent, and super kind. He is a drummer / neolithic archaeologist / professor... by profession, but served as a rad Skopje tour guide for the night. While running around the city, he fed us the abridged history of Macedonia, present-day political and social climate, and gave us the scoop on the future push to enter the EU in conjunction with Skopje 2014 (and the controversies that are arising with the redevelopment). It was a hell of a lesson, and a killer tour in just a few hours.
I would definitely like to reconnect with Goce in the heart of the Balkans again... I dig Macedonia and think it would be cool to hang there for a bit longer... hopefully getting to catch Goce at a gig somewhere and get into the art scene a little more next time around too...
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