Lake Ohrid, Macedonia

After a wonderful three months, I left Kosovo to start a Balkan adventure with my mom. Our first stop was Lake Ohrid, FYROM/Macedonia. On the way, we stopped in Skopje. The travel agency wanted us to spend a night in Skopje, but since I have already been there and I know it is not the most exciting place in the world, I strongly disagreed and decided we had to change plans. We had a pleasant stop there though and walked around the huge Bazaar, only since it was a Sunday it was virtually empty.

Then we had around a three hour drive to Ohrid, and except for a border guard being very confused about why I spent three months in Kosovo, nothing exciting happened. We arrived at Ohrid at night, so we couldn’t really see anything. We settled into our hotel and went downstairs for dinner. Well since it is not tourist season, the restaurant was completely empty except for us. The waiter explained to us what our food options were, “trout, veal, fish, scallops, chicken..” and I love scallops, and have been craving seafood these past three months, so I jumped at the idea of getting scallops. My mom opted for trout, since our guide told us it was a specialty here and there was a kind of trout that only lived in this lake. Our food arrived and I looked down and saw meat. I was utterly confused – this was definitely not scallops. My mom started laughing and told me that they must have meant veal scallopini, since veal is commonly eaten here. I am not the kind of person to make a fuss and send things back, so I reluctantly ate my veal… it was okay. The food in Macedonia definitely has not been the best.

The next day was great. Ohrid is a small city on Lake Ohrid, which straddles both Macedonia and Albania. The lake itself is very beautiful, and is the number one tourist destination in Macedonia. At first I was bummed out that we came so late in the season – bad weather, some stores are closed…but the positive outcome is that the streets are empty, and we are free to wander around the city without any other tourists nearby. There is a modern part of the city, but there is also an old walled city that sits upon a hill. At the top of the hill there is a castle, which definitely crosses the line between renovation and complete reconstruction of a castle. It is basically brand new and does even resemble an old historic building, but at least it sets an atmosphere and gives us an idea of what the area used to look like.

The best two words to describe Ohrid are ‘little churches.’ The city is full of them! It is really beautiful, we spent a long time looking around little streets, and after every turn, we found a small hidden abandoned church. They are mostly all brick and Orthodox. We only entered a couple of them, since most of them are in very bad condition and are closed. The ones we did enter though have old fresco murals covering the walls. It’s hard to imagine why such a small city would need over twenty churches, but I went with the flow and appreciated them. Afterward, we drove around 20 km (or 12 miles for those of us who don’t understand the metric system), to Sveti Naum church, which sits on the sea. We had to walk past many tourist stalls selling little paintings of religious figures and jars of honey… poor disappointed stall owners, since there were hardly any tourists and they were wasting their time sitting there.

The church for some reason had a lot of peacocks in its garden, that is probably the thing that I will remember most, even though it was a nice church. As great as churches are from an art and historical perspective, after a certain point they can really just all blend together, especially in the case of Ohrid, where the architecture is all practically the same. The peacocks though were hilarious, and our guide could not really understand why they were there. Peacocks are somewhat a religious symbol here, I’ve seen them on some of the iconoclasts, so perhaps that is one of the reasons.

After Sveti Naum, we wandered around the city more, and on our walk back to our hotel, my mom and I were lucky enough to watch the sunset. It was perfect: the sun was setting right next to the old city, and also on Lake Ohrid, so there was a beautiful reflection on the lake. Those of you who know me know that I am absolutely obsessed with taking photos on sunsets. This time I really outdid myself and took over 116. I’ve been trying to narrow them done, and maybe I have around 40 left on my computer. I just can’t say no to them, and there were even swans swimming in the lake in the pink water from the sun. Really, how can you resist?

Ohrid overall was a completely charming city, and I definitely see why so many tourists flock there in the summer. The old streets are adorable, but seem to me more authentic than the white stone streets you see somewhere like Dubrovnik. It is touristy, however since we went in late October we were basically alone in the city. If you are in the Balkans, I would definitely recommend going to this city. It is perhaps not a completely authentic city, at least the old part, as it tries to caters to tourists, it is still a great historic spot because of the plethora of little churches and the picturesque spot on the lake.

Macedonia itself is a pretty confusing country. The Balkans is characterized by ethnic tension, and Macedonia is no exception. Actually, the Albanian community has a large percentage (I think around 25%) of the population, and thus it became the second official language after Macedonian. A lot of neighboring countries lay a claim on Macedonia - there is Albania who claims big cities like Tetovo, Greece who has issue with the technicality of the name because the Macedonian Region extends into Greece and Bulgaria, not just the country Macedonia itself, and Bulgaria. I've had Bulgarians tell me that there is no such thing as a Macedonian - they are all Bulgarians! I did not take this man's word for truth, since Macedonia was in Bulgaria's control for a long time. But that's just the thing here - every modern country was at some time in someone else's control... Just because a country was under someone's control 400 years ago - does that legitimize their claim on it? I think about this and apply it to the US: are we all Brits? I would never call myself British... but our version of nationality is different, and to understand the Balkan idea of it you have to forget what we think of as ethnicity and nationality in the US. It's a long process...but interesting!