Kitschy Skopje

In Skopje, I possibly surfed with the best guy to stay with in this hard-to-understand city: Rubin, with 21 years, has been involved in so many protest, actions and projects, that I feel like you could already write a book about his legacy :D 

On my first evening I got to meet his crazy friends, whom he all seems to have met through his political activities. The following day, he showed me all around town, not letting a single governmental building unnoticed, recounting the occasion on which he had been protesting in front of it. The highlight of all anecdotes for me was the fact that the walls of most offial buildings in Skopje look solid, but actually aren't. When you knock on them with your fingers, you can hear they're paper-thin. Rubin found out when they were throwing eggs against it - how else?

I learned that most of what I saw in Skopje's city center is actually not older than 3 to 5 years. The floor of the main square had been paved only weeks before. Now look at the pictures:

I think I've never seen a place with so many random statues. Some were nice. But most were just...random. The worst of all though, was the water fountains on the main square, that make you feel like you're in a mix of Las Vegas and Disneyland of Antiquities.

Nothing seems to fit together in this city, until you get out of this oddly renovated city center and reach the old bazaar, the actual core of the city. Cobbled streets make you feel normal again, and the little shops look like any other old market in the Balkans.

We stumbled across a little passage, that Rubin didn't know yet. My trained eyes spotted the Star of David above the arched entrance - a silent reminder of the once vibrant Jewish community in Skopje.

After a really great lunch in a place called "Squeeze me" (because they also make awesome juices - I had the "Flu killer"), and after an even greater Peanut Butter Cake and a round of mini pool (which I won, yay!)...

...I could convice Rubin to visit the Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia, which, to our both relief, also had an exhibition on Jewish history in Macedonia in general. It was free of charge, and even though the reasing order was a bit confusing, it contained detailed and well-presented information.

Downstairs they had an exhibition of paintings drawn by pupils aged 12 to 16 about the Holocaust. I personally find it a bit sick to make children paint on this topic, but some of the pictures were really breathtaking.