Every tourist to the Balkans has probably heard about the dramatic remaking of Macedonia’s capital, Skopje. Twenty-five years after the country peacefully won independence from the former Yugoslavia, its capital is in the midst of a huge face-lift: the construction of some 40 monuments, sculptures, facades and buildings.
The transformation is meant to sweep away the post-Soviet pall and attract tourists. I was one of them last year. Everywhere I looked, I felt small, dwarfed by shiny, new gargantuan bronze statues of Alexander the Great and his parents, Philip II of Macedon and Olympias, that lord over the main plaza. Galloping horses here and imposing Doric columns there round out various corners; faux-Baroque facades and balconies reminded me of Josef Stalin’s wedding cake-style apartments along East Berlin’s broad boulevards, which have a certain retro appeal these days but still feel overwrought.
Despite the immense investment here — the current estimate of the project is $727 million, according to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network — tour operators who aren’t closely linked with the country’s state-run tourism office are championing a different reason to visit the region: ecotourism.
This nascent industry is less interested in Skopje’s overhaul and more keen to spirit travelers along the country’s hiking trails to tucked-away Byzantine monasteries and caves, and arrange cycling tours and homestays with cordial Macedonians who can talk about their country’s culture and history.
My guide, Slobodan (who goes by his nickname, Danko), works for one of these operators, Macedonia Experience, run by Jane Josifovski, which organizes Jeep safaris, horseback riding, caving, diving and paragliding. My visit last year came when Macedonia had been in the headlines, as hundreds of thousands of refugees had crossed the country’s southern border en route to northern Europe. And yet, Mr. Josifovski told me, overnight stays and tourism in general in Macedonia were moving at a strong clip, helped along by cheap flights into Skopje on the budget airline Wizz Air and inexpensive travel within the country.
The morning after I arrived in the capital, Danko drove me to Matka Canyon, one of his favorite haunts. A former student of architecture and the son of engineers, he told me on the way that he had decided to be a mountaineer (and drummer). Most weekends, he heads into the mountains, less than an hour’s drive from Skopje, to hike or ski.
From the trailhead, I followed him up narrow, leafy passes and around switchbacks while he recounted the history of the pathways we’d be exploring. The Ottomans had blazed many of Matka’s trails as they sought to build a railroad from Lake Ohrid, on the Albanian border, into Macedonia’s interior. Danko occasionally turned back to point out the view. We could see the Treska River and forested, misty ravines, as well as spiked ridges, like blades of a knife.
He later led me to see the 14th-century Church of St. Nikola, which was locked, but while perched at a nearby picnic table on a ledge overhanging the summit, he pointed first to hooks driven into the sides of the steep faces, and told me which he himself had scaled. He then pointed to the canyon’s depths, to the cloistered, emerald Lake Matka and to the Monastery of St. Andrew, alongside an attractive lakeside chalet resort, making for a dramatic panorama.
We made our way down the mountain toward the lake and once we reached the shore, Danko hailed a small motorboat with a thatched bamboo roof to take us across to the resort. Once there, we sipped espressos and gazed out at the striated gorge while waiting for the next boat that would take us up the Treska River to Cave Vrelo. It had turned chilly, and the thought of touring a frigid cave didn’t excite me, but Danko insisted it would be worth the effort. Our boat finally appeared, and we sped onward through the cavernous passage, where I saw Robinson Crusoe-esque bungalows and tree houses on the banks and ducks with their ducklings scurrying away from our boat.
Cave Vrelo is among 10 caves in the Matka Canyon, and it is also among Europe’s deepest. As we docked near its entrance, Danko pointed out murky gaps in the exterior where divers slip inside. We were taking the overland route, and as we descended the slippery stairs, I gradually saw that Danko had been right: Before me were jaw-dropping stalactites, smooth in contour, like otherworldly wax, and one most noticeably shaped like a pine cone. Bats swerved overhead as we approached one stunning section known as the concert hall because members of the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra once played there after the cave was opened to visitors.
We later sat at the restaurant Mechkina Dupka, or Bear’s Cave, where I ordered the so-called Village Chicken. It was baked, covered in a savory mushroom sauce, and came with fresh squash sautéed in garlic and olive oil, along with a hearty house white wine from Macedonia’s Tikves region. We had a long drive ahead of us, said Danko, via Tetovo and into the Mavrovo National Park, so we toasted our journey before hitting the road.
When we reached Tetovo, Danko navigated heavy traffic, and I wondered if a stop there was worth our time. But as we finally pulled up alongside the Sarena Dzamija mosque, my eyes took in the vibrant painting and graceful half-timbered design. This was indeed a rare find, in part because it is uncommon for a mosque’s exterior to be so adorned — Sarena Dzamija translates to “decorated mosque” — but also because two sisters, named Hurshida and Mensure, rather than sultans or pashas, had bankrolled the construction in 1438. The women are buried in the octagonal stone turbe adjacent to the mosque.
By dusk, we were at Mavrovo National Park, and had checked into the inviting home of Deni and Tina Lazareski in the village of Leunovo, located in the park itself. The pair welcome tourists year-round, and had recently built an addition to their home for guests. Tina had prepared stuffed peppers in a tomato sauce for us, and we sat around the dinner table long after the meal, talking about our families, and in particular, life under Communism, all aided by Danko’s translation.
Danko had hoped to guide me to the summit of Mount Medenica in the Bistra Massif the next day, but we woke to a heavy fog and he didn’t want to risk getting lost. So we chose a trail at a lower elevation that still afforded us pretty views of wild horses in the distance and shepherds with their flocks, as well as clusters of almost supernatural, purple-stemmed cotton thistles.
We departed the pastoral scene for Galicnik, a village renowned for its traditional folk dancing and weddings every July, where we met Marko Bekric, who runs a mountain-biking business. Over lunch at his family’s restaurant, he explained that the business had been inspired by years of cycling the Bistra mountains, scoping out new paths, and thinking that enthusiasts from abroad would thrill to the unspoiled nature, as he does.
The Macedonian government evidently thought the same, granting him a rural development loan to start the venture. After lunch, he led me across the road to show me an abandoned cheese-making factory he’d renovated where he stores the bikes. Someday, he added, he’d like to convert the building into a museum and offer instruction on making sheep and goat cheese.
The tour, though, reached a height the next day when it shifted from ecotourism to cultural immersion in gorgeous Ohrid, one of Europe’s oldest cities at a jewel of a lake bordering both Macedonia and Albania. Our guide, Nebojsa Kamilov, led us up and down the cobblestone-covered hills of the city — whose Slavic name comes from vo rid, or “city on the hill.” At just about every turn we took in sweeping views of the translucent water, none so sublime as those at the picturesque Church of St. Jovan at Kaneo, perched on a finger jutting out into the vast lake.
A student of art and history, Nebojsa gave a fascinating overview of Ohrid’s Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman roots; its scholarly legacy (the first Slavic university was established here by the ninth-century Sts. Kliment and Naum); and the hundreds of other churches that once dotted the hillsides, supposedly one for every day of the year. We visited several of these ubiquitous and elegant multidomed churches, each with a covetable collection of frescoes, icons and mosaics. My favorite was the Church of St. Kliment and St. Pantelejmon, which had a fourth-century mosaic mysteriously signed “Made by those whose names are only known to God.”
These, of course, were the soaring buildings of their day, structures that involved immense expenditures and likely cost overruns that would dwarf those in Skopje. But these churches, this landscape, had stood the test of time. As Macedonia’s capital remakes itself, their permanence is a reassuring reminder that while this country has changed hands more times than one can count, its beauty and its culture endure.
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