Macedonia

February 24, 2003

Last weekend we finally made it to Skopje, Macedonia.  It’s a really nice small city!  Beautiful scenery, river running through it with pedestrian walks on both sides and bridges going across (kinda like Boise, but cement-not greenbelt ;-) hey, it was a communist country at one time!)  The market was fun and the old town (turkish) has small, windy streets with stone roads/paths and shops.  We stayed with another Freedom House volunteer that we met in D.C. during our orientation, Rob.  Sorry, no pictures.  Maybe next time.  We think we will probably go more often as the exchange rate for the dollar is better than here and it was good enough to essentially pay for our trip there!  It is only about two hours bus ride (1/2 hour is the boarder crossing scene).

The formal name of this nation is the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).  The lengthy moniker was adopted after the neighboring Greeks insisted they had proprietary rights to the placename Macedonia. Over the centuries, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania all have sliced off parts of the once-formidable Macedonian empire.  Curiously, as of yesterday "Yugoslavia" ceased to exist as the federation that remained after the breakup in 1991. That nation now is known as "Serbia and Montenegro." So I guess that makes this the "Former-Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (F-FYROM].”  –Rob Groneman, Freedom House Volunteer