Porno-Skopje!

PORNO-SKOPJE
Hi all! So I’ve had so many exciting adventures since the last time I wrote I am not even sure if I can get to writing about all of them tonight! But I will begin with my trip to Skopje, Macedonia - where I went for an academic conference.

I should first start by saying Skopje is awesome! What a super fun, really beautiful place! Great wine, friendly, attractive people, tons of good restaurants, beautiful scenery, and really affordable!!

After a harried few days teaching, packing and getting sorted out, I took the late flight into Skopje after teaching on Tuesday night. Arriving around 11pm, the hotel had sent a driver to pick me up. When I got into his very comfortable car, he immediately turned on the video screen in the passenger seat and proceeded to play a mix of pop and hip-hop videos for me…his favorites mostly, but he did take a few requests. After the ½ hour drive to my hotel, the driver, Goce, then let me check in, and drove me to get something to eat. He would then be my driver for most of the time there…which worked out excellently!

Goce dropped me off at the pizza place. I ordered a pizza for take away, and walked back to the hotel (about 10 minutes walk). On the way I passed a total of about 15 people, and much to my delighted surprise, each one looked up, smiled and said “Dobar vece” or the more informal “Zdravo!” Quite a change from Belgrade!

I got back to my room – which I must add, far exceeded my expectations! Clean, friendly, comfy, free wireless, etc. I highly recommend Hotel 7 to anyone going to Skopje. I turned on the TV while I ate my dinner. I was thrilled to find I had nearly 100 channels in English, Greek, German, Hungarian, Serbian, Macedonian, and maybe a few others. I watched an episode of CSI and then turned on CNN (for the 1st time in months!). When that got boring I began to flip around…and that’s then the unexpected happened…

…At one moment the TV was talking at a reasonable sound level about president Obama, but with an innocent flip of the channel it was suddenly blaringly loud, graphic pornography with a woman yelling “smack my ass! Smack my ass!” It’s late, the walls are thin, I flip it quickly, but the next channel is a Spanish telenovella. I go up one more, and NO JOKE…more graphic porn! To spare you 98 channels of this, I will summarize by saying that about every 3rd channel was a different manifestation and degree of pornography. There was a drag queen with a boy, a series of slides with skin pics, girl-on-girl, 2 girls and a boy...you name it!

It began to strike me as hilarious. First because I felt like “Don’t they know that they can charge for this stuff in hotel rooms?” And second because in Serbia I my TV gets 9 channels that are pretty much constantly playing one of four genres of TV show A) Political discussion, B) Slutty girls singing and dancing, C) Spanish telenovellas, and/or D) Gameshows. I come to Skopje and am not only spoiled for programming choice, but I seem to have dropped into a zone where “anything goes.” This atmosphere of friendliness in conjunction with what seems like a relatively open culture strikes me more like Budapest than like Belgrade.

OK, the next morning Goce picked me up to go to the conference. As Macedonia is like all mountains (which I did not realize) it was snowing pretty badly. The first day of the conference was held at a private university called FON. Here all the university students wear uniforms. They are all really attractive, and the facilities are finer than any university I have been to in the US. The talks were mostly very interesting. The people were a good mix of Macedonians, and other internationals, and there was a mix of youngish, mid-ish, and older than Moses. Every several hours we had a coffee break and were taken to the campus lounge – which looked like a swanky martini bar!

After the conference, Goce picked me up and drove me back to the hotel. That night I met up with a Macedonian friend who I know from a conference in Bosnia a few years back, “I.” We went out to dinner at a traditional kavana, drank rakia, ate delicious local specialties and giggled a lot. After dinner “I” gave me a tour of the city. We took photos at Mother Teresa’s house, and she showed me the train station which is one of the only remaining buildings from the terrible earthquake that shook Skopje in the 1960s. In fact, nearly every Macedonian I spoke to mentioned the earthquake, and someone said that as many as 1 in 5 people in Skopje died (or were injured…I can’t recall) in the earthquake.

Train station - stopped in time of earthquake

Interestingly, there is an old bridge in Skopje that looks like many other old bridges in the region…and most like the WWI bridge in Sarajevo. The bridge also withstood the earthquake. A few years ago, when they were restoring the bridge, they found a ton of dynamite in the bridge that had been left there when the Nazis pulled out in WWII. Amazingly, it did not detonate for the Nazis, and even more amazingly, it did not detonate during the earthquake!

At the Old Bridge

The next morning, Goce picked me up again and drove me to the pick-up point where all the remaining conference people met at like 7am to drive to Lake Ohrid. By now the sun had come out and I could see for the first time how really mountainous and lovely Skopje was! As we drove to Ohrid, we stopped on the outskirts of a town called Tetovo to hear a couple lectures at the South East European University. Lovely town, but a rather strange looking campus – modular.

At the South East European University - Tetovo

We then went on the Ohrid…and it was so very lovely! Reminded me of a combination of Lake Louise (near Banff where my sister got married) and Dubrovnik. A big, clean, mountain stream fed lake surrounded by a village reminiscent of Dubrovnik – with an ancient fortress, centuries old churches, an ancient Roman excavation site, and all surrounded again by huge mountains. After spending the day walking around, touring the sites, we went to the local Culinary/Hospitality Vocational High School and had wine, rakia and food. After a few rakias, and a few laughs with the director, most of the group left to go shopping a 3 of us stayed for another rakia and a chat with the director.

Church at Lake Ohrid

Beautiful scenery of Ohrid

Lake Ohrid

Me at Lake Ohrid

The trip home was long, of course, and we had some added drama when the bus unwittingly left one man’s wife at the rest-stop on the top of the mountain (one lane road) and we had to figure out how to get her back. When we got back to Skopje, I went for a bite to eat with one of the new conference buddies I had been hanging out with, “D”.

The perfect ending to a perfect day…we went to a MEXICAN restaurant (MY FAVE!) and had burritos and mojitos. “D’s” girlfriend – a stunningly beautiful, friendly and fun woman – met up with us, and had a few drinks and then all walked home together laughing and being silly. As we walked I told them about the porno-channel experience, and not a minute after I finished telling them about it, we came around the corner to face a huge billboard. Depicted on this immense advertisement for some mobile phone company is a (sexy) nun with puffy lips like Angela Jolie injected with Novocain. I said “Whoa! What’s with the Porno-nun?” To which “D” said “That is why the pope is always happy!” And in that moment it seemed like the place was a “pornoSkopje!”

The last day of the conference Goce had another job, and I decided to walk outside and just flag any taxi. Now, up to this point I had Goce driving me, had been with people from the city, and had gotten by with speaking Serbian and English. I hadn’t picked up a map (like an idiot) and figured it would be no problem to get where I was going. I flagged the first cab I saw…BIG MISTAKE! I think a good rule of thumb is that if the car looks like it was likely already a rust-bucket death-trap 10 years ago, you should probably not get in. I would also say that if you absent-mindedly do flag this type of cab, but the driver has less than 5 teeth, go ahead and let that one go by. But no…I got in, and to my surprise, this driver did not speak Serbian or English…nor did he have any idea where I wanted to go. When he dropped me off at some high school and I had no map and no idea where I was…I began to panic a little! It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, I just felt really stupid and conspicuous and lost.

After a bit of wandering, I flagged another cab…a nice one…and was brought to my destination. The last day our lectures were at a 3rd university – the Electrical Engineering Faculty. Here we saw all kinds of electrical stuff, concept cars (so Jersey baby!) and a exhibition of their commercial video program. We then disbanded as a conference and a group of us went to lunch. It was a beautiful day! We had a long lunch with amazing regional wine and then walked the city together…seeing the old bridge, the fortress and other sites.


Concept car w/Jersey style

As we were making our way to the birthplace of Mother Teresa (a Catholic Albanian born in Skopje) I hear someone calling my name. Who would I know here I wonder? I turn around to see the Australian, “L” who I had hung out with in Belgrade the previous week! He joined our clan and we proceeded to visit the Mother Teresa house and then proceeded to the old market – the Turkish part of the city. Coffee, sweets, and then we toured an old Hamam (Turkish bath house) that was now an art museum…lovely!

Mother Teresa's House


Hamam (Turkish Bath House) in Old Market

Museum inside Hamam

That night, my last in Skopje, I first went out with “I” and her friends to a great little bar that is attached to a huge art space. We had such a great time! And Aussie “L” met us as well. Afterward, “L” and I went to a party hosted by “D.” What a lovely flat! We snacked, drank rakia, listened to music…all of that. The evening was decisively ended when “D,” who had sat in front of the computer to change the music, suddenly began to snore very loudly…asleep at the wheel!

The next day Goce picked me up to take me to the airport. Hung-over and exhausted, I made my way to the tiny Skopje airport to fly to Cologne, to take a train to Amsterdam for a few days…and that is where I will stop for now. I will write all about A’dam later this week. Again - I had a blast in Skopje! Can't wait to go back!