All That Glitters, Is Not Always Gold

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The music finally subsided in the early hours of the morning. However we were up bright and early and after an adequate breakfast, we made our way to the old Railway Station which now masquerades as the City Museum - free entry. The striking art deco building built between 1938 and 1940 is cut in half - left a relic to the 1963 earthquake. The simple clock on the front of the building remains halted - forever 0517 hours 1963. The museum houses a fascinating insight into the destruction of the city in old photographs and artefacts. I was surprised that foreigners had been killed - this was communist Yugoslavia, before it really fell out with Mother Russia and opened up to the west. There were photographs, showing Marshall Tito coming down to the southern reaches of his empire to see the devastation for himself and no doubt plan an emergency response. The evacuation of the children took place – Skopje became a “city without children” and the rush to get the population out of the tent city before the advent of the cold winters in these parts. However, it was interesting to see just how many temporary new homes Britain helped to build and fund and just how few the Americans had contributed. The usual propaganda snaps of the Youth Brigades, helping out the comrades were also in evidence. The Man in the Middle has just finished my Jason Smart book - Balkan Oydessy. As with the book, we both concurrently agreed that the pots and pans section of any museum bores us to death and we skipped the basement area below the earthquake section.



The sun was burning through the early morning cloud, as we headed away from the museum. The Ramstore Shopping Centre was springing into life next door. Who would have thought that the Derby County retail machine would stretch this far? As the sun burned through, I might finally get my Alex the Great photographs with the sun in the right direction. The Alex the Great statue is the centrepiece of the Skopje 2014 project. After the 1963 devastation, the city centre was rebuilt is a typical communist fashion. The newly independent Macedonia came up with a plan to revitalize the centre and create a new one, fit for the independent nation. The overview was to build attractive structures and monuments to show the confidence of the new nation to the world and draw in visitors. The figures for the costs seem to have been a speculative guess, as indeed are the numbers of new buildings which has mushroomed. The end result as I said in my previous blog is very Vegas or Disney, but striking under the blue skies in the heat of early autumn. I wasn't convinced all these structures were real, so I took tapping them with my hand jut on the off chance they were plastic. We noted a great many of the buildings have been given an added touch of graffiti or caught in the middle of a paintball war. Lions with red eyes (and other red bits, which we’ll skip over to prevent embarrassment). Government buildings splattered with colourful paint blotches. Stag do experiences are all the rage in Eastern Europe – firing AK47s and the like – and here we have a real life European capital, where it seems paint ball wars are not confined to a damp forest in the middle of nowhere. The marks are the reaction of the people – a sort of silent protest at the cost of it all. In a country where mass unemployment is the norm, the costs have been quite astronomical.



We stopped off at the Mother Theresa Memorial house. Mother Theresa was born as an Agnes in Skopje in 1934. She found a calling and left to live with the Sisters in Ireland in 1928 at the age of 18, before departing for India. She devoted herself to the lives of the poor in India from January 1929 onwards, receiving the Nobel Prize in 1979 and being canonised in 2016. She died in Calcutta in 1997, where she laid in state. The house is a tribute to her life. It held our attention long enough to study the photographs of her meeting the great and the good including the Pope, Princess Diana and the Dali Lama. She looked in awe of the Pope, happy to see Diana and positively disturbed, when stood next to good old Ronnie Reagan.



After the minor difficulty getting basketball tickets the previous evening, I suggested checking out availability of handball tickets for the Vardar Skopje Champions League game at 1730 hours. Yes, even handball has a Champions League. The guy in the record shop ticket agency in the shopping centre studied his screen and announced tickets only available at the venue. We abandoned the plan, when we discovered the exact location of the said venue – the afternoon football was never going to give us enough time to get there. The Arc de Triomphe round the corner was another monument from the Skopje 2014 plan, covered in paint splashes. A vintage creation – from 2011 – it looks somewhat older and more worn that it’s 5 year status suggests. My second Arc of the year, after Chisinau, Moldova.



We walked off down the Vardar River towards the Philip II Arena. The fisherman were spread out at strategic intervals on the Vardar. We noted one do his bit for the planet, by throwing plastic bottles at the ducks after his bait. The original plan was to see FK Rabotnicki play at this big stadium. They had conveniently changed the game to 1500 hours on Saturday. The use of the this 33,000 capacity is a bit of a farce for the home games of Rabotnicki and Vardar, who could usually fit in there a thousand times over. Alas on Friday, it was confirmed that the game was elsewhere. I had noticed from Macedonian press sources that the last couple of games had been moved out of the stadium, although the international websites suggested the games had in fact been played on the hallowed turf. The Macedonian Football Association had laid some new turf in advance of 3 big international games scheduled for the following week and were waiting for it to bed in. They obviously hadn’t heard we were coming. Two Germans approached, as we neared the ground, in order to query whether we there for the game. We suggested not, as it wasn't being played there. They looked devastated. On a mission - as only German groundhoppers can be - to see a game in every country in Europe. They only had Kosovo left. This game was a bonus Alas, the Kosovo games in Divisions 1 and 2 had been switched to midweek and left them with Saturday free. Our news was possibly the last straw. "We hope to see a Division 3 game in Kosovo tomorrow". I feared for the success of their mission. The open door presented opportunities for photographs of the Arena as a consolation. We highlighted the stadium where Rabotnicki had relocated to and where the Metalurg game would be in Division 2. They had no map and didn't seem very clued up. "See you at Metalurg", we agreed. We never saw them again.



The Man in the Middle had a thirst on by this stage, so we retired to a bar by the Vardar. The sun was high in the sky now. It was very hot. A couple of old boys baked in the sun on the wall in front of us. The Man in the Middle cautiously opened his ring pull on the bottle of Dab - his thumb already a victim of a kitchen implement. An old boy near us made a hash of his bottle opening. The beer gushed out of the neck. "Champagne" chuckled the barman. In the interests of bottle opening reearch, we had another. I deposited the "big" camera back at base. We headed to Gazi Baba, northeast of the city centre.



A few weeks ago I was in the North East's Premier Seaside Resort and an old friend of my childhood queried whether I was still following "that glory team". The irony was, he was sporting a Barcelona lesiure shirt. I assured him that I had retired from active service and was more likely to be spotted in the lower reaches of Balkan footie these days. There was no glory in evidence at the Stadium Zelezarnica. The team coach of Academia Pandev was one of the few clues that a match was actually about to take place. Weeds grew tall from between the discoloured seats. A few Police and stewards hid from the warm sun for as long as possible prior to kick off. Of the few that risked sunstroke as kick off loomed were 6 Germans, one of which bizarrely sported a Scotland shirt and a peaky blinder hat. Our friends from the morning never surfaced. There was no turnstile and no money was requested. Value football. The Macedonian Division 2 was clearly not box office. One of the Hamburgers wandered along the front of the seats, his mouth visibly counting. A man after my own heart. The Man in the Middle suggested we confer on the total. I incidentally made a total of 131. Metalurg had leaked 4 goals the previous week, but took an early lead against the run of play after a howling piece of keeping that would have made a Far Eastern betting syndicate very happy. After hitting the frame of the goal on a number of occasions, Pandev finally translated their dominance into goals and ran out 4-2 winners. The majority of the crowd were primarily pleased to have some respite from the 80 degrees heat. The small roof of the Main Stand - the only Stand - had been my salvation. The weeds survived trampling by another large crowd!



The city centre 24 hour party people were out in force again. Friday night, Saturday night, any excuse for a drink. We agreed. We settled in the same bar as the previous night. The crowds walked past us in both directions, some folk wearing a white costume. The barman elaborated, "It is the night of the White Knights". Visions of Klan followed. Research reveals it was the Festival of the White Night. We finished our bargain jumbo pulled pork kebabs. The strange folk wearing the white costumes were performing in front of the Alex the Great statue, when we arrived back by the river. It was sort of War Horse set to Macedonian music. A surreal experience in front of the surreal buildings. The heavy metal band outside the Concert Hall had been replaced by a version of the Corrs. The Man in the Middle was unimpressed and led the charge for another beer. There could be glory tomorrow.

Appendix 1

Macedonia Vtora Liga

Metalurg Skopje 2 Academia Pandev 4


Date: 1 October 2016 @ 1500 Hours

Venue: Stadium Zelezarnica, Skope, Macedonia


Attendance: 131

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Photos

Skopje
Mother Theresa Memorial

Skopje
Old Railway Station..................the clock remains forever 0517 am

Skopje
Mother Theresa Statue

Skopje
The damaged wing of the old Railway Station

Skopje
Mother Theresa Memorial

Skopje
Mother Theresa Memorial

Comments

[Rainyb]

Great statues!!