A Weekend of Monasteries

---

This was a tiring weekend! Sashka and her parents took me to two different monasteries in two days; I'll begin with Mavrovo.
Yesterday we drove about an hour southwest of Skopje to Mavrovo, a village where most of the houses act as summer homes for those living in Skopje. The village is on a placid lake among the green mountains, and there are two other villages across the lake similar to the one we passed through. We stopped at a cafe to eat our breakfast, and I had a Turkish coffee, surprisingly. That prepared me for the twenty-minute drive through the winding mountains on a road wide enough for only one car, which means that one finds oneself in a predicament if one approaches a car coming from the opposite direction. Anybody who has traveled much in Europe likely is familiar with the process: both cars stop, one reverses until it reaches a place where it can pull over, and the other car proceeds past. This happened to us, but with Sashka's father driving as a true European, such occurrences did not deter him. He still sped along the road with no reservations about the precipitous fall only a few feet away. Who knew that driving with all the sharp turns could be a core workout!
After climbing into the rocky mountains covered with shrubs and trees, we reached the St. John Bigorski Monastery. Despite the fact that Sashka, her mother, and I were wearing pants, we were required to put on loaned skirts that reached to our ankles upon entering; any type of covering on a woman less than that is considered indecent at this monastery. This was an Orthodox monastery, of course, and the monks were dressed in black pants and long-sleeve shirts, black caps, and overgrown beards that were often black or grey as well. Along with studying and praying, the monks here produce honey, drachia (the liquor unique to Macedonia; it's super-distilled white wine, and to call it strong would be a grave understatement), and handling the many tourists. I won't bore you with too many details of the background of the monastery (I'll save that for my dad, the history buff), but essentially it was built in the eighteenth century hidden in the hills. There are hundreds of churches and monasteries around Macedonia in high, remote locations like this because during the rule of the Ottoman Turks, the building of anything other than mosques and other monuments of Islam was severely restricted. The outside and inside of the church within the monastery were covered with icons-- the outdoor ones were frescoes on the walls and the indoor ones were on wood with real gold backgrounds. Seeing it all was like a trip back to art history class! It was amazing how much I remembered from that class upon spotting the kind of art that we studied. There were Orthodox believers everywhere making the Sign of the Cross compulsively and often. Perhaps my favorite part of that monastery was the water; in that region of Macedonia, the water is in flowing rivers everywhere, and oftentimes it is clean. This water was made plentiful at the monastery through dragon-shaped faucets spewing it straight from the mountains; upon entering the monastic grounds, each person washed their hands there. You could even drink it, and it was some of the best water I have ever tasted! Icy and pure, no filtration needed.
In the afternoon, we had a picnic of salted pork, peppers, bread, and water from the monastery beside another river. It was calm, sunny, and picturesque, the kind of environment that makes me want to just break out into a run across the flower-bedded clearing. Then we walked along the river as Sashka's mother pointed out to me the unique medicinal purposes of several plants that I had previously written off as undesirable weeds. When made into teas, the leaves of some of these plants can be used for everything from kidney problems to blood-thinning. The resourcefulness of this people continues to bewilder me.
I had thought that after a long day in the sun I would turn in early, but I ended up joining the others at the crowded city park until one in the morning (a common outing among the youth in Skopje). The fun here never ends!
Today we (Sashka's family and me-- wait, I am now part of Sashka's family! so just our family) awoke early, about ten o'clock (yes, I now consider that to be early) to drive about twenty minutes outside of Skopje to the Canyon Matka, a word which literally means womb or uterus, stemming from the winding, water-filled canyon surroundings. That's how it was; the canyon was not very wide, but the river within it was rushing, allowing it to be used as a location for kayaking races during certain parts of the year. This part of Macedonia is populated by a majority of Albanians, who are Muslims. They are easy to spot since the women wear the characteristic headscarves, and many of them were having picnics along the bank of the river. We went to a convent at the entrance of the canyon first, which was also Orthodox, called the Monastery of St. Bogorodica, which means the one who gave birth to Christ, referring to Mary. It was small, and the main work of the nuns there is to produce the ornate celebratory garments for priests.
When we walked farther into the canyon, we encountered a dam built by the Germans during World War II that created an artificial lake beyond it. It was similar to Lake Powell, but greener and much smaller. The lake is narrow, but very deep; there is one underwater cave that still has not been explored to its deepest depths and is thought to perhaps be one of the deepest caves in the world. We hiked along the canyon, then sat down at a crowded outdoor restaurant for lunch. It was very busy, since this place is a popular weekend destination for the city-dwellers.
This was a weekend of sight-seeing, I suppose, but it sure is my type of sight-seeing! Monasteries, nature, a little bit of history thrown in, that's my thing. I went jogging along the Vardar this afternoon and am now incessantly yawning. Time to wind down. Oh, and happy Father's Day, Dad!

---