Our first stop today was still in Bulgaria at The Rila Monastery. The first time I heard one of our local guides mention The Rila Monastery, I was only half paying attention and I thought they were saying River Monsters.  I’ll admit I was a little confused about how Jeremy Wade could be fishing for deadly, oversized Anaconda a million miles away from the Lost tribes of the Amazon in Bulgaria, but I was good with it.  So you know, it all made a lot more sense once I saw the name written on the sign.  I digress, but seriously I love watching that show way more than I should.   Back to the monastery.  Despite our valiant initial effort to post daily, we have once again fallen way, way behind.  I have so many facts rattling around in my head that I can’t keep track of everything.  I did try to pay attention to the local guide, so I do know the following discombobulated facts.

Monastery facts:

-founded in honor of a hermit monk who lived in the year 900.  He’s on the back of the 1 Lei coin, so he’s a pretty big deal round these parts. Like huge.

-Like just about every major historical structure, it was destroyed by fire (also popular is destruction by earthquake, but I don’t believe this one has any earthquakes in its history), so it was mostly rebuilt starting in 1834.

-The oldest part is a 14th Century stone bell tower (which makes sense because stone should be able to withstand fire.)

-Currently, the monastery is home to a grand total of 6 monks, but there are living quarters for 250 monks.  

And really I am starting to sound like our local guides that I tend to tune out, so I’m going to move on to the next topic now. 

Macedonia! We made it to Macedonia.  Or I guess we should call it The Republic of North Macedonia, but that’s such a mouthful.  Can you say that three times fast? Well ok, can you say that three times fast with a stack of crackers in your mouth?  Country number 71 for those of you keeping track! Macedonia is actually the name of a region, most of which is in Greece. Hence, the really long official name because the Greeks wouldn’t let them have the name.

Macedonia is a country of nearly two million people.  The candy bars that we paid over $2 for in Bulgaria are only $1 in Macedonia.  Strangely I didn’t see lines of Bulgarians at the border crossing to stock up on half priced Milka candy bars. Weird, huh? Anyways, about 500k people live in the capital of Skopje.  

Skopje is probably the most bizarrely, amazing city thetwinsontour have ever visited.   It’s truly a juxtaposition of wow! and huh?  Skopje was hit by a huge earthquake in 1963 and like 80% of the city was destroyed.  Rather than take that opportunity to rebuild a beautiful, modern metropolitan city, they ended up just building ugly Communist block buildings.  So anyways about 40 years later, the now exiled ruler decided he wanted to boost national pride and make the city beautiful.   How do you do that on a budget? Great question.  Part of the answer is statues.  About 400 should do the trick. Now as you can imagine, when you decide to erect 400 statues and squeeze them all in a small area you kind of run out of ideas.  The most famous Macedonian is Alexander The Great, or as he’s known in his “homeland,” Alexander The Macedonian.  (He died in 323 BC).  There’s a huge giant fountain of him in the center of the main Plaza that’s featured in many of thetwinsontour’s selfies.  But not that far away is the fountain of his father Peter the Great.  It’s not enough for there to be just a statue of Pete, no it has to be surrounded by lions at the base and for some reason statues of Papa Peter, Mama Olympia, and a young Alexander. 

Now it gets even weirder because there is also a statue dedicated to Baby Alexander and his Mama Olympia.  It’s terrible.   There’s 4 sides to it.  You’ve got a pregnant Olympia, you’ve got her breastfeeding baby Alex, there’s also one of her holding a toddler Alexander and a young Al. It’s truly something to behold.

There’s a pedestrian bridge lined with about 20 “famous” Macedonian artists and authors, another bridge right next to it featuring a bunch of ancient Greeks, a fountain of horses, another fountain of lions, a shoe shiner,  and statues of a bunch of other people on every spare spot.  There’s even a statue in the river of a woman diving.  

Since these statues are less than 20 years old, they just painted them all with a fake looking patina so that they look older than they are.   Also, I think they were running low on statue makers because they aren’t really well made. Definitely none by Rodin!  You can see the weld lines at some of their knees where they assembled them.  

Now for the ugly Communist Era grey block buildings.  What do you do with that? Well they just covered them with fake Styrofoam facades so they would look like ancient buildings.   Too bad I used up all the available photo storage space here on the blog because photos would really help about now.  I’ll have to post them to FB later. Which is a good time to remind you to go and like thetwinsontour on FB.  Anyways all of these fake facades make it feel like Las Vegas or Disney World.  It’s odd.   Alas, they ran out of money before everything was finished, so there’s empty half constructed buildings sitting next to the fancy Styrofoam buildings even in the main plaza.   There’s spots where they never finished the sidewalk too.  And a lot of the sidewalk tiles wobble when you walk on them. 

It’s really hard to know what to think.  Some in our group think that every former Communist country should cover their buildings in Styrofoam to make it pretty and attract more American tourists. (I think this is completely ludicrous for more reasons than you want to read.  Speaking of, are you still here?.)  The local guide we had in Skopje was very diplomatic and said that the money could have been spent on other things that would benefit the people more. (I agree 1,000% and I think this would be the consensus of most people if the mayor of Olathe tried to do this to the downtown.) Our tour guide says it’s humiliating that they tried to create a national identity that is fake just like Disney World.  It’s not real.    You just can’t create a national identity by willpower and statues alone.   However, I do admire their, or maybe just that one guy’s, determination to transform the city and national identity.

Now, on to less complicated subjects.  Even more well-known than my friend Alex the Great, is Mother Theresa.  She is of Albanian descent, but she was born in Skopje, Macedonia not far at all from the ginormous statue of Alexander.   Her birthplace was destroyed in that big earthquake of 1963, so there’s just a plaque there now. Her statue is a couple of blocks away by her museum. To my knowledge there’s only one statue of her. Seems like they missed a great statue opportunity.  They could have a young Mother Theresa, or her and the Pope, or her in India.  There’s so many possibilities here, and all just wasted.  Maybe thetwinsontour should leave insurance for a job in city planning and beautification?

Side note (from a few days in the future), in Albania our guide told us that no one in Albania knew who Mother Teresa was until 1991– after the fall of Communism. There are very few Catholics in Albania– like 10%. Most are Muslim. But, during Communism religion was not allowed. Hence, no one knew about their national treasure in her heyday.

If you are still reading this, thetwinsontour love you very much!

Love,

thetwinsontour