The last time I was in Skopje was when that city owned the center. A small square from which, through the radially arranged streets, one could go in different directions, a few tens of meters away from Vardar, the Stone Bridge and one of the first shopping centers in Yugoslavia, was completely in line with the size of Skopje, which, after the earthquake in 1963 , transformed from a slightly larger settlement in just fifteen years into a city, at least in terms of architecture and urban planning. Even as a child, I fell in love with that city where, for me at the time, everything was new, clean and clear lines, with skyscrapers everywhere, and the Olympic village on the mountainside and in the middle of the forest, from where there was an impressive view of the valley. I understood a language that wasn't my own, and it wasn't even foreign, the beans with sausages and roasted peppers were just like when my grandmother used to make them (and better), the world was warm, and there was something to my grandfather's stories that, fleeing the misery of the Serbian countryside, he became a professional soldier in Skopje in 1928. About the fact that in 1980 I found a Doors record in a shopping center in Skopje (Morrisons Hotel) not to mention. Along with Dubrovnik, it was my most favorite city in Yugoslavia.
photo: tanjug / filip krainčanić...
And then everything went to hell.
Despite that, Skopje somehow held on. Although it aged (overnight) and quickly fell into disrepair (but in turn killed the cruiser on top of Vodno, which glows eerily at night; only the rugged guys in white hoods fail below), it seemed to have managed to preserve something of what made me love I'm coming back to him. Until a certain Gruevski got his hands on power and decided to give the Macedonian nation spiritual and material roots that go back to the ancient Greeks, that is, the ancient Macedonians and Alexander the Great himself, with his horse. Okay, history knows similar idiotic ideas - Hitler himself made a considerable effort to find the origin of Germans in the ancient Greeks and Romans (and whoever searches finds it, namely, Hitler did not like Germanic roots, so he approached history creatively), until he reduced Germany to dust and ashes - but what Gruevski did to the center of Skopje, in accordance with his own primitivism and madness of omnipotence, it exceeds even the wildest nightmares. I got to see with my own eyes what Macedonian friends told me about, or those who experienced an encounter with the apocalyptic center of Skopje, a few days ago as a jury member of the Philosophical Film Festival in Skopje. So, I listened to stories about Skopje as the European capital of kitsch, I saw photos of monstrous imitations of ancient Greek and Roman buildings with all Ionic, Doric and Corinthian columns (the most, let me say right away, are Corinthian, because they are the most ornate, and for a primitive consciousness that is more colorful and detailed, it's a more beautiful thing), I knew about the Triumphal Arch and the Horseman on a propped horse, I saw all those senseless and badly done statues, but (my people!), when you find yourself in the middle of it all, under Bucephalus's ass, for example, when you look at the whole and realize that Gruevski and crew have covered the facade of socialist buildings with something that should resemble, let's say, Paris (because where else will the Arc de Triomphe go but in Paris), and then you discover (in an ugly dream that will never pass) and two rather large wooden sailing ships which, I guess, are by Vardar (how else?), sailed to the center of Skopje, the scene becomes so impressive, unforgettable, beyond any reason and sense, that, in terms of the intensity of the damage that was done and the depth of the monstrosity, all that nightmare can only be compared to Belgrade on the water (proportionately, not by size), and as things stand, more and more with Belgrade itself. I was accommodated in a hotel about fifty meters from the center, but during those few days of my stay in Skopje, I did everything in my power to never again pass the road that leads through the center. Afterwards, my Macedonian friends informed me that they, too, had not come close to that abomination for years. Quite simply, it is too sickening and insane, too offensive to reason and taste, too destructive to bear. (It is incomprehensible, to the extent that the decent people who came to power after Gruevski did not have the will and courage to scrape that garbage off the face of Skopje.) The problem, however, is that the entire center is contaminated, not only the square, but some fifty meters away, on the street that leads to the ruins of the old railway station where the clock stopped at the moment of the earthquake, an innocent walker stumbles upon the walls of an unfinished church, and at every step he meets senseless metal with figures - a bull, for example, an imitation of that bull from Wall Street, or a woman with huge breasts that almost fall out of her dress, or a single, golden lion on a massive white pillar in front of the ornate facade of some state institution, as if it escaped from Serbian villages... scary.
photo: tanjug / filip krainčanić...
OLYMPIC VILLAGE
After I slept and collected myself a bit, I decided to look for Skopje, which I loved. I wake up early to avoid the infernal heat and head towards the former Olympic village, although I see from a distance that somewhere, approximately where the tastefully done houses for the 1972 chess Olympiad were arranged, some kind of concrete monster is sprouting, similar to those freaks who slowly eat lower part of Kalemegdan. I decide not to go in a straight line, the boulevards are boring, I take the smaller streets uphill and quickly notice that the sidewalk is lost somewhere, and that I have run into an oriental chaos where pedestrians and cars share the same space. At the Faculty of Medicine, I discover a beautiful and hopelessly dilapidated wooden pavilion, painted white, several tens of meters long. A mixture of anxiety and admiration, I think I could take a photo of him and save him from almost certain death, but anxiety prevails and I continue on. I come across a pleasant cafe in the thick shade, filled with students, but just ten meters away, a bakery with two plastic tables huddled together in a narrow part intended, I guess, for pedestrians (not tables). I bravely make my way up the hill as the heat begins to rise from the ground. After a while, I no longer see my landmarks and I ask a passer-by my age if - I point with my hand - the Olympic village is in that direction? "Eh, my friend", says the man, "the village doesn't exist anymore". I probably made a confused face, so he continues: "The village has been destroyed and now there is nothing up there." You are building something". I heard him well, but I repeat: "They demolished the Olympic village?" "There's nothing worse," says the passerby, shrugs his shoulders and continues down the hill, while I'm still standing trying to compose myself. I am overcome by nausea, as in the encounter with the center of Skopje, I turn around and go down. From time to time I come across beautifully decorated spaces with well-kept greenery, but these are, as a rule, the headquarters of hateful corporations.
Where is my Skopje, I wonder?
photo: filip krainčanić / tanjug...
SHOPPING CENTER
I've been out less than an hour and a half and drenched in my own sweat. Next to the old railway station, I notice a new building and with some difficulty I manage to understand that it is a shopping center. Okay, I'm not much of a mall connoisseur, but I can usually spot them and get around them. Miraculously, this one is well packaged and in harmony with its surroundings, so that, from the outside, it is not as disgusting as one would expect from a modern commercial vehicle. It's just gross on the inside, but I'm too thirsty to shave. I find a nice cafe, sit on the terrace, open a book, but after five minutes no one approaches me. "I noticed", I write a message to my friend, "that the waiters here are not exactly the fastest in the world". The book draws me in and I forget about my thirst, but after ten minutes nothing happens. Every waiter walks past me, but he doesn't seem to see me. I start to turn conspicuously, but the waiters continue to ignore me. Behind me, a group of young people talking in Albanian are drinking coffee and juices quite normally. "The waiters here don't bother with service activities", I write to my friend and start waving my hands in the direction of the waiter, one of them smiles and waves at me, but doesn't come closer. It's getting silly now. At one point, I see a guy walking around watering the flowers, "Can we order a drink?", I ask slightly nervously. "Sure," says the guy politely, "go inside and order." Self-service”. Annoyed, I resolutely get up, take a step to demonstratively leave the terrace and gracefully bounce against the immaculately clean glass. I hear a group of young Albanian men and women laughing loudly behind me, out of shame I don't turn around, I fall to the ground, but somehow I manage (like a fly that attacks the window glass, but still stings the exit) to get out of the terrace and angry at the waiters from Skopje and myself stupid and blind, I punish the Skopje hospitality industry by jumping out of the pleasantly chilled shopping center into the street hell. At the same time, I have an attack of pride and I regretfully go back inside, but in a wide arc I avoid that self-service coffee shop and a group of cheerful young Albanians, I find a coffee shop hidden behind the bookstore on the first floor, I order a "ceden portokal" (squeezed orange) and finally I calm down. I'm surprised, though, when I see how big the "bill" is: the same as in Belgrade. For some reason I expected it to be cheaper. (I would later find definitively that I was seriously mistaken.)
photo: tanjug / filip krainčanić...
It was pleasant on the terrace of the shopping center, but it's not my Skopje.
Around the former "Vardara" stadium, I'm looking for a restaurant that no longer exists. The park, however, is as I remember it, as well as the old Skopje bazaar (albeit cleaned up for tourists). I lecture at the Faculty of Philosophy. "Speak in Serbian," my friends tell me when I ask them what language I speak, "everyone here understands Serbian." I'm not convinced of that - why should twenty-year-olds know Serbian? - well, I speak slowly, but in the discussion after the lecture, several people who speak Serbian better than me appear.
I go to lunch with Ljupča and Rista, I meet Lazar Fotev, about whom I have heard so much that I thought that the man does not exist, but not only does Lazar exist, but he is a very interesting guy with a lot of peculiar ideas (for example, he nurtures the delusion that Serbia, for unlike the other Balkan principalities, it has a state, but it still builds on that assumption a science-fiction story about political conditions in the Balkans) and an even bigger bunch of hilarious jokes. After lunch, he takes me to "the best god in Skopje and beyond". Really, I haven't had such a drink in a long time.
photo: tanjug / filip krainčanić...
SKOPJE FOUND
I head towards the Skopje Cinematheque, first along Kliment Ohridski Boulevard, then along Partisan Detachment Boulevard. As I move on, the urban chaos calms down, and Skopje begins to take on the shapes I remember. I am surprised by the number of pleasant and shady cafes in that boulevard of straight lines and clean shapes, and I will be even more surprised when, on a night walk, I discover how very lively that whole area (Karpoš) is. After the lecture in the Cinematheque, we sit in a pleasant cafe. There are three generations at the table: my generation (Yugoslavs) who understand Macedonian and speak Serbo-Croatian, the middle generation who understand Serbian, but speak less well, and their children, teenagers, who neither understand nor speak Serbo-Croatian, nor are they interested in it. The conversation is relaxed and cordial, Slavica, Ljupčo, Trajče are pleasant and educated people, we easily find a common language despite certain ideological differences. While listening to them (they speak in Macedonian, I only get stuck here and there), I realize, in fact, that "my" Skopje is no longer there and that, of course, it will never be (just as, after all, the me back then is no longer there either) , but that the Skopje I was looking for was, in fact, these people: Lazar, Jane, another Slavica and Rumena and Andrej and Diana... Enough "mine" so that I wouldn't feel like a stranger and "foreign" enough that everyone ours the conversation required full meanings.
