Bosnian Gobbets

The word gobbet is usually a terrifying one for undergraduate historians. They are a staple diet of modern history exams, where one is presented with a text that can be as short as six words, and on that basis write a 1, 500 word critical essay, in exam conditions. A brutally exact and contextualised knowledge is needed to be successful; the text can be something as feeble as " I saw Chamberlain today. PM very gloomy". No flannel or padding is possible with such scant material.

It's the historical equivalent of 20-20 cricket, where one has to go in and immediately start biffing the historical white ball all over the park, or get out quickly and hope that someone else can do better. So gobbets here is meant in the gentler sense, in just being short observations about this week, viz.

1. Why are French sporting teams so damned lucky? Sarajevo went very quiet on Wednesday night, as the BiH football team took to the field at the Stade de France, knowing that a win would see them qualify for a major football tournament for the first time. And, for an hour, the Bosnians dominated a shockingly poor home side, who did a good impression of having met for the first time in a Métro carriage half an hour before kick off. Dynamo Moscow's Misimović, surely the most under-rated attacking midfielder in Europe, passed the French off the park and was the electricity in the Bosnian dynamo.

Sadly, much of the ammunition he provided fell to Manchester City forward Edin Džeko. The big no. 9 was doing a very good impression of Tony Cascarino on Wednesday. He was absolutely terrible, missing two or three really easy chances, before, in typically mercurial fashion, making and scoring the brilliant goal which saw Bosnia lead at half time. Džeko has terrific upper body strength and is quick, but in terms of skill and temperament he's still a bit of an unguided missile in my view, and is very, very frustrating to watch.

Sadly, France equalised with about twelve minutes to go through a penalty, and the Bosnians had run out of steam by then, leaving them to rue their profiligacy in the first half. With typical abysmal luck, they have now been drawn with Portugal in the play-offs, the worst draw possible, as this is the team that eliminated BiH at the same stage before the 2010 World Cup. If only Bosnia could have a bit of self belief, they could gain revenge, but it seems unlikely. The spirit of the old Yugoslavia team hangs around this current BiH team; they are wonderful to watch, very gifted technically, and flatter to deceive, never quite prevailing in games where it matters. Sarajevo was twelve minutes away from an amazing party on Wednesday night; instead, the pubs had emptied half an hour after the full time whistle, as folk dissipated away in bitterly disappointed silence.

France are better organised under Laurent Blanc, after the utter shambles and scandal of the Domenech era, but they are still a deeply mediocre side who won't make it beyond the group stages of Euro 2012 next year; a side extremely fortunate not to be facing a play off. I can think of only two of the current French group of players, who would have got near their all-conquering squads of 1998-2000.

Let's not even start on the rugby world cup semi-final today. I heartily detest rugby union for reasons for too numerous to mention, and will loathe it to my dying day, but I really wanted Wales to win today- and it sounds like, yet again, France were extremely lucky to progress to the final. Almost certainly, however, a righteous vaporising awaits them at the hands of the Kiwis or the Australians. Nonetheless, no one has heard of rugby here in Bosnia, so it's been bliss to be spared the egg-chasing "world cup" (British Commonwealth plus one or two exotic others, more like) in its entirety.

2. It's been largely poor stuff from the ex-Yugoslav countries in qualification. Alongside BiH, Montenegro have been the team to really stand out, qualifying from a difficult group behind England. The doughty Montenegrins- lacking a genuine goalscorer, but very, very determined and hard to break down, particularly in Podgorica- face a winnable tie, against a poor Czech side, for a place in Poland and Ukraine next year. Croatia face the Turks in another difficult to call tie, the men in the red and white chessboard shirts have had a very quiet time, since the heyday of Slaven Bilić's team leaving Steve McLaren cowering under his umbrella, in a Wembley monsoon. Both sides seem to be in transition although I think the Croats are marginal favourites.

Serbia and Slovenia cancelled one another out in a very bizarre qualifying group, won easily by Italy but, surreally, seeing Estonia make the play offs. Having spent some time in Estonia in the last 3-4 years and seen them play on many occasions, I am absolutely astonished at their transformation. This was a team that went winless for over a year in 2007-8; the last time I watched an Estonia international, they were a sorry, dis-spirited shambles, routed 7-1 in Sarajevo by the Bosnians. However, their unsmiling head coach Tarmo Rüütli, who nearly lost his job after that humiliation, has transformed them into a hard working team much greater than the sum of its little-known parts. Back to back wins against an ageing Northern Ireland team for the Estonians, left Serbia needing to beat Slovenia in Maribor; Slovenia prevailed 1-0, being cheered on not only by their home fans but by a capacity crowd of cornflower-blue clad loons at the A le Coq. stadium in Tallinn, watching on a giant screen.  In the three days that followed, both Vladimir Petrović, the deeply unpopular Serb head coach, and Noerthern Ireland's Nigel Worthington, have paid with their jobs for Estonia's success.

It was such a strange group: Estonia won in Belgrade last October, and suffered a catastrophe in Torshavn at the hands of the Faroe Islands just three months before this high point of their footballing history. Their qualification is a wonderful story, but I suspect it will end before Euro 2012 begins; I really cannot, even with my most optimistic glasses on, see them beating the Republic of Ireland over two legs in the play off.

Finally, to no one's surprise, Macedonia's John Toshack has the biggest job on his hands. After his promising start against the Russians in Moscow, Toshack has subsequently overseen an excruciatingly dull 1-0 win over the mighty Andorra in Skopje, followed by a tumble down the slippery slope to a 1-4 disaster in Yerevan. Tuesday's home draw with Slovakia restored some deeply wounded pride, but worryingly for the Macedonian FA, the stadium was virtually empty for this meaningless final game. Toshack needs to unearth some new young players from somewhere, and improve their morale, if they are to make an impact in the 2014 world cup qualifying group.

As for Scotland? It would have bee typical if we had gone over to Spain and won, but the reality is that the damage was done by abysmal, negative, fear-filled showings away in Kaunas and Prague. Craig Levein has failed to convince a significant minority of Scottish fans that he has the necessary attributes to make Scotland competitive and challenging seriously for qualification again. The 2014 group- featuring the Croats, Serbs, Belgians, Gary Speed's resurgent Wales, and Macedonia, looks very difficult for us again.

3. I've finally got some research underway at the faculty of fine art here in Sarajevo. Nonetheless, in terms of art, there's been slim pickings. The National Gallery, supposedly re-opening on 11 October, remains absolutely closed, and the question as to when it will re-open usually just produces a shrug of the shoulders. The reality is, however, that since the 1992-95 conflict here, art has been a mobile and temporary phenomenon in terms of its display; initiatives like the small duplex 10m2, run by two French curators, are one of the few still points in a continuously changing small scene. 10m2 has been closed all week, but there is an opening of the contemporary Porschism collective there tonight, so I think I shall be sneaking along to that. Other then 10m2 and the extremely itinerant SCCA, which I have yet to find, there is not really much other than the Fine Art academy, constituted as such in 1972, and a few small commercial galleries of very varying quality. It will take time to uncover what seems to be a very fragmented and ephemeral contemporary arts scene.

4. I think I'll have another week of pretty intensive work in Sarajevo, then will spend the week after next travelling to a few places outwith the capital. I need to go to Konjic, a small town which was home of Tito's bunker, now a major exhibition of contemporary art; Mostar; and Jajce, home to a Museum of the Partisan struggle. So there should be quite a lot on here in the next couple of weeks.

5. Google Maps for Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia is pathetic. Seriously, the information is so scant, poor, and misleading, they might as well not bother.

Skopje again and 9. Biennial of young Macedonian artists

Installation view of the Biennial at MoCA

So, today's my last day of another very busy short spell here in Skopje. I have had good meetings and discussions every day since I've been here, and new possibilities do appear to be opening out ahead of next year.

I wound up my affairs in Belgrade last Thursday. The week flashed by very quickly after my lecture: I met some interesting private collectors in the Serb capital last Tuesday, who have a really representative and very broad collection of Yugoslav art from the 60s through to the 80s. I also had meetings with a couple of artists from that period.

Having bunkered down in Belgrade for three weeks, it felt a little odd to be leaving, but I was impatient to be back in Skopje again. As well as meeting various artists and pals in the last few days, there was also the opportunity to catch the Biennial of Young Macedonian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was a varied exhibition of work around the politically neutral theme of still life.

Kristina Božurska, Zoomed Still Life, 2010 / 11

Two or three individual pieces really stood out in this show. Kristina Božurska's Zoomed Still Life was reminiscent of a late 80s Christian Boltanski, featuring over 300 little metallic cubes, arranged into a rectangle on the wall. Each individual cube is rusted away and is part of some crushed-up industrial debris; this piece, then, functions as the ultimate recycling of material in a post-object state; the rehabilitation of practical objects at the end of their lives, into a new and unexpected art-object phase: a kind of discarded readymade.

Filip Jovanovski, Still Life: The Cabinet of Professor Velimir Veličkovski: 24 Allegories to Explain the World, 2011

 Filip Jovanovski, whose work in progress I had seen on my last visit to the gallery,has made a real success of his "living still life", above. The installation is really well put together and has an intriguing range of objects, from a black and white portrait of Tito, through several of the professor's own paintings and books, to ephemera and tat from the 1970s and 1980s. It raises the question not only of the still life as object, but of the role of the still-life object in helping to build up a portrait of an individual. Of course, using the object to convey an aspect of the sitter's character, that cannot be conveyed by the image of the face and hands etc, has long been a tool of the portraitist's trade; this merging of portrait and still life throws up many interesting questions.

Sofia Grabuloska, Black/White Still Life, 2011

So, after meeting up with some friends later I have to pack up my stuff again tomorrow morning and set the co-ordinates for Sarajevo. It's about a ten hour drive so I'm stopping somewhere in central Serbia tomorrow night, as driving in the dark on unfamiliar Bosnian mountain roads would be an insane strategy. I hope to be in Sarajevo early Thursday afternoon, so my next update, with first impressions, will be from BiH probably early next week. It's the part of the trip I have most been looking forward to, as I have never been to Sarajevo before, and I also have plans to take in Jajce, Mostar, and Tito's bunker, now an art gallery, about 20kms south of the capital. As for Skopje? Well, it's a little bit sad to have to do a city I really enjoy in such short bursts, so I am very much looking forward to being a resident here next year, and writing up the great tome from a towerblock somewhere.

Crumbling Yugoslav-era "AutoMakedonija" sign in the city centre. Don't think the neon has worked since the mid 80s

I largely wrote this in Skopje, but never got around to finishing it so am putting it up now. Next update from SJ (where I am now) soon.

Skopje (final part)

Makedonska Square, Thursday

 So my proposed regular updates from Skopje didn't quite materialise as I'd hoped. For readers back home, that's a good sign; regular updates about Balkan marginalia on here mean that I'm not very busy, hence spending too much time arsing about on the internet.

Kale Fortress

Last week was incredibly busy, far much more so than I'd expected before coming to Skopje. It was a very interesting time to be in the city, during independence week. As a partial consequence, the Museum of Contemporary Art had a rather impressionistic two floor showing of Macedonian art in the last twenty years; further, the young artist Filip Jovanovski was developing an exhibition on the ground floor of the museum, with the subject being still life. However, the "still life" in question is one of his university professors, so Filip is slowly filling his space with a changing installation featuring some of the professor's paintings as well as his own objects and ideas.

Filip Jovanovski's work-in-progress at MOCA

In total I think I had seven or eight long meetings last week with various academics, critics, curators and artists. As a result, I now have a very good idea of some aspects of Macedonian art history beyond Martinovski, as well as the politics and difficulties of the contemporary art world in the country.

Speaking more broadly, there are many very interesting young artists working in Skopje; the Lokomotiva collective,  and OPA for example; the trouble is that a lack of money restricts meaningful exhibiting opportunities, and prevents the art world infrastructure from growing beyond a very basic "there's just enough money for this gallery to exist" level. Other interesting initiatives, such as the small artist-run Press to Exit space, face a very uncertain future, as government funding has been withdrawn. Much of the infrastructure and art world networks are still intact from Yugoslav times, only without the money that was available back then. As a result, being a working young artist can be incredibly hard and frustrating in Macedonia, and requires a level of survival-ingenuity and invention to a much greater degree than in other cities that I have visited. It is precisely this tension, between a government who has one rather prescriptive view of visual art, and a majority of artists working who resist this view, that makes it so compelling for a visitor.

The OPA (Obsessive Possessive Aggression) duo

 There was a strange atmosphere in town last week. Skopje is a customarily easy going place, with Makedonska Square and the surrounding streets, and the Stara Carsija, full of coffee or beer drinkers at all times of the day and night; Makedonska Street is thronged till late at night, with chatter just about audible above a high decibel soundclash between Latino music, Euro-disco and Serbian turbofolk, played by differing bars and clubs. However, this week, accessing the city centre was difficult, particularly between Tuesday-Thursday, in the run up to the massive independence rally on the Main Square.

On Tuesday night, the massed ranks of the Macedonian army, police, and air force paraded through the city centre, with one black-clad group of paras bellowing "MA-KE-DON-IJA" repeatedly as they marched past; frankly, all a bit sinister. Helicopters constantly circled buzzingly overhead. Amongst the by-standers, prevented from crossing the road by the police as the troops crunched past, there was a mixture of a ripple of applause, sullen irritation at the disruption to a journey and, in one or two cases, suppressed laughter. As it turned out, the Independence Day parade and celebrations passed off very well, with a huge red-and-yellow-clad throng packing out Makendonska Square and celebrating long into the night. The Prime Minister delivered a long celebratory speech, but I suspect most were there to hear the singers and bands that followed.

Overall, the impression taken from the independence celebrations is that this a city and country suddenly undergoing massive ideologically-driven change, and it appears that whilst the government has many supporters for its project, there are many more who are far from convinced by the path that they have decided to take. Ultimately, a successful government in Macedonia will do all it can to raise the shockingly low wages and lifestyle expectations that many citizens have to contend with, and it seems rather obvious to point out that such a long term task cannot be achieved by statues, parades and flags.

Monument to the Liberators of Skopje, designed by a collective of Yugoslav sculptors, including Jordan Grabulovski (he of Illinden monument fame)

This is such a beautiful country, and the sad thing is that it is so little known outwith the Balkans. The only time we really hear of Macedonia in the UK is when one of the home nations is playing them at football. News on Macedonia in English is still pretty hard to find on the internet- a puzzle, as all the other former Communist countries from Montenegro to Russia have at least one reliable and decent source of journalism in English.

Macedonia still has major wildernesses and national parks, which in Western Europe are, at best, a rarity these days. There is a huge possibility to develop environmental tourism here, although whether it would be desirable to have hordes of Western Europeans filling up the narrow roads of Mavrovo or Pelister, with SUVs, is another matter, although undoubtedly this would help improve living standards for many people. As I mentioned in my last entry, Skopje is an intriguing and much more compelling place to visit than it might appear on a one day stopover. There is a functioning and interesting art scene, very good restaurants, new pubs and clubs springing up in the Stara Carsija, decent bookshops and stalls, and some of the friendliest and most welcoming people anywhere on the European continent. I came here a week ago knowing virtually no one here, and left with more than a dozen new pals whom I will keep in touch with.

Yesterday I slowly ground my way up the road to Belgrade, arriving here about 2100hrs. But, my plans have changed slightly; I will return to Skopje and Bitola for a few days at the beginning of October, and some more meetings, and then head directly to Sarajevo from there. There was not time to meet everyone I wanted to meet, and there is also an electronic music festival happening in the city around that time; one of my favourite DJs/producers/artists anywhere in Europe, Frankfurt's Isolée, is playing at Club Havana on the 2nd October, so it would seem rude not to come as I'm pretty nearby. And, longer term, this would be a good city to write my book in next year, as it is possible to live here on comparatively little money compared to elsewhere, as well as with good access to libraries, archives and other nearby cities. A plan is forming, but I'll keep my powder dry on that one for now.

I have a lot to do on the internet today- sending many emails and making calls, so my promised entry on the book project, and the reasons for it, should be up later tonight.

Skopje (part two)

So I'm sitting writing this in an open air cafe on Makedonska Square, the central point of Skopje; the sun is beating down and it's about 35 degrees, with the air conditioning hissing under the umbrellas. As it's Sunday, town is quiet; if people are in the sun at all, they're taking it very easy.

Skopje bakes in the Friday lunchtime sun

This is my second time in the Macedonian capital. I came here on holiday a couple of summers ago, and since then, the city is suddenly undergoing a huge re-building programme. There is an absolute orgy of new public sculpture, in what must be the biggest government investment in new monumental statuary anywhere in Europe. Two years ago, this square was still a largely empty Tito-era parade ground and mass rally space, the centre point being a rather nice circular display of amber, red and blue local flowers. Today, the place where the flowers were has vanished, to be replaced by a truly gigantic bronze statue of Alexander the Great on horseback, balanced on a marble column about thirty feet in the air. Alexander can be seen from pretty much everywhere in the centre of the city.

Makedonska Square and Alexander the Great from the Stone Bridge. I'm writing this under the umbrellas in the shade to the left

This bronze behemoth would be more than enough to attract the eye, but the square is also now choked with other figures from the new narrative of Macedonian statehood; Tsar Samuel, Goce Delchev, other patriots, warriors and churchmen from history. The overall effect is rather claustrophobic; one can't really stand back and look at the sculptures individually, without being physically aware of the presence of others looming very nearby. For sculpture to work, of course, scale and proportion in relation to the physical environment is as important as a successful three dimensional image; it seems that scale and proportion have been deemed of secondary importance to the need to have a graven image of absolutely everyone near to hand. The sculptures continue across the ancient stone bridge, the enduring symbol of Skopje's survival and permanence; on the other side of the River Vardar, there is effectively a giant building site, as a new government and civic quarter is created. Two new mock-classical buildings are arising under a dense network of scaffolding and clamour of building noise; it is going to be a new museum of "Macedonian struggle", and some government structures, with the workies already having finished the new foreign affairs building on the other side of the stone bridge.

21st century classical architecture rising on the banks of the Vardar

This frenzy of new architecture and sculpture is part of a government plan to re-design the city centre by 2014; the authorities have already spent 200 million euros on statuary alone (and it shows); the new buildings will cost at least three times that. A complete new Skopje tramway is also planned, presumably in order to retire the fleet of local, very old, clouds-of-diesel-fumes buses that chug around presently. For some, these monumental new structures are a symbol of Macedonia emerging from a tough and contested first twenty years of independence, towards a hoped for prosperous future in the EU; for others, it represents an overblown, pompous and inappropriate historical classicism, ignorant of Macedonia's Albanian and gypsy minorities, and ruinously expensive in a country where up to one in three adults of working age are officially unemployed. It's not for me to say who is right, but the overall effect is odd and unsettling; a newly populist, right wing version of Macedonian history, in conflict with its Yugoslav architectural past.

Typical Skopje apartments

Re-invention, however, is not a new thing for Skopje or its citizens. 80% of this city was destroyed in a massive earthquake, in July 1963, with tens of thousands killed, injured and missing. The old classical Skopje disappeared in a few minutes. In response, Tito and the Yugoslav government issued a major call for international aid and invested heavily in rebuilding the ruined city. A Japanese architect worked with locals to redesign the city entirely; the result was the emergence of a plantation of tower blocks and wide boulevards. Only one small corner of Makedonska Square gives any evidence of the old classical appearance of Skopje. Just outside the central block of few streets, wide highways are choked with traffic, and one has to be rather careful crossing the road, even when the green man is showing.

One of the by-products of the earthquake was the establishment of the Museum of Contemporary Art, which sits just behind the Kale fortress, on a hill overlooking the city centre. At present it is closed, but it re-opens on Tuesday night, with a major exhibition of Macedonian art since independence. Macedonia celebrates its twentieth anniversary as an independent country on Thursday; on 8 September 1991, 74% of the country voted to secede from crumbling Yugoslavia, with the only completely peaceful withdrawal of the Yugoslav National Army negotiated shortly afterward.

Basketball frenzy in Makedonska Square

To the casual visitor, Skopje might appear to be a drab place, but this first impression is unfair. At night, it is very lively indeed, with packed nightclubs along the River Vardar, busy restaurants, and the customary Macedonian sight of large family groups and friends out for a leisurely evening stroll. It's also worth putting in the effort to walk as much as possible; many of the most interesting places are hidden up side streets, such as a tea and hookah garden; little more than a small wooden hut with some outdoor sofas, at the end of an entirely unremarkable one way street. Skopje is also quite a book town; I have browsed through two or three excellent bookshops, whilst mobile carts of books can be found on most streets in the city centre. The charmingly entitled Macedonian for Foreigners was a bargain at just 250 denars (£3.50).

There has been a celebratory mood here, this weekend, too. Yesterday, the Macedonian basketball team- for the first time ever- triumphed in a bitter derby battle with the Greeks, by 72-58. I know virtually nothing about basketball, but apparently that's a bit of a gubbing. The entire square was filled with celebrating Macedonians last night, with the large electronic screen turning off its rotating series of adverts and replacing it with an image of the red and yellow Macedonian flag. On the boulevards, long, slow moving queues of cars filled the air with a tremendous din of tooting horns; a young bloke hung almost completely out of the passenger side of a Zastava Osmica, the boxy outline of the old grumbler almost completely obscured by a gigantic flag. I suspect there may be more celebrations tonight, as they are currently beating the Finnish team, as well.

Yes, it really happened. Makedonija 72: 58 Grcija

There was an edge to the Greek game, of course, as successive Greek governments have been implacably hostile to the emergent new Macedonia since the 90s; complaining about its flag, its name, its aspirations to integrate fully with international institutions; Greece has been quite ludicrously intransigent on all these issues. Even Barack Obama was moved to declare himself "bored" of the Macedonian-Greek quarrel a few months ago. However, given the catastrophic extent of the current Greek financial crisis, they may well have expended their political capital on these issues, and Macedonia may finally be able to progress a bit. It could be argued, of course, that the sudden sprouting of the Makedonska square statuary could be some kind of sculptural response to a national identity that feels itself threatened.

The very existence of an independent "Macedonia" makes some Greek politicians nervous; the new national narrative, with Alexander the Great at the centre of it, irritates them enormously. That said, the Greek suspicion that Macedonia will some day lay claim to the part of Greece also named "Macedonia" seems, to this observer, paranoid. The number of Macedonians dreaming of a "greater Macedonia", incorporating ethnic Macedonians in present day Greece, Bulgaria and Albania, would struggle to fill a Transit minibus. Yet, the contents of that hypothetical Transit have been enough for the Greeks to throw up every obstacle in the way of Macedonia integrating fully with instituions such as the UN, NATO, EU accession talks, and so on. In its first twenty years, Macedonia has been locked in a permanent existential crisis, with the Greeks openly skeptical of its national aspirations; Bulgaria has tempted some Macedonians into claiming Bulgarian citizenship (the lure being an EU passport, and he ability to move and work in the EU without a visa); there was also a threatened very nasty ethnic conflict between Macedonians and Albanians, at around the time of the Kosovo conflict in 1999-2001, although that, for now, has been peaceably resolved.

The captivation of the locals with the successful exploits of the basketball team couldn't be in starker contrast to the rank indifference shown to the national football team's ailing Euro 2012 qualification series. The Macedonians played Russia on Friday night, with John Toshack in charge for his first game as national team manager. I was one of only three people watching the game in the pub (indeed, there was more causal interest in the Scotland-Czech Republic match, yesterday afternoon). Macedonia played quite well, and were unlucky to lose 1-0 to a very unimpressive Russian side. They looked decent both in defence and midfield, but carry no real threat up front. It will be interesting to see how the gifted but cantankerous Welsh nomad gets on here, as the basis is there for a decent and competitive team, that both Scotland and Wales will find difficult in their 2014 World Cup group.

Street in Skopje's bazaar

Today I've been for a leisurely stroll around Skopje's old bazaar, a tight warren of streets located around three separate mosques. The call to prayer echoed across the largely empty streets at 1pm. In the weekday, this place is busy from dawn until dusk, with a myriad of small shops, a fruit market, and a series of permanently popular cafes. Today, it was very quiet, so I was able to get some decent photos.  The bazaar was founded in the sixteenth century, and although it is now designated as the "old commercial centre", it still seems to trade very briskly when open. As with the much smaller bazaar in Bitola, trades, leatherwork, exchange bureaux and food sellers predominate here; there is also another gallery of modern art, located in an old Turkish bath house, that I will return to later in the week.

This week is my first full week of work, and I have several meetings with art historians, artists and curators lined up. I am also going to have a very close look at the collection in the Museum of Contemporary Art, and there is an archive from the old Soros Centre here, that chronicles Macedonian contemporary artists in some detail, which I will need to spend about a day in. As for on here, I'm going to write a detailed entry later on about my project, for those who want to hear more about that; there should be another couple of updates from Skopje before I leave for Belgrade next weekend.

More photos can be seen here

In Skopje (& Prilep)

On the road between Prilep and Veles

Just a quick update tonight- I'm now in Skopje, having driven three hours north from Bitola today. The road north was extraordinary- in between Prilep and Veles, there was a steep climb then a seemingly endless descent on a mountain A/B road; I stopped and took some photos of this extraordinarily parched landscape, with only chirruping crickets and the occasional passing heavy lorry for company. The landscape is rocky, tough, yellow and green, full of dust and stones. Away from the main road, it seems like it sees very few people indeed; over the winter, I can imagine even a main road like this being borderline impassable for days at a time.

Mountains recede northwards

The road between Veles and Skopje was remarkable. It's a main road- the equivalent of the road between Dunfermline and Edinburgh- yet it is very narrow, rutted and populated with all kinds of exotic motor species; ancient GAZ lorries still pulling a full load fifty years after first being built, at no more than 45 km/h; poisonous yellow Zastavas chugging along pulling trailers (Communist-era car colours are always vaguely suggestive of unpleasant medical remedies, or nuclear waste); even, on many occasions, horses and donkeys pulling carts chaotically laden with haphazard mounds of vegetables. Eventually, the road spiralled and corkscrewed through a ludicrously improbable series of tight turns, before giving way to a motorway, about 20 miles south of the capital. It was a beautiful drive for a visitor, but must be an extremely wearing road to have to deal with on a daily basis.

Prilep: socialist "hero city"

Skopje has changed quite a bit and seems to be in a frantic phase of re-building, since I visited here two years ago. I'm going to hold off saying too much about it here, though, until I've spent a few days in the capital. Instead, I should mention Prilep briefly. Prilep is about 25 miles east of Bitola, and couldn't be more different from either there or Krusevo. As a former "hero city" of socialist Yugoslavia, Prilep is all wide boulevards, towerblocks and Yugoslav-era public sculpture; this rectilinear order is in stark contrast to the jagged, angular, rocky mountains that surround this dusty place. Although smaller than Bitola, Prilep somehow felt more lively when I was there; the little cafes and pizzerias surrounding the old bazaar were crammed at lunchtime.

Prilep, in addition to being a "hero city", is home to the longest-established artists' colony in Macedonia. It was first designated as such in 1956-57 and is still home to many working artists and the large cultural centre <<Marko Cepenkov>>, as well as a major theatre. Unfortunately, the Marko Cepenkov seemed closed yesterday, so I had to content myself with taking some snaps of 1970s Yugoslav sculpture, and a rather puzzling gable end mural. Most remarkable of all, though, was a very strange, monumental angular sculpture, which you can see in the picture above. i was completely unable to find out anything about its purpose, although, with its globe cradled in giant steel legs, it did have more than a whiff of the Tony Montana about it; all that was missing was the legend "THE WORLD IS YOURS" in neon around the globe. Prilep's other claim to fame is that it is a major tobacco town; if you smoke Phillip Morris cigarettes, its more than likely that at least some of your tobacco originated in one of the ginat processing facilities on the outskirts of town. Although I had been frustrated in my attempts to see art, I liked Prilep a lot; it had a good feel about it, and folk were friendly.

My next updates on here, over the weekend, will say a little bit about Skopje, and the whole purpose for me being out in this part of the world in the first place. Until then...

Bitola & Kruševo

Mount Pelister from Stiv Naumov street, Bitola

Well, my first day working on my project today, and what an absolutely remarkable day it's been.

I arrived in Bitola yesterday- the second largest city in Macedonia. It's a fairly interesting place, known as "the city of the consuls"- during the latter days of the Ottoman empire, Bitola was a centre of diplomacy, with many countries basing their representatives here. There are still a dozen or so consulates here today, although how active they are is a moot point.

"Sirok Sokak", Bitola, Monday evening

The centre of Bitola is officially called ul. Marsal Tito (Tito Street), although no one actually calls it that- it's known by everyone as Sirok Sokak (Wide Street)- in the dimensional, rather than the Scottish, sense of "Wide". This is also a remnant from Ottoman times in Macedonia. Sirok Sokak is the main social and shopping street in town; I'm just back from there, and it is absolutely mobbed- at 9.30 on a Tuesday night, in a manner frankly unimaginable in old stomping grounds such as Dundee or Perth. At the top of this thoroughfare, there is a statue of the ancient Macedonian king, Phillip II, a melodious clocktower, and two very impressive mosques. Behind the mosques a little bit, there is the Stara Carsija or old bazaar. In Ottoman times, this was a centre of artisanry and trade- apparently, at one time, 250 different trades were crammed into this claustrophobic rabbit warren of narrow streets. There are still trades there today, albeit in far fewer numbers; the main source of business now seems to be leatherwork, parts for 1980s cars ranging from Yugos and Ladas to Escorts and Sierras, and, er, a shop selling scarves for the local football team, FK Pelister Bitola. Pelister are at a low ebb however, having been relegated from the Macedonian Prva Liga last season- so they really must be dreadful.

Dalmatinska ulica, Old Bazaar, Bitola

Bitola is not a city for the street-sign dependant map readers amongst you. Street signs, even in the city centre, border on the non-existant, whilst directions to other vaguely important places- Skopje, for example- seem to date from the Yugoslav era and have either worn away or are falling off the lamp-post. One has to navigate by a mixture of landmark, repetitive walking, and osmosis. It's a city, too, where clear signs of the Yugoslav past remain; not only the obligatory regular monuments to fallen partisans from the great struggle of 1941-44 (the Bulgarians had been booted out of here by late 1944, by the Macedonian partisan brigades), but also street names that have mostly been replaced in other ex-Yugoslav countries. Here, streets are still named after Lenin (Leninova), and long forgotten Yugoslav Communists such as Eduard Kardelj, Ivo Lola-Ribar, Boris Kidric, and Ivan Milutinovic. Partisan heroes are also commemorated- Stiv Naumov- alongside martyrs of the Illinden period. Macedonia seems to have the least amnesiac relationship of all the republics with the Yugoslav past. For every Macedonian nationalist, who bemoans the "lost" parts of Macedonia, in present-day Greece, Bulgaria, and Albania, you'll find someone who bemoans the end of Yugoslavia, and the apparently easier life of those times.

Kruševo from the Martinovski museum

Enjoyable though Bitola is- another real livewire of a place at night- the spectacular highlight so far has been today's trip to the little mountaintop village of Kruševo, about 30 miles north-by-north-west of Bitola. I drove there this morning for my first day of research, and after hesitantly sputtering along a slippy and rutted tarmac road, which featured spectacular hairpin bends for the last twenty or so kilometers, I was richly rewarded.  As well as being a modern day ski and winter sport centre, Kruševo is significant both in Macedonian history and the Macedonian present; firstly, as the seat of the Illinden uprising of 1903, against the rule of the Ottoman empire; secondly, as home to the "first Macedonian modernist" Nikola Martinovski; and, thirdly, as home and location of a memorial to the "Macedonian Elvis Pressley, Tose Proeski. It's also, nearly 4,000 m above sea level, the highest town in the Balkans.

I began by trying to find the Martinovski museum, eventually discovering it at the end of a narrow cobbled street, about ten minutes from the centre of the town. It is located in a lovely old town house with spectaclar views of the rooftops and the surrounding mountains. A grey working donkey, tethered to a pile of logs, was honking and braying loudly into the bargain, just below the museum walls, in between munching on what seemed to be a gigantic pyramid of carrot peelings.

Nikola Martinovski, Wet Nurse, 1948.

Nikola Martinovski died a few weeks before I was born, in early summer 1973. Five years before his demise, the federal Yugoslav government provided the money to buy this handsome building in Kruševo and do it up, to house the majority of his paintings. In 1924, Martinovski left Macedonia for Bucharest, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts for three years; after completed his studies in Romania, he spent 1927-28 in Paris, spending time working at the Grand Chaumière, under de la Bissière and Moise Kisling.

On his return to Yugoslavia in 1928, Martinovski participated in the first showing of contemporary art in the Macedonian capital, and was part of a pan-Yugoslav modernist grouping called Oblik ("Form"). He was to spend the next 45 years in Skopje, with regular visits to Kruševo and to Paris to see old friends. Martinovski was a good example of the strong Francophile orientation that inter-war Yugoslav painting had; his work shows a thorough understanding of the work of Modigliani, Matisse and Chagall. During the war, Martinovski contributed visual images and propaganda to the partisan struggle; a study of a partisan, completed in 1944, still forms an important part of one of the rooms.

Martinovski's wartime work and pre-war fame ensured that he was well-placed to play an important role in the Yugoslav art world, during the presidency of Tito (1945-80). He exhibited regularly in Skopje and Belgrade, and was a significant academician and art world politician in the 50s and 60s. In the post-war period, Martinovski chose to concentrate on the themes of family, motherhood, and social studies of everyday life in Kruševo. This collection is extremely interesting and wide ranging, featuring oil painting, drawings and lithography. Although Martinovski is little known outwith the former Yugoslav countries, his work is well received and popular; in Macedonia, his work enjoys the same kind of status that a Fergusson or Peploe does in Scotland.

The extraordinary monument to the Illinden uprising (1972-74)

The real surprise of the day, however, was the monument to the Illinden uprising, on the crest of the hill about 2kms from Kruševo town centre. Briefly (you can read the wikipedia article linked to above), the Illinden uprising involved macedonian and Bulgarian peasants rising against ottoman rule, in 1903; a ten day "independent republic" or Kruševo was declared. The Ottomans put down the revolt with pitiless harshness, liquidating the independent political leadership, conducting a wholesale massacre of the civilian population of the town, and handing out long sentences of imprisonment or deportation to many survivors.

The monument to this tragic incident in Macedonian history was first conceived as a project by the federal Yugoslav government in 1972; the remarkable structure was opened to the public in August 1974. Conceived by the sculptor Jordan Grabuloski and his architect wife Iskra, this is probably the most unusual and extraordinary building that I've ever seen. Featuring biomorphic sculptural reliefs, beautiful blue and green ovoid stain glass windows, and an exterior that is part Rollerball, part over-sized limpet mine, part Le Corbusier on powerful hallucinogens .

In Yugoslav times, the monument was supposed to stand as a symbol of the centuries-long struggle for Macedonian freedom from oppressive imperial rule; a struggle that, back then, was supposed to have reached its peak with the establishment of a Socialist Republic of Macedonia, within a broader Yugoslav federation. The interior decorations present the Illinden uprising as a premature revolutionary outburst doomed to failure from the outset, lacking the necessary Marxist understanding of history alongside atavistic nationalist sentiment. In this way, the monument marks the appropriation of a nationalist uprising by a broader state-socialist, Titoist ideology; it opened on the 71st anniversary of the uprising but, more importantly back then, it also marked the thirtieth anniversary of the first meeting of ASNOM (the Anti-Fascist Liberation Council of Macedonia- the wartime military-political umbrella body that resisted fascist occupation in this part of the world).

Whilst the main accounts of the Yugoslav partisan war, by Milovan Djilas and Vladimir Dedijer, focus on the struggle against the Germans and Italians in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia, here in Macedonia the struggle was run almost independently, under the leadership of Svetozar Vukmanovic-Tempo; Tempo accepted Tito's overall supremacy in Yugoslavia, under AVNOJ (Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council of Yugoslavia), he had a largely free hand in Macedonia to conduct resistance to a rather savage occupation by Bulgaria. Little is available in English on the subject of the partisan war in Macedonia.

Stained glass glows through one of the main portholes of the monument

These days, of course, the Communist iconography is little understood, and the Communist interpretation of Macedonia's development is flatly rejected as outdated and anachronistic; the building now is a cradle of Macedonian nationalist sentiment, with a new nationalist narrative from Illinden, to secessionist upheaval in the 1920s, to independence in late 1991, now suggested. Aesthetics aside, it is this tension in function that makes the structure so fascinating; as a monument to the Macedonian past, filtered through the Lens of Titoist and Yugoslav ideologies, now re-interpreted for a post-Communist present. the building is at once a virtuoso display of the vibrancy and invention of Yugoslav socialist modernism, at the same time as being a contemporary tombstone for a thoroughly dead ideology.

A giant portrait of Tose Proeski faces his monastery and memorial

 Just how much has changed since the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation in the early 90s can be witnessed by the monument to the Macedonian folk and rock star, Tose Proeski, which occupies a large space at the bottom of the hill, under the Illinden monument. Before his death, Proeski invested heavily in a monastery and space for spiritual contemplation; he was killed, at the horribly young age of 26, in a car crash in Croatia, in October 2007. I know nothing about Proeski's music, but he is one of the few figures in post-Yugoslav times who has an eager following all over the Balkans. Several busloads of tourists were in attendance at his memorial and monastery today, and local flower, teddy bear and bottled water sellers were doing a brisk trade out of the back of their Stojadins.  Religion was grudgingly tolerated in Tito's era but the emergence of Proeski as some kind of uncanonised saint in the last four years shows just how quickly the Macedonian Orthdox faith has expanded to fill the yawning ideological void left by the end of Titoist socialism.

Tomorrow I'm off to Prilep, the artist's colony and tobacco town. I've had a great start to my work today, if Prilep proves to be only half as interesting as Kruševo has been today, then I'll be content.

PS, if you're not on facebook, you can still see the full photo set relating to this article here

Ohrid

Ohrid old town from the lake

So, it's been a really enjoyable four days here. Ohrid isn't a big town, but it is permanently busy and, whatever you are here for, there's something usually available to do.

Like many towns in the former Yugoslavia, Ohrid is split between an old town that spirals down from the crest of the hill in a series of tight, cobblestoned-corkscrew streets. Imagine Ansthruther or Pittenweem, with Fife accents and fish n chips replaced by baking heat, burek, and Macedonian, and you're somewhere close. On the other side of Bul Kliment Ohridski is the Tito-era part of town, all rectilinear low rise apartments and hotels in various states of repair.

The old town is quite beguilingly beautiful, as befits a world UNESCO heritage site (Ohrid has held this status since 1979). There are two remarkable churches, one of which- St. Jovan at Kaneo- is widely believed to be the most photographed structure anywhere in Macedonia. The town of Ohrid was founded by St. Klement Ohridski, who has a statue by the plane tree at the lakeside. In the early mediaevel times, Ohrid was a significant religious centre, and the first South Slav university was founded here. Back then there was a continual war between the South Slavs of various origins, and the Ottomans, and the Ottomans eventually prevailed, ruling the roost here until the beginning of the twentieth century.

...and the Lake from the old town

These days Ohrid is mainly a tourist town; Bul. Kliment Ohridski is crammed at all hours of the day and (even Sunday) night. It's like walking on Oxford Street on a busy Saturday. Macedonians are very open, sociable, family-oriented folk; large family groups promenade slowly down to the lakeside, chatting animatedly. The street has its eccentrics, too; a white bearded man, ludicrously sporting some 1970s pink Elton John-style outsize glasses, stumbles erratically through everything from folk songs to Happy Birthday on his wheezing accordion.There is a significant Albanian population here, too, unsurprising with Albania on the other side of the lake. On Friday, as I headed out for a long walk, the call to prayer from the mosque was sounding across the town centre.

It's unusual, too, that the secular and the sacred seem to co-exist so easily here. In the UK, large churches and religious sites have an unspoken small exclusion zone around them, so that no pubs or clubs disturb their peace and quiet; here, Eurodisco and house cranks out from about nine at night, cheek by jowl with some of the remarkable churches on the hill. Much of the tourist population throngs Sar Camuel in the evening, where the main boozers and clubs are. I was delighted to re-acquaint myself with Slovenian Lasko again over the weekend; after the Macedonian Skopsko beer, the smooth, fast-disappearing Ljubljana potion seem the one most widely available.

Yesterday I took a break from watching the 24hr football on Ustream, and went to a real game; 100 denar (£1.25) got me in to the crumbling Biljana Springs stadium to see the local team, newly promoted, against the big city slickers of Vardar Skopje. Or, in Macedonian terms, the Ribari (Fishermen) against the Црвено-Црни (Red and Blacks). The stadium was like a run-down Dundee junior ground, with a running track around it (think Downfield or Dundee Violet, for those of you who know these exotic junior stadia). In truth, watching the capacity crowd of 3,000 was much more entertaining than the actual game, which was brutal- soporifically slow, error-strewn, replete with misplaced passes and woeful timidity in attack.

Flares, Bog Roll and lots of noise as the Ribari ultras desperately try to enliven a dull game

Undeterred, the Ribari ultras proceeded to go absolutely mental in spite of the turgid fare on offer, peppering the little used running track with bog roll and letting off marine flares at the slightest provocation. Ohrid cut open a shockingly bad Vardar defence several times, but sadly their forwards had the penetration of a blunt HB pencil against a block of granite. In the end, the home side were rather unlucky to lose 0-2, to two well taken late strikes from outside the penalty box, as Vardar finally remembered that they had played football before. In a week where Scottish football plumbed new European depths, it was gratifying to note that an Airdrie or a Raith Rovers could comfortably have taken care of these two rank rotten sides.

The Macedonian President's summer hideaway

 Today I went out on a boat on the lake; a little wooden thing with an outboard motor, and a Vietnam-river-boat style old army canvas over the top. We headed off in the general direction of Albania, before cutting back past the summer residence of the Macedonian president, on a secluded outcrop- the building originally put up for Marshal Tito in Yugoslav times. A little police boat bobbed at the edge of the little jetty, indicating that the president was there, although the two officers on duty seemed fully occupied in making their lunch. It was very peaceful, with the water, calm, a deep blue-green.

So, that's pretty much the end of the holiday phase of this trip, and Ohrid was a very good choice to end it in. Macedonia is still off the beaten track for many UK tourists, and options for getting here are limited, but if you get the chance to come to Ohrid, don't hesitate- do it.

This week, I'm basing myself in Bitola, about an hour's drive from here and ten miles or so from the Greek border. Whilst there, as well as looking around Bitola itself, I'm going to Prilep- home of the longest established artist's colony in the former Yugoslavia and still going in contemporary Macedonia, as well as Krusevo, where there is a museum dedicated to Nikola Martinovski, Macedonian's J.D. Fergusson-cum-Chagall. Having written a near dissertation's worth of pure bunkum on here today, my next update will be from Bitola probably on Wednesday night- by then I should have had my first meetings and taken my first notes for the big tome.

Journey south-eastwards

Ohrid old town street & Zastava Fiça

So it's time to collect my thoughts after a few days in Ohrid, a beautiful small lakeside resort in the South East of Macedonia. Lake Ohrid is a gigantic expanse of water, surrounded by mountains; 2/3 of it belongs to Macedonia, and 1/3 to Albania, whose mountainous shores stand out clearly on the distant horizon.

It's about 700 miles from Rijeka, where I was last Sunday, and I took it in leisurely style, via overnight stops in steaming hot Zagreb (and some very nice fried Calamari in an old haunt there) and in a beautiful woodland hotel outside Kragujevac, which was filled, of all things, with an Irish television company making a series about the building of the Titanic. Er, Serbia was clearly an obvious choice to make that, then. Apparently it's boom time in the movies in the former Communist countries; the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Serbia are all vying hard to attract film makers via a series of cashback and tax free incentives. there was also a large party of elderly Italian men making the pilgrimage to Kragujevac from Italy, in their little Zastava Fiça cars- they made a very noisy and slow moving, if entertaining, convoy.

Whilst the EU may have been celebrating the fall of borders since the end of Marxism-Leninism, in this part of the world they've been going up in the last twenty years. Had I done this journey in 1989, I could have driven from the Austrian border to here, without once being asked to show a passport. I've had to produce it four times in the last week, with the Serb and Macedonian borders being particularly niggly affairs, owing to the need to buy car insurance. No UK insurer will cover this part of the world (presumably there isn't enough money in it, and the accident rate is high) so I had to part with cash in order to receive a dubious piece of slippy telex paper in Cyrillic writing, in both countries.

A stone-faced insurance agent girned, huffed and puffed over my card for half an hour on entry into Serbia; in Macedonia, I had to leave the car at the border, and take a taxi into the dusty border town of Kumanovo, in order to withdraw cash and go back to the border to get my bit of paper. The facility to pay by card does not exist at the Macedonian border, nor can you get Macedonian denar anywhere but Macedonia, so it was either take the cab or go back into Serbia. The ride was very Butlins; an amiable, animated and genuinely psychotic unlicensed taxi driver got to Kumanovo in 15 minutes, largely by driving his ailing Fiat Uno at 120km/h on the wrong side of the road. There was a rather uncomfortable "chicken" moment, as we overtook a slow moving convoy and found ourselves head on with a big Polish articulated lorry; we abhorted that with about 15 seconds to spare, amidst a feline screech of balding tyres and an elephantine trumpet on the horn of the juggernaut.

A quick photo stop, 20 miles north of Ohrid

 These alarms aside, the roads outside of the towns are much quieter than I'd expected. There was quite a bit of roadkill in Serbia; a dead sheep stinking and rotting in the mid-day sun; various cats and Alsatians, guts everywhere, having met their end at night-time. It was intensely hot, and dusty; two Serb women, in headscarves, had to turn their back at the side of the road as they were enevloped in a huge cloud of dust by a passing lorry. On two occasions I saw horse-and-carts being driven over motorway bridges (presumably a good way of cutting out the seemingly endless motorway tolls in this part of the world). The Serb landscape, dotted with red-roofed white farmhouses and small towns, was baking; yellow, green, and parched.

Through Mavrovo National Park, Macedonia

From Skopje, the Macedonian capital, the road skirts the base of the Sar Planina mountains, and down through Mavrovo National Park. The road down to Ohrid is easily the most beautiful and captivating scenery I've seen yet. After Skopje, the landscape is lush, green, sweltering; the road to Ohrid is like a B-road in Highland Perthshire; narrow, steep inclines, very tight corners, then dizzying descents; deep valleys, steep inclines, long cool shadows cast by thick deciduous woods, also the feeling of being very remote and cut off, save for the occasional hamlet. In bleaker moments in my last job, I'd toyed with the idea of sneaking off down here, with nothing more than a Lada Niva 4 x 4, a big Sarplaninac dog, and a rifle for company. I'm sure my art books would have made a good winter soup, or could at least be sold for glue.

If you ever see me rolling in one of these, with a dog the size of a small bear in the passenger seat, you'll know I've tired of life

Ohrid itself is a very lively town. The streets are packed with folk eighteen hours a day; the many small supermarkets, pubs and souvenir shops never seem to close; the main Boulevar Turisticka is car-choked mayhem at peak times, with elderly Yugos honking irritably at pedestrians and scooters, and accelerating off with a trademark asthmatic rasp from the exhaust. The main pedestrianised shopping street, Bul Makedonski Prosvetiteli, is also the artery to the lake, where everyone goes at night, and to the winding Car Samuel, which leads to all the pubs and nightclubs. My hostel is just off Turisticka and everything is a ten minute walk away.

However, I'm going to go and see some more first, before writing down my impressions of four days here, later tonight.

Mavrovo shines emerald-like in the late afternoon sun