As I said before, my initial plan was to stay up north a bit more and then fly to Athens from Budapest, but one of the best parts about not planning ahead very much was that I had a great deal of flexibility.  I met Richard and Angela in Warsaw while they were there for a conference and they invited me to visit them in Skopje which sounded like a great idea.  So I changed my plans and made my way to Skopje Macedonia for a few days.  I got off the bus and met up with Angela for dinner shortly after settling in.  We started off with traditional Macedonian food and beer!

After dinner, she invited me to a birthday party being held at their office and I said what the hell and agreed to join for some revelry.  Angela and Richard are co-founders of Code Academy Macedonia which is a coding bootcamp program that helps students get brought up to speed on coding and helps them get a job as a developer after graduation.  For this reason, a lot of people were very intereted in my experiance in Califonria and Silicon Valley.  It ended up being a lot of fun!

After the party started to die down a bit, I called it a night.  The next day I met Angela for lunch and then headed to their office to hang out and observe their operation.  They were in the midst of interviewing their potential students for their next co-hort, so I joined a few of them.  Lunch was also pretty homey.  After a full day of hanging out at the office interviewing potential candidates we grabbed dinner and met up with Angela’s friends.

Dinner was bomb and we ordered way too much food.  I enjoyed the relativity chill nature of the day and really needed a break day after being pretty active for the past few weeks.

The next day I woke up decently early and headed to a free walking tour of the city.  I learned a lot about the government, quarrels with Greece and the reason there were so many statues in the city.  Apparently the government invested a ridiculous amount of money on statues as an attempt to bring in more tourism. They are nice, but I for sure would not travel to the city just to see the statues.

The other interesting thing was that Greece was not happy about MAcedonia calling themselves Macedonia as Greece also has a region called Macedonia and Greece thinks Macedonia is trying to steal their land.  It was actually interesting to hear the opinion of the Macedonians and then to immediately go to Greece to hear their opinion.  Very polarizing.  Macedonia is not even in the UN because Greece continues to veto their entry unless they change their name.  I think their was recent news that they finally came to an agreement by calling themselves The Republic of Northern Macedonia.  It seems silly to fight over a name but there is a lot of history between the two countries and so things aren’t as simple as they may appear.  Anyways, the walking tour was very interesting and covered a lot about the history of Macedonia and Skopje.  There are also mixed claims about where Alexander the Great was from thus there is a giant statue in the middle of the town that appears to be Alexander the Great on a horse but is called something generic like General on Horse or something like that.

The newness of the place and facade that the buildings had on them were really nice, but felt very new.  It felt kind of like Las Vegas or DisneyLand.  The whole thing just felt off and despite trying to make things look authentic, I think they got it too perfect.

It was neat to see the house of Mother Teresa who was from Skopje which was now turned into a memorial.

Across the river there was a nice bazzar and fort on the hill, that was actually authentic and much better than the new area of the city.  The dogs eventually caught up with us and followed the group for the rest of the tour.  They were pretty nice and friendly.

The tour ended on the top of the hill in the fort so I wandered around a bit with some of the others from the tour and then headed back to my room so I could get in a run before dinner.

I enjoyed this tour and learned alot about Macedonia as I really knew absolutely nothing about the country before arriving.  On my way to my room though, I caught this picture of the statue and I really like the shot.

The run was pretty solid, as there was a trail that ran along the river and I could follow it as long as I wanted to.

After finishing up the run, I met up with Angela at a bar run by the local brewery in town , for dinner and beer!

The beer was pretty good and one of Angela’s friends eventually decided to join us later on in the evening.  It was enjoyable to keep the chill train rolling.

The next day was my last in Skopje and I had already explored much of the city so decided to take a bus outside of the city to a gorge which was supposed to be very pretty.  I decided to check it out and so that’s what my morning ended up as.

The gorge was dammed at one end and as you walked in you passed the damn and then entered the gorge.

It was a nice walk and the views were gorgeous.

There was a trail that followed the river that was pretty well maintained.  I met a fellow traveler on the walk and we walked together for a bit.

The gorge was called Matka canyon and was accessible by city bus, which was nice!

On the way out they had a white water kayaking course set up too, which I thought was neat.

I headed back to the city after my walk, and dropped by the office of Code Academy for a goodbye.

It looked like a fun company with tons of growth potential in a market that is geared and ready to grow.  There were a few things in the works that I provided my feedback to and hopefully they can be really successful.  Thanks for hosting me!

And with that, my time in Macedonia had ended and it was time for me to get to Greece.  I had to take a bus to Thessaloniki, which got me in pretty late followed by an early flight the next morning, so I didn’t even really explore that much at all.  I decided to fly because it was waaay faster and the cost was not that much difference.  I also did not want to sit on a bus for a long time so close to the marathon, but that is a story for another post.  Macedonia was fun and I am glad I had some hosts to show me around.  This is one of the examples where having no plans is a benefit, because I had no intentions of coming to Macedonia before i met Richard and Angela in Warsaw.

Until next time!