Sunday, August 5, Skopje

The most remarkable thing about Skopje is its monuments. They are everywhere. Monuments to past glories (Alexander the Great and his dad, Philip); monuments to religious figures; monuments to past revolutionaries (mostly unsuccessful and killed off by the Ottomans or Turks); monuments on walls (many on random buildings); monuments in city squares; monuments on quiet side streets. I'm certain that Skopje leads the world in per capita monuments.
I took photos of a sampling, but realize that this is just a tiny percentage of what I saw.

If I were to describe the Balkans in one word it would be 'unsettled'. Which might partially account for the large number of memorialized heroes here. In each country that I visited there is a museum of history, and in each museum are listed the past heroes who conquered the surrounding areas (mostly from the Ottomans) and expanded said country into a regional power. The Croats took over present day Bosnia and Montenegro and parts of Serbia. The Bosnians, at some other time, swallowed up Serbs and Macedonians and Albanians. Same for Albania and Macedonia. They've all had their times as masters of the region. And each museum contains at least one map showing that the 21st century borders of their country don't truly represent where their borders should be. Macedonia, for instance, claims ownership of a sizable chunk of Greece around Thesaloniki.
Nobody's completely happy with the status quo ante.
Whether anyone has a yen to duke it out and reclaim 'lost' territory, that I couldn't divine. That would take a longer stay and a higher level of engagement with policy makers.
But you can understand why a place like Macedonia, which has been repeatedly absorbed by its neighbors, would celebrate heroes of the past. If nothing else it at least asserts that there is a Macedonian identity, and that, at one time in the past it was a masterful identity.

Tomorrow I head for Bulgaria.