An emotional day in Skopje, for several very different reasons
I wake up to cancel the 9:30 walking tour. Partly because of the rain, partly because we were still in bed. I rebook for 1pm.
I take a short walk down the road to get essentials from the nearest supermarket, like bread, butter, cheese, and a triple snickers. Yes TRIPLE. I also buy this carton of stuff with a picture of a cow on. I assume it is milk.
Back at the flat I make my beautiful wife coffee. But it turns out it’s not milk. It’s yogurt. The coffee goes down smoothly, but comes back up quicker than it went down. It’s is now touch and go if we will make the 1pm walk.
We walk out of the apartment full of confidence. After the first day of anxiety over not knowing where we are going i comment to Megan that it’s nice how quickly we have got our bearings. We immediately find ourselves completely lost. We miss the walking tour.
The starting point for the tour was outside the pub where we had cocktails yesterday. We go in and have cocktails.
The Caerphilly Massive arrive and we chat for a while comparing notes. I manage to sell them half of my cash (See yesterday’s blog for this to make sense).
Then, we head for the match ticket collection point.
No matter where you are in the world, somethings never change. Like the inside of large chain hotels. The Holiday Inn is no exception. We could have been in China, New York or Pontllotyn.
We collect our tickets and sit in the bar. Inevitably loads of familiar faces stream past. We recive news that Posh and Becks are at Skopje airport, but their luggage is taking a slower route and will not arrive till Thursday. As we are digesting this news, Posh’s third favorite son joins us in the bar for beers. He moans about his bathroom smelling of dead bodies. Bloody kids
After several local bottled lagers, which turn out to be much nicer than the draught cooking lager, we head out into the world, ready to take a leisurely stroll down the river, taking in the new ancient architecture. Then we spy an ancient Irish Pub.
We don’t normally do Irish Pubs. (I’m sure i type those words every trip, before writing about going into an Irish pub). Then we went into the Irish pub in the hope they might sell cider. They don’t.
The pub is quite lively though so we have a few dark beers. Young gentlemen are stood on tables swinging their shirts around their heads, older gentlemen are stood on the floor waving their pants around their head.
The DJ appears to be a glorified juke box, playing tunes by the likes of Dafydd Iwan, The Barry Horns and KC and the Sunhine band. The crowd sing anti English songs, before, without a hint of irony, singing along to The Jam, the quintessential Union Jack wearers. Tom Jones is played, which is not unusual, and everyone sings along to a song about wife murdering. All good clean fun.
When we head back out into the daylight, the daylight has buggered off and we get to see the magnificent architecture illuminated. We walk down the river taking in the sights, past the opera house, down to the old stone bridge and into a pub next to the statue of Alexander the Great. And we wait.
A crowd is starting to gather ready to march at 7pm. The march is under the banner, ‘The System is Next’ is a protest against percived corruption in the government. I don’t want to go into to much detail here because I am a foreigner detached from the politics of this country, so I’m not an expert. However, the march has been prompted by the death of fifty-nine young people in a fire in a nightclub last week. It is believed by some that corruption in the licencing and safety checking system created a situation that led to the fire.
The protest starts eerily silent and respectful. It looks big, but not huge. As we walk down towards the Arc de Triumph, we look back and see the crowd is much bigger than we thought. There must be at least ten thousand gathered. It stays mostly silent till we reach what I assume is the presidential palace where we stop to chant at the building. I say we, I have no idea what is being chanted so stay out of it.
We then march down past the Irish bar at which point my bladder is in need of draining, so we peel off from the protest. As we walk away we see that the crowd keeps coming and coming. It’s a huge turn out.
Back in the Irish pub, completely oblivious to what is happening down the road, it’s business as usual. Although slightly wobblier than a few hours ago.
Posh and Becks are now in their room, in the same block as us, so we wander back with wine and sympathy. Bizarrely, we can’t get to their floor without being let in. They are in the penthouse and only they can use the lift, which opens into their kitchen.
We end the night in the company of old friends debating whether or not you need to wear swimming costumes in a private rooftop jacuzzi. That age old conundrum.
Then we head for bed. We have booked a tour tomorrow morning with no small amount of optimism and a sprinkling of stupidity. Watch this space.