Skopje

In Skopje we stayed in a very nice hostel called Hi Skopje Hostel, which is run by two friends. We made a city check and recognised that there are a lot of sculptures in the city:

The uncountable sculptures and the new representative buildings in the city centre are part of a project called „Skopje 2014“ with the purpose of giving the capital a more classical appeal by the year 2014. The project consists mainly of the construction of museums and government buildings, as well as the erection of monuments depicting historical figures from the region of Macedonia. Around 20 buildings and over 40 monuments are planned to be constructed as part of the project. The project has been criticized for constructing nationalistic historic kitsch. It really looks strange and reminded us of something like Disneyland, because it is obviously that all the sculptures and buildings are new, but trying to look historical. „Skopje 2014“ has also generated controversy for its cost, for which estimates range from 80 to 500 million euros. (Wikipedia)

The second day we decided to go to lake Matka, which is a 45 minute bus ride from the city centre. There you can find a beautiful canyon which has awesome caves to discover. We rent a kayak to explore the lake and the caves:

In the evening we went to the city centre again and crashed into a Macedonian wedding:

….. and had a home-made Absinth at the bazar:

At night we stayed at the hostel and had a interesting chat with the owner of the hostel and the other guests from Canada, Belgium and Switzerland. There was a dog who immediately felt in love with the smell of Tobias` shoes, because he knows what`s good: