Skopje

“ In 1963, upon the occasion of a particularly malicious earthquake, which levelled Skopje – they rebuilt it from generous foreign donations. The message sank in: foreigners love disasters, natural and manmade. Foreigners are willing to shell hard currency for this indulgence. The harder the catastrophe – the harder the currency. Thus, calamities became an export industry, a major earner of foreign exchange, the opportunity of a lifetime for a few in exchange for the misery of the many. ”

“ When necessity phrases the issue thus it is clear that the second choice is the one which will always be preferred by everybody, for what honest Macedonian patriot would be prepared to sacrifice Kostur, Lerin, Bitola, Ohrid, Resen, Prilep, Veles, Tetovo, Skopje, etc. for the unification of Macedonia up to the left bank of the River Vardar with Bulgaria? Is there a greater affinity between a Macedonian from Eastern Macedonia with a citizen of Ruse, on the Romanian border, or with a Macedonian from eastern, western, northern or southern Macedonia? ”

“ It included, besides modern Servia, as far as the Ibar and the Servian Morava, a part of Bosnia to the east of the watershed between the rivers Bosna and Drina, the district of Novibazar and Old Servia, and a part of Albania.97 It had no regular capital in the modern sense, but the Kings resided usually at Prizren, at Scutari,98 or at Skopje (Üsküb) . It touched the sea-coast at the Bocche di Cattaro and in Albania; and the town of Cattaro was sometimes under Servian protection. The importance of the country does not begin until the reign of Stephen Nemanja (1143 or 1159) . ”

“ The appointment of Bishop Nil is expected for the fire to blaze forth. The Poljanin eparchy will immediately turn into a Union and the Strumica and Voden eparchies will join in, as well as a huge number of villages in Salonika, Drama, Serres and other eparchies. The other Macedonian eparchies will certainly be shattered, too, first the Veles eparchy and then the Skopje one. The Veles eparchy is also dissatisfied with its bishop, Damaskin, while at the same time the citizens of Veles, aroused by a craving for power, believe that they should govern Macedonia in religious matters. ”

“ Please let me recommend that we should not in future reject the idea of accepting the Macedonian flock under the wing of our Holy Church. It would be good to recommend our archbishop in Plovdiv to get into contact with the Metropolitan staying in Sofia.
Your Eminence, my suggestion is based upon confirmed reports from Macedonia, where the congregation of the Skopje eparchy, as well as the whole of Macedonia, reacted strongly against the replacement of Metropolitan Theodosius and declared that they were ready to pass into union with our Holy Church. ”

“ Riots and counter-riots ensued, culminating in violent demonstrations of Macedonian students in the streets of Skopje, the capital.
The average salary in Macedonia is 200 Euro (=180 US dollars) a MONTH. There are c. 300,000 unemployed in a total working age population of 930,000. There is a constant balance of payments deficit of 8% of GNP. Macedonia is POOR – real poor, not relatively poor. It is poorer than any other country in Europe, with the exception of Albania. It is also insecure. Albanians and Serbs from within and from without threaten its very existence. ”

“ Is it not high time to put an end to hatred between blood brothers? And how could this be achieved if not by way of our own national Church, by way of the Archbishopric of Ohrid? I shall be sincere, my dear brother in Christ, and shall openly declare to you: we, the Macedonians, do not suffer as much by the Turks, long live our Padishah, as by the Greeks, the Bulgarians and the Serbs, who have set upon us like vultures upon a carcass in this tortured land and want to split it up. ”

“ You know that the Turks would never agree with us to establish a new Church. Yet, on the other hand, they do not like the Bulgarian either. I had the opportunity here to talk to the Vali extensively and he promised to help me with the Porte, if we placed our new Church under the patronage of another recognized Church in the Empire. Of course, my dear brother, he asks to be paid for his favour, but I cannot rely upon the local wealthy men, and what can I do alone, being so poor? ”

“ Wishing to put a dagger to my throat and exert pressure on me and compel me to recognize the Patriarchate unconditionally, it engaged the Greek associations and, as you already know, a huge number of Greek newspapers published the news that I admitted to being a schismatic and repented, imploring the Patriarch to accept me again into the bosom of the Holy Orthodox Church, and that I would pass with the whole of my flock from Macedonia under his jurisdiction. In fact this false news was intended to upset the Exarchate and the Exarch ”

“ Then I let him know that his policy towards Macedonian was not very acceptable for the people and that he should not be surprised if the people renounced the Exarchate and demanded the restoration of the Archbishopric of Ohrid. ”

“ I was as dirty as a Bulgarian peasant, and exhausted with hunger, when at last I reached Sofia.
Still war had not been declared, but its spirit reigned in Sofia. Outside the old white mosque, with its tall and slender minaret—the one thing of beauty which had been inherited from the Turks—there passed all day long companies of soldiers, heavily laden in their field kit, and bands of Macedonian volunteers. Through the streets there was the rumble of bullock wagons and forage carts, drawn by buffaloes. ”

“ The street is dead still till a sword clanks and the patrol marches past. The lights are extinguished in the mosque. The darkness is dense and dead, and there is no sound. It is only nine o'clock, but all Skodra seems asleep.
Skodra the town, as distinguished from the bazaar, has not a great deal to show. It is a big town with some 40,000 inhabitants, and as all houses of any size stand in a large yard or garden, it covers much space. Here every man's house is his castle, and the high walls are not only for seclusion but for defence. ”

“ Their wants were few, luxuries there were few to be purchased, and they showed all their worldly goods upon their persons in a blaze of gold and finery on high days and holidays. Skodra does so still, and so does every peasant and many a nobleman in the old-world Balkan peninsula of to-day. Gorgeous garments solidly made they are, for they will not go out of fashion next season, nor the season after, never indeed until Albania is "civilised," and when will that be? So the finery is made to last, and is worn and worn till it descends to "Petticoat Lane" and is bought by the very poor. ”

“ The Turks were confident of an early and easy victory, and hoped to reach Sofia, not from Constantinople and Thrace, but pushing up north-eastwards from Macedonia. The rapid offensive of the Serbian army, however, took them by surprise, and they were completely overwhelmed at the battle of Kumanovo in northern Macedonia on October 23-4, 1912. On the 31st King Peter made his triumphal entry into Skoplje (ex-Üsküb) , the ancient capital of Serbia under Tsar Stephen Dušan in the fourteenth century. ”

“ The Skoptsi faith, the practice of which is strictly forbidden in Russia, entails a life of absolute chastity. This sect can only acquire new members by election, since both sexes so mutilate their persons that they can neither beget nor bear children.
The Skoptsi exiles, who number about six hundred, inhabit a village called Markha about seven versts from Yakutsk. Every man and woman in the place (there are of course no children) is a Skopt. ”

“ The peasants load their beasts—they are adepts at pack-saddling and you rarely see a sore back—and trail slowly across the plains towards their mountain homes. The bazaar is shut up, darkness comes on fast, and belated foot passengers pick their way with lanterns.
Night in Skodra is uncanny. The half-dozen tiny oil lamps do not light it at all. When there is no moon, the darkness is impenetrable and absolute, save perhaps for a long streak of light from the door-chink of the next shop and the lighted windows of the mosque opposite. ”

“ Sofia (50) , capital since 1878 of Bulgaria; is a fortified town, situated in the broad valley of the Isker, a tributary of the Danube, 75 m. NW. of Philippopolis; has recently largely undergone reconstruction, and with hotels, banks, a government palace, &c., presents a fine modern appearance; has a national university; is an important trade emporium, and is on the Constantinople and Belgrade railway; manufactures cloth, silks, leather, &c., and has long been famed for its hot mineral springs. ”

“ The residence portion is only partially built up, there being wide gaps between the houses, showing the town lots that have been held for speculative purposes and where building schemes have been abandoned. If Sofia were as closely built as the ordinary European city it could accommodate three times its present population. Occasionally a stately residence rises from behind a forbidding wall. The foliage around it indicates a garden, but Bulgarian civilization has not passed the period when it is prudent to omit any means of protection. The streets and sidewalks are in a horrible condition. ”

“ When Skopte was with the king he represented to him that there was relationship between the king and him; and also that he, Skopte, had always been the king's friend, and his father's likewise, and that their friendship had never been shaken. He added, "People might know that I have sense enough not to hold a strife, sire, with you, if I was wrong in what I asked; but it is inherited from my ancestors to defend my rights against any man, without distinction of persons." The king was just the same on this point, and his resolution was by no means softened by such a speech. ”

“ The costumes of the people you meet are Oriental, though the women go unveiled. Samakov has a garrison; it is not far from the Turkish frontier, and the uniforms of the fine-looking Bulgarian soldiers strike a Western note. But on the whole the aspect of the town is Oriental, the smells intensely so.
The road improves as it leaves Samakov, it becomes really quite a good road, and carries you upwards into the mountains. There on a high plateau embowered in a forest of pines lies Tshamkuria. It is a hot-weather resort—everybody who is anybody in Sofia comes here for the summer. ”

“ Skodra is not a town of progress, for there telephone or electric light is forbidden; machinery of every kind is against the law, and neither newspapers nor books are allowed to enter Albania. Therefore in those crooked streets of the bazaar the traveller is back in mediæval days, and the town of to-day is just as Florence was in the days of Boccaccio or Dante. Like the mediæval Florentines, many of the men from the mountains shave their heads, leaving a tuft of bushy hair at the back, which is cut square at the neck. ”

“ The taste for the arts shown by the wealthy house of the Scopadæ proves no more that such was the disposition of the whole people, than the existence of the same qualities in Archelaus argues their prevalence in Macedonia. This is sufficient to distinguish them from the race of the Greeks, so highly endowed by nature. We are therefore induced to conjecture that this nation, which a short time before the expedition of the Heraclidæ, migrated from Thesprotia, and indeed from the territory of Ephyra (Cichyrus) into the plain of the Peneus, had originally come from Illyria. ”

“ Books and European newspapers were plentiful in all the houses we visited in Markha, and the Skoptsi with whom I conversed were men of considerable intelligence, well up in the questions of the day. But their personal appearance is anything but attractive. Most of the men are enormously stout, with smooth flabby faces and dull heavy eyes, while the women have an emaciated and prematurely old appearance. The creed is no doubt a revolting one, physically and morally, but with all his faults the Skopt has certain good points which his free neighbours in Yakutsk might do well to imitate. ”

“ They swarm at the new Army Club and at the restaurant of the Red Crab.”
The new Sofia, too, has produced a citizen class which already disdains the peasant simplicity which was the hall-mark of the Bulgarian nation in the time of Stambuloff. They affect fine manners and wit, they try to smile where the old-time Bulgar was a gloomy churl. These parvenu niceties are ostentatious, and sit but ill upon people to whom they are far from natural; they are accompanied by much chatter about art, for Sofia has already produced its clan of “intellectuals.” ”

“ The largest mosque, in the center of the city, and only a stone’s throw from the palace, was recently fitted up for a national museum.
Although Sofia is still primitive in many respects, modern ideas are rapidly growing in favor and there is nothing in the new part of the town to recall the recent Turkish occupation. The citizens very generally wear modern European clothing. The only place one can see the native costume is at the market in the early morning, where the country people bring vegetables and dairy products for sale. ”

“ In 1382 Sofia was captured by the Turks; in 1443 it was for a brief time occupied by the Hungarians under John Hunyady. Under Turkish rule the city was for nearly four centuries the residence of the beylerbey or governor-general of the whole Balkan Peninsula except Bosnia and the Morea. During this period the population increased and became mainly Turkish; in 1553 the town possessed eleven large and one hundred small mosques. In the latter half of the 15th century Sofia, owing to its situation at the junction of several trade routes, became an important centre of Ragusan commerce. ”

“ On they went, across the Morava river, across the main line from Salonika to Belgrade, past stockaded villages, over low dusty hills, never checking the pace until, about 5 o’clock, the domes and minarets of Sofia hove into view. Soon they entered the city, slowing down as they ran through the street. They passed shops where cheese and onions lay on open counters, larger establishments where silk hats and French gloves were on sale, dodged electric cars, and a gendarme who was too much amazed to call on them to stop. ”