So that statue you see right behind me is of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. Right now,
I am in Skopje, the capital of the modern day Republic of Macedonia or North Macedonia. And in
this video I'll cover my experience of getting to this country and my first day in Macedonia.
[Music]
So it's 10 30 a.m. and I don't kno w exactly where I am but I'm in Albania.
I got on a bus from Tirana at 9 am which I barely caught by two minutes because I was fixing some
subtitles for a video that I was uploading. And we stopped here for 20 minutes and today
I'm headed to Macedonia or North Macedonia as it’s now called. This is the first stop.
I slept like three hours yesterday because I filmed like 10 short videos in the last week.
This view is amazing. There's like a little stream over there. Although
I'm wearing a t-shirt, it's kind of cold right now. I think it's like 12 degrees
I have a little bit of Albanian money left that I need to spend. Hello.
I crossed the border into Macedonia and I'm at this like gas pump where a lot of trucks
are refueling. And there's like a gas station where people are having coffees and cigarettes and
uh using this for a bathroom break. That border crossing took forever and it always takes forever,
because I took the same route four years ago. Cuz in the Albanian side before you exit they make you
come out and like look through all your bags, so I had to explain to them why I have a GoPro, camera,
a drone and how a gimbal works and explain what is going on with all my electronics. Then after
that at the Albanian exit, like the Visa control, they brought me in a room and they were asking
me everything about why I was in Albania for six weeks and all that stuff. Then I realized I gave
them my old passport, not my current passport. So, I gave them a new one and then let me go
immediately. Then I went to the Macedonian side border control. I had to go inside a room and they
checked my Visa properly to make sure if I have the right visa to get in because I'm a Bangladeshi
citizen and we're not usually allowed to come in without a Visa. But because I have a U.S visa,
they were able to double check that for like 20 30 minutes and this took a while as well. But people
were like super friendly. The officials were super friendly and they were curious about a Bangladeshi
coming to Macedonia and Albania. At no point did I feel like they were rude. People in
this part of Europe are very very welcoming to foreigners. I've almost experienced no racism
here the whole time I've been here, there's a reason I keep coming back to this region,
the Balkans. People are super friendly. We're next to Lake Ohrid right now and
we're gonna get on the bus soon and go to Skopje and I'm guessing this is going to
take another three and a half hours, I want to say. Behind me is the flag of Macedonia,
although it's like folded up there. So officially I am in Macedonia or North Macedonia. It's not
Macedonia by the way it's (pronounced) MaKedonia. I don't know why we pronounce it wrong.
It's 2 pm. Stopping in another city. There's a massive Macedonian flag back there. This is a very
chilly town with a lot of fog. It finally feels like winter has started for me in the
second week of November. I'm not sure what's going on but everyone except me
on the bus got off on this city before Skopje and this guy just started washing the bus
It's 5 p.m and I just arrived in Skopje and it's way too dark right now to film and it's
kind of cold too. I think it's 12 degrees so I'm just gonna start filming again tomorrow.
[Music]
So it's daylight again and I am in Skopje the capital city of North Macedonia or Macedonia
as most locals call it. And right now, I'm at the top of the Fortress which is situated in
this very high hill next to the city that sort of like overlooks the whole city and the river and
everything else. It's probably the best place to be around sunset but I'm starting the day
off here just for logistical reasons. So Skopje has been an important city for like thousands of
thousands of years. There's records of people that inhabited this area more than 6 000 years ago. For
the longest time the city and this country like a lot of other places in the Balkans have been
on the crossroads of different Empires that were basically always fighting against each other. And
that is reflected in the makeup of the population of Macedonia or Northern Macedonia today. You'll
find people from different religions. You'll find people from different ethnicities. You'll
find people speaking different languages within this one small country of a few million people.
This Fortress itself is believed to have been built around 1500 years ago in the 6th century
and then it was taken over by the Byzantines and Ottomans or whoever ruled the area basically.
[Music]
Next to the Fortress Is this huge mosque which in my opinion is the most impressive mosque in
the whole city of Skopje, probably in all of Macedonia. This was built in 1492 by the
Ottomans and it's called the Mustafa Pasha mosque. I don't know if you can hear it but
there's a bunch of mosques that are like doing the call to prayer right now. And right next
to one of these mosques is this brewery which is one of the only craft breweries in Skopje I think
Right next to the brewery is this church that's been around for a very long time and looks very
different from the mosques. Something very interesting about this church is that this
Bell Tower wasn't always here. So back in the day when the Ottomans were ruling the place, they had
these laws that any other religious institutions including churches had to be hidden. They couldn't
be like plainly out there like mosques and they also had this rule that the bell towers of the
churches could not be higher than the minarets of nearby mosques. So this wasn't allowed to be
as high up as it is now. Okay now I'm gonna go to the old Bazaar which also has very heavy Ottoman
influences. Take a look. So many different kinds of stores here. So many different kinds of food.
So back in the day basically every street in the old Bazaar had its purpose and only sold
one item and that was like that not just here but in Sarajevo and pretty much every other
Ottoman town in the region that I can think about. But recently that has changed and there's like
restaurants and different kind of shops in every street, except for this one street which is the
Jewelry Street, which is where you can still find just jewelry in most places. And that's apparently
like a big part of culture in Macedonia is that when like kids finish Primary School,
Secondary School, someone gets married, someone's born, someone gets circumcised, the thing to do
is often family members give them gold. That's why buying jewelry is still very popular. It’s
still a big part of their culture and that's why the street basically survived. Some shops on the
street are also selling wedding outfits because I guess wedding goes hand in hand with jewelry
[Music]
Okay so I'm in this little square it seems right next to Old Town and just went to an ATM and I
got out some Macedonian denare. Plastic money. I like plastic money. I don't think they use a
lot of coins either which is nice and the exchange rate is uh one US dollar to 61 Macedonian denares
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[Music] Okay so back in Old Bazaar, I'm gonna try to find some food and make a separate food vlog
if you're interested in Macedonian food, check that out. I'll link that in the description.
Right now I'm in one of the main squares of Skopje which is called Square of King
Philip II and in the middle of the square is this huge statue of King Philip II. This guy
basically took over all of ancient Greece and his Empire obviously overlapped with modern day
Macedonia or North Macedonia and if you look at it closely it looks like he's saying hi to
someone else on the other side of the bridge. Now we're going to check out the statue of his son,
Alexander the Great. Now what's crazy is it's only 3 45 p.m and it's already almost dark
Right in the middle of Skopje is the Vardar river which is basically the
reason the city was built. And there's like a million bridges going across this river.
Probably the most famous one is the one I'm standing on right now which is called the
stone bridge and was built by the Ottomans in 1469 and this river is not really that
deep over here. Earlier I saw a guy standing in knee deep water and fishing over here.
So right across the River from King Philip II square is Macedonia square with probably
the most famous statue in this whole country of Alexander the Great, the historical conqueror that
conquered everything from ancient Macedonia all the way through the Middle East and North Africa
and then all the way through to almost India. And then died pretty young so he did all of that at a
pretty impressively young age. He's definitely considered one of the greatest conquerors in
history. Now the Greeks have an issue with Macedonians glorifying Alexander the Great
because he's from a different part of Macedonia which is in Greece today and because of that a
couple of years back when I was here, Macedonia had to officially change the name of the statue
to “man on a horse”, not call it the Alexander the Great statue. Even though this was a statue
of him. And then after that eventually they had to change the name of the whole country to make
Greece happy so they could try to join NATO or try to join the EU. When I was last here,
this country was just called Macedonia. Now it's official actually called North Macedonia although
the locals still just call it Macedonia. So a bit of interesting rivalry going on here.
Another thing I want to say about all the architecture here and all the statues: these
haven't been here forever. They were basically created in 2014 when the city decided to go on a
massive remodeling project and tried to make all these statues to make the city more attractive
So basically right next to Macedonia square is this Memorial to the humanitarian and Nobel Peace
Prize winner, Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa was of Albanian Heritage but she was born in the city of
Skopje in a house that was basically right here that didn't survive the earthquake that we'll
talk about later. So she was born in Skopje which was an Ottoman territory 112 years ago,
went on to become a Catholic nun and a world famous humanitarian and made the country very
proud. She grew up mostly here too but eventually she left the city and left Europe and moved to
West Bengal and Calcutta with her life's mission of serving the poorest of the poor through her
fate of Catholic Christianity. Right next to this Memorial you'll see is this huge Arch that
honestly looks a lot like Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. So right in the middle of the city is this huge
shopping mall that's essentially an open shopping mall which is a kind of a unique concept. I don't
think I've seen this in a lot of places. You can pretty much walk through the mall next to shops
and see the sky above you. Probably gets pretty wild when it's like snowing or raining really hard
[Music]
In another recent development the city of Skopje decided to make all these fancy fake
ships right near the center on the river. And it looks kind of absurd because these
ships are higher or significantly higher than the bridges that are right next to it.
Okay so it got too dark yesterday so I had to stop filming. But there's like one more stop
I want to cover before I catch my flight and leave Macedonia. This is a museum in Skopje.
It used to be the old train station and if you look at the clock that's on the wall over there,
it's frozen at 5 17 a.m. That's because on a July Morning in 1963, Skopje had unfortunately one of
its most defining moments at that exact time. There was a massive massive earthquake that
destroyed 80 percent of the city and killed more than a thousand people and the city was
devastated. In a response to that, what's interesting is that all of Yugoslavia came
together to help the city. All of the people from the nearby towns came to rescue the people that
were trapped and that were suffering. And even the whole International Community sort of came
to the rescue for Skopje because they wanted to save the people. Where are you from? Bangladesh.
Do you understand English? Yes. This hotel Bristol. Yeah. In my
time. Yeah. When I was young that was the last w****-house.
The last w****-house
Okay okay. So was not expecting that but yeah. Because the international communities came
together to um help Skopje or Macedonia in its time of need/ people ended up renaming a lot of
buildings/ a lot of quarters after the different countries or after the different cities from where
the people came to help in my short time in Macedonia I've noticed that the people are
really friendly. They're friendly in general in the Balkans towards foreigners but people
are really friendly here too. And someone told me who's from Macedonia that it has a lot to do
with uh being thankful with how the International Community responded to Macedonia when it needed
help. All right guys that is gonna be it for this video because I have 40 minutes to go back home
finish packing and then catch a bus that gets to the airport. I really wish I had more time
to show what's in Skopje. There's some really cool stuff like this mountain next to the city
with a huge 20 30 meter maybe 60 meter cross on it. There's the Matka canyon nearby and there's
just a lot more culture and history, especially history from the last 100 years or so that would
be very interesting to discuss. But I severely underestimated how cold it is in the mornings and
how quickly it gets super dark, so I didn't get to film a lot of the things that I was hoping
to cover. Hopefully I can come back someday you know do a more deeper dive into the culture and
history of this place. I was about to finish the video then I saw the historic Parliament
building right next to me so I figured I would show you guys that. A lot of stuff has happened
in there over the last couple of centuries. So along with a copy of the Arc de Triomphe,
Skopje also has its own mini version of the Brandenburg gate in Berlin. So I guess you
can see every city in Europe if you come to Skopje. So I forgot to film The outro
because I was running late. Like, comment, subscribe and follow me on Instagram on
the go if you want real-time updates. I'll catch you guys in the next one from Asia.