Trains no longer arrive at Belgrade’s riverside main station, at the foot of the limestone scarp that gave the white city its name. Today, the yellow stucco facade faces a gleaming new statue, eight storeys high, which dominates the forecourt where refugees, mostly from Syria, camped in the late 2010s.
Our flight-free trip from London to the Balkans has taken just 24 hours as far as Budapest, via Eurostar and the Brussels-Vienna sleeper. But now here we are, gazing across a dusty bus station at a 23-metre-high (75ft) Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja. We had expected to arrive at modern Belgrade Prokop station for the final leg to Skopje. But in 2024 no international trains are running south into Serbia, and none at all on to North Macedonia.
Next year promises to be different. A new high speed rail-link between Budapest and Belgrade will shrink the six-hour journey we’ve just made by bus to three and a half hours. But by train it used to take all day. Eventually, faster onward train connections to Skopje and Thessaloniki will also be reinstated. I don’t want to wait that long, though. The excuse for our trip to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, is a cluster of book launches. But the real reason we keep returning to this small country, roughly the size of Slovenia, is that it’s every bit as beautiful and varied as its better-known cousin. Manageable in scale but crammed with history and nature, North Macedonia is a perfect introduction to the underexplored west Balkans.
The Belgrade-Skopje coach takes six hours past plains of maize, storks on telegraph poles and half-built villas of red breezeblock where strings of peppers hang drying on balconies. The disadvantages of overland travel are obvious. But its advantages aren’t just ecological. Forced to slow down, we’re witnessing at first-hand how cultures shift piecemeal, and not necessarily at frontiers. We share strangers’ slivovitz – a fruit spirit – and flaky homemade burek stuffed with white mountain cheese, ground meat or apple, and fall into surprising conversations.
So our arrival in Skopje is a flurry of farewells. The bus door opens on a warm, southern dark smelling of petrol and dust, orange peel and cigarettes. Even after 9pm, the temperature this September evening is still in the mid-20s. Turbo-folk music thuds from a taxi. Beyond the river, the muezzin’s call for the Isha prayer rises over the rooftops, drawing our gaze up to the floodlit silhouette of Kale fortress on its rocky outcrop.
The popular viewpoint is easy to see because in 1963 an earthquake destroyed 80% of this intimate city, sheltered by mountains. As a result, low-rise Skopje boasts a mix of architectural styles – from jugendstil (the German version of art nouveau) shopfronts to extravagant, Communist-era experiments in concrete such as the Central Post Office – that make the national pastime of strolling a pleasure. Beyond the bus station are dim, treelined streets busy with cafe terraces – like the one we seek out straightaway. Under linden trees, we drink the local light Skopsko beer and devour smoky, sweet ćevapčići, the spicy, skinless grilled sausages that are a regional staple.
We’re staying at the Stone Bridge hotel, my favourite because, as the name suggests, it’s right by the Roman Stone Bridge, a downtown landmark. The Vardar, the country’s longest river, flows into the Aegean at Thessaloniki; here, its cement-lined channel has something of the austerity of a canal. But the nearby Art Bridge is romantically lined with statues of Macedonian artistic luminaries – admittedly somewhat kitsch in execution. Behind them, an eight-storey-high statue dominates central Macedonia Square. The Horseback Warrior is costumed like Alexander the Great, but the hero born 2,400 years ago in Greek Macedonia, remains problematic in Greek-North Macedonia realpolitik.
Beyond the Art Bridge is the Archaeological Museum. My favourites in its collection include prehistoric votive figures and gold Celtic funerary masks, reminders of the original wildness of the European continent. The Macedonian Philharmonic and the Macedonian Opera and Ballet cluster close behind, on arty, modern Mother Teresa Square. The name’s a reminder that this most famous Albanian Catholic was in fact born in Skopje. Here in the Balkans, such overlapping national identities and territories are continually in play. Among roughly 2 million North Macedonians, Orthodox Christian Slavs outnumber Muslim Albanians nearly two to one; there are also Turkish, Roma and Serb minorities.
Their coexistence remains an astonishing achievement, given North Macedonia’s neighbours: Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Kosovo and Serbia. It’s symbolised by Skopje’s Stone Bridge, which links the smart restaurants of Macedonia Square with the cafes and boutiques of the old Turkish bazaar. In the city’s left bank, the quarter’s pretty lanes are bright with coloured awnings and busy with shoppers and pavement diners. This is the place to search out vintage curios and crafts: traditional ceramics and textiles, including brightly woven kelims, wood, silverwork and icons. Several artists have studios here, within sight of the Museum of Contemporary Art on Kale Hill. It’s also where the city’s mosques, including the 15h-century Mustafa Pasha mosque, are concentrated. I always look in at the peaceful, arcaded courtyard of the Ottoman-era caravanserai, Kuršumli An.
The city is buzzy with post-pandemic bounce-back. We catch up with friends over innumerable silty coffees: never here called Turkish. The annual Pro-Za festival, directed by writer Aleksandar Prokopiev, is in full swing at the Daut Pasha Haman, the 15th-century bathhouse now housing the National Gallery. Cultural entrepreneur Sašo Ognenovski hosts events at the ever-cool Youth Cultural Centre. We eat rosemary-scented grilled lamb and drink the iconic T’ga Za Jug (“Longing for the South”), a dryish, tannic red wine named after the country’s most famous poem.
After a couple of days I hop on a bus to Tetovo, less than 30 miles to the west and the “capital” of the Albanian community. I’m visiting Shaip Emerllahu, who has helped to found many Albanian-language cultural institutions: university, broadcasting station, festivals. We take our coffee in the comfortable, modern Hotel Lirak, overlooking the tree-lined garden of the town cultural centre, before strolling round the corner to the Painted Mosque, whose delicate trompe l’oeil makes me think of 18th-century English country houses. Later, at the Bektashi community’s walled 16th-century Arabati Baba Tekke, the baba invites us for lemonade and lokum (Turkish delight), before telling a series of jokes that leave both men rocking with laughter. In Bektashi Sufism, Shaip tells me, laughter – like poetry, dancing, and even wine – is regarded as a spiritual good.
It’s a joyful ideal I take with me next morning on the bus from Skopje through the dramatic, forested mountains that flank Mavrovo national park, a great area for hiking. The deciduous forests are alive with wildlife: eagles, bears, wolves and even European lynx. But today I’m heading 100 miles south to Ohrid, and one of the oldest lakes in the world.
By the time I arrive at Ohrid town, a lunchtime aroma of Ohrid trout, a lake delicacy, is rising from waterside terraces. Modern hotels line the smart esplanade and marina. I head into the old town, up cobbled lanes winding between half-timbered Ottoman houses, past a Roman amphitheatre, to the sunny headland of Plaošnik, where lizards dart along the sandy paths. Here like a palimpsest of national history are the remains of Samuil’s Castle, capital of the first Bulgarian empire – a Byzantine basilica, a ruined baptistry with stunning fifth- or sixth-century mosaics swirling with birds and beasts and, as I descend, the iconic church of Sveti Jovan at Kaneo, its cypress trees and 13th-century brick dome silhouetted against the shining lake.
Back home three days and 1,500 miles later, it’s this view I remember. Blue mountains, the sunny Albanian shore to the west. A boat ride away, the monastery dedicated to Saint Naum, who with Saint Clement developed the Cyrillic alphabet here on Ohrid. And down at the reedy waterline, the water-snakes I’ve swum with summer after summer. T’ga za jug, indeed. See you next year.
Fiona Sampson’s Limestone Country is reissued in paperback this month by Little Toller (£14). To support the Guardian and the Observer order a copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.