Skopje - Europe's Kitsch capital and some party animals

My top observations of Skopje

1) Kitsch at its best. There are more monuments and statues that I've ever seen anywhere. But all of them are new or recently built

2) Macedonians love to party

3) Everyone smokes everywhere - from restaurants, bars to buses and museums. It's F...annoying

4) Super friendly people

There are interesting contrasts in this small capital city of North Macedonia (one must include the North part to not offend any Greeks who made Macedonia add the North to its country name.....Politics nonsense in my opinion but hey...)

With the city divided by the Vardar river, on one side one has most of the glorious Kitsch buildings and statues and on the other, one can go to the old bazaar part of town which is quite a beautiful neighborhood of cobblestone streets, shops and restaurants all the way to their market. 

The old bazaar is mostly the Muslim part of the city and where a lot of commerce happens. One can simply cross the river through the old bridge and walk along the not very busy old bazaar

But let's talk about the Skopje 2014 project which was driven by the government to build and develop the city and through which dozens of government buildings, monuments and infrastructure projects were developed and billions embezzled on the process. 

That's how they created Europe Kitsch capital or a Disney world looking city where everything feels as from a movie set and out of place. 

Below are just a glimpse of many of the copies of the famous monuments from across the world. But mosthavevbeen minimalized to reduce costs, been made of cheap materials so they look like real marble when they are cheap metal and the like. 

A funny story is that of the Prometheus statue (who dared to steal fire from the gods) but the difference in the Statue in Skopje is that Prometheus seems to be wearing diapers instead of being naked as typically all over the world. Simply because some puritans started protesting about the indecency of a naked man statue and hence Prometheus was dressed with what looks like diapers. 

As someone told me. You can come to Skopje and pretend you did a full Europe trip on Instagram as we have kind of replicas of the most famous monuments in Europe, from the Paris Arc de Triomphe, Berlin's Branderburg gate, Athens Parthenon and so on....Instagram paradise galore!

If you still doubt the Kitsch part, the pirate looking ship is just for show, probably a copy out of Pirates of the Caribbean as the river isn't even navegable and the ship isn't even on the water but they built 3 such ships just because one can (or a politician wanted to win such tender!)

The main square has a statue of Alexander the great, which in North Macedonia can only be called the man in the horse as the Greeks have decided Alexander was Greek and hence Macedonians have no claim on him...

There's also an old fortress from back in the ottomans time

And here's a fun fact for you:

Which very famous person was born here in Skopje?

None other than Mother Theresa. There's only a plaque on the center of town where the house she was born used to be but they have created a fake replica of her house a few blocks away. 

The old building above is the old railway station which is now a museum and a memorial for the 1963 Skopjw earthquake which destroyed the city And marks one of the rare times during the cold war where Americans and Russians cooperated to help Yugoslavia at the time rebuild after the powerful earthquake. 

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As for the partying, I will just be brief and to protect those involved there will be no photos or videos shared. 

We were told that we need to go to a day party as that's what the locals do and being new year we were a bit skeptical as new year is at midnight. We were told they start early as get there by noon so we went there around 1pm and arrived to a jam packed place at Intermezzo where there was no more space and they sold us tickets just because we weren't locals. 

But at this time, every table was full (they only have high tables but no chairs anywhere as the place gets packed) and every table had bottle service and the drinks were flowing, the party was going, a famous singer was singing.  

I could imagine this at midnight, but at 1pm??? But when traveling do as the locals and we joined. 

But then we had more surprises as the day parties tend to finish around 8 or 9 so people can go home, take a break and then do this all over again at the night parties, sometimes in the same venue or another one. 

I will just say, this is a very very fun city to experience the nightlife or should I say the daylife???

But the best part is that people are super friendly

It was a great new year. Happy 2024!

And there's more of Macedonia to come!