NIGHT LIFE AND OHRID LAKE TOUR
- Joelle McDonald
- Jul 24, 2023
- 10 min read
This morning we left Shkodër at 9 AM not realizing how long a day it was going to be. By the time we cross the border between Albania and North Macedonia and drive another 30 minutes to our Airbnb, it’s 2:30. Despite just completing 5.5 hours of sitting, Hannah and I are both exhausted, so we cook lunch (we brought supplies with us) and settle in.
Summer I Turned Pretty
Last summer when Hannah and I were on a cruise ship in Norway for one day, we hid in our room and binge watched the first season of a show called “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” It’s your basic summer, teen, romantic turmoil show, and we loved getting to completely relax for a few hours while watching it. No thoughts of trains or check in times or baggage afflicted us.
This summer, the second season of the show is coming out (not all at once unfortunately), and we finally have a TV. As we eat lunch, we lay on the couch and watch the first three episodes of the show. We have been looking forward to this since Hannah found out the release date for the new season would be while we were in Albania. We have been planning this vege afternoon for weeks.
Once we finished our show and Hannah napped, I decid we need to go out this evening at the very least to get our bearings but ideally to get dinner too.
Street Corn
Our apartment is about a block from the waterfront, where there is a wide stone sidewalk that is very busy tonight. Along the sidewalk, we pass someone selling grilled corn. We saw this in many places in Greece, but we never actually got any. We walk pass the corn griller, then decide if we don’t try the corn right now we probably never will. We turn back and ask for one. The man puts one in a husk for us to hold and gives us a napkin. We don’t know the price and we haven’t totally figured out the currency yet, so when Hannah hands him 1000 Macedonian Donar, and the man gestures no we are a bit stuck. 1000 Donar is about $18 and it’s the only size bill the ATM gave us. After about a minute of clearly not knowing what to do a man sitting just behind the corn stand asks us if we need help. “YES!” He looks in his wallet and doesn’t have change for us, but thankfully one of his friends has two 500 Donar notes. The corn vendor can break that. We chat with them a bit. They are Macedonian but live in Australia now. We are so grateful for their friendliness and help as we continue to walk along the water munching on our corn.
Old Bazaar
The walk along the water goes along a street that is buzzing with activity. There are arcade games set up, small huts selling every type of sweet treat imaginable, a few photo booths, tiny chop chop trains for kids to ride in, and masses of people. This is a bit different than the tiny mountain villages we have visited in Albania. The street ends in somewhat of a square and all the activity in it screams Disney. Tiny kids crying, others running around, balloons of characters being sold off enormous balloon clusters. We turn to walk up the Old Bazaar street, which is the hub of the night here, to see what we find. As we go, we pass countless restaurants, bars, and stores.
Folk Dance Festival
We start to hear music and cheers about half way up the street and discover that a Folk Dance Festival is happening tonight! What are the odds?! We stop and watch four dances: two with young adults, one of seniors, and one of little kiddos. Everyone is in traditional clothes and dancing in a similar style to what Hannah and I learned in our dance class on our first day in Bulgaria. We had no idea how much traditional dance we would actually be seeing when we did that, but there has been A LOT this trip. We leave after the little kids finish their number, and they are undeniably the cutest.
Dinner
We stumbled upon much more activity than we expected to and it’s distracted us from our dinner mission, but now our stomachs are making their needs heard.
I found a restaurant on Google that at least has vegan options labeled on their menu, which is about as good as it’s going to get around here. When we arrive, however, the restaurant is packed and hopping with live music. We stand around for a long time without anyone stopping to check in with us, but eventually we get a waiter’s attention and venture we need a table for two. He shakes his head and says “no, outside is full.” There are countless empty tables inside, and we ask to sit there but he says “You can but it’s too hot in there” then leaves. We aren’t totally sure where that leaves us, so we just keep standing until a few minutes later a table opens and we are gestured to take it. That was clunky. We order hummus, bread, vegetable risotto, and roasted eggplant, and it’s all pretty good considering that those were our only choices.
Tour
Hannah and I booked a tour for today to go into a rural village to see traditional ways of life, including washing clothes, homes, and food. We were most excited to ride donkeys, which was promised as an option. However, a few days ago we got a message from someone from the tour company letting us know the tour is no longer conducted, and they just can’t get it removed from online. Instead, he offers to take us on a tour of the Bay of Bones, an archeological museum above the water in the lake, and St. Naum Monastery. We don’t have anything better to do, so we go for it.
Bay of Bones
The Bay of Bones was constructed ten or so years ago after remains of wooden posts were found in Ohrid’s lakebed, providing evidence that there was once a settlement built on a platform above the lake water. The Bay of Bones gets its name from the tools made of bones that were found at the site and some human remains that were discovered. The site is a reconstruction of what the original settlement is believed to have looked like. Our guide says people would have chosen to live here instead of on land because it gave easier access for fishing and left property less vulnerable to attacks by bears and wolves. We walk down to enter and explore the museum only to find the gate locked. Apparently our guide forgot that basically all museums in Europe are closed on Mondays. That’s awkward. We are bummed not to get to walk around it, but he assures us that all but two of the buildings are empty anyway. We have no way to verify that, but we can chose to believe it and didn’t miss too much.
World War II Monument
On the way to St. Naum Monastery we make a quick stop at a small obelisk like monument built in honor of those in Macedonia who fought against the axis powers in WWII. Parked in front of the small monument are three old cars. Our guide launches into a story about these “Yugo” cars, which were built in the former Yugoslavia (which Macedonia was a part of). Yugoslavia was very proud of its production of cars, but according to our guide they were “very shitty cars.” There were three models and all of them are here, one large, one medium, and one small. Our guide tells us that they were even sold in the United States, but they were so poorly regarded that some dealerships would offer deals like “Buy a Mercedes and we will send you home with a Yugo car too, free of charge.” Another testament to their quality is a common joke made about them “Yugo, but the car doesn’t” (Read as ‘You go, but the car doesn’t).
St. Naum
Hannah and I stayed the night at Rila monastery in Bulgaria and expected a similar sort of place for our monastery today. We texted the guide in advance to ask about dress code so we weren’t the tourists who couldn’t go into a monastery because of our tank tops. Our guide assured us there was nothing to worry about, and I am beginning to see why as families dressed in swimming suits walk through the gates of the monastery. Ummm, did we misunderstand where we are going?
This monastery is the biggest tourist attraction on Ohrid and once we walk through the gate the crowds are revealed. This isn’t just a monastery. On the left there are countless tiny shop fronts, and on the right is a long sandy beach along Lake Ohrid that is absolutely packed. All of this property is owned by the church, but there is not a trace of religion down here. Our guide brings us to a shop front run by one of his friends to show us the famous Ohrid pearls. These pearls are made with an old and secret Russian recipe using the scales of a fish abundant in Lake Ohrid. The pearls are a little translucent and shine in the middle with reflective fish scale. To be clear, these aren’t real pearls produced by oysters, but rather beads formed in molds that look similar to pearls. If we said that to someone in Macedonia we may make an enemy though.
We walk for awhile through the church’s property, which is highly developed for tourism. We pass over a spring (which we will get to later) and look at a carved statue of St. Naum placed just outside the Church’s gate. It is carved from a Walnut tree’s trunk with its roots still in the ground and was made in 15 hours by one man using only a chainsaw. The artist apparently created this after he dreamt of St. Naum telling him to create this carving here. The artist died relatively young of COVID-19.
Finally we make our way to the actual church. Peacocks roam the grounds as we get our first glimpse of it: a traditional Byzantine (I think) church and the resting place of St. Naum. Apparently if you put your ear to his tomb you can still hear his beating heart (Hannah and I tried and did not hear it). Our guide walks us through the inside of the church explaining all the ways that it was built according to Orthodox Christian rules: Jesus on the ceiling, a painting of Mary and Jesus on the first panel to the left in the front and a painting of the church’s saint to the left of that. Today the church is almost exclusively a tourist attraction, though baptisms and weddings can still occur here if requested. On the square surrounding the church, a hotel, restaurant, and gift shop are built. Hannah and I aren’t really religious, but it strikes us as icky to commercialize Church grounds mere meters from the resting place of a saint. All of the buildings are owned by the church though, so the church is certainly making a huge profit.
Springs - Drinks
We leave the inner church grounds to go back to the springs that we walked over earlier. Here the water is crystal clear and rushes to meet the lake along the waterline. This spring flows under a mountain from Lake Presta, which is just on the other side of said mountain. Our guide tells us we should take a boat ride so we can see the whole springs and we decide ‘why not’. He finds us a boat and paddler (motor boats are not permitted here) and we are off. The water glimmers different shades of blue depending on its depth and plants extend up from its bottom in many places. Birds paddle in the water along side other boats with tourists. We stop in one place and let the water’s surface still so we can see the water bubbling up from underground into this spring. It’s a pretty surreal sight. Our guide is an interesting character and live streams the boat ride on his Facebook account.
We return to the island/restaurant/boat starting point and our guide insists we stop for a drink at the restaurant, on him. Hannah and I are both hungry and tired and ready for air conditioning but neither of us feels like contradicting our eclectic guide, so we have lemonades (really just lemon water, apparently sugar is upon request) while he rambles about his opinions on all matter of things. It is interesting to hear him talk, but it also confirms that we definitely have not received our tour from an impartial source.
General history and impressions
North Macedonia is in the application process to be a part of the European Union, but it seems to have issues with countries on all sides, so it isn’t going well. First Greece took issue with the name “Macedonia” because Northern Greece was also a part of the historic Macedon kingdom, making it Macedonia too. In 2017, after many years of refusal, “North” was added to Macedonia’s country name to win over Greece’s support to join the EU. As soon as that happened, Bulgaria started taking issue with North Macedonia. The territory used to be a part of the Bulgarian Empire, so the two countries share many of the same national heroes, though each claim them as their own. Bulgaria has thus refused to support North Macedonia joining the EU until they forfeit a few hero’s. Then Albania and North Macedonia have contentious history with regards to territory. Many Albanians live in North Macedonia, with Albanian towns reaching all the way to the capital toward the east. Albania’s territory was reduced dramatically by Western European countries who made decisions about borders on behalf of the Balkan countries. Our Macedonian guide claims that the St. Naum Monastery, which used to be in Albania, is in Macedonia today because Macedonia traded two towns on the other side of the lake to get the church within its borders. This was because of the significance of St. Naum to Christians. When we mentioned this to our Albanian driver a few days later, however, he scoffed and said North Macedonia took all sorts of things that weren’t theirs.
Macedonia was a part of the former Yugoslavia, a collection of countries including Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and more. Yugoslavia was lead by a dictator named Tito who was apparently beloved and highly charismatic (again, remember our guide wasn’t impartial so this is one side of the story). After his death in the 80s, the many countries that came together to form Yugoslavia no longer had a leader capable of uniting them, so the country fell apart into its original separate territories.
Naps
When our guide drops us off at our apartment after what felt like a very long tour, Hannah and I quickly stop at a grocery store to grab a few staples for lunch, eat, and pass out for the rest of the day.
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