Macedonia, in food, wine and song

The Weekend Australian

6 June 2015

In a country mired in complicated geopolitics, the greatest pleasures are
simple, abundant and heartfelt.

It’s my first evening in the Macedonian capital of Skopje and I’m sitting outside Gostilnica Cardak, a traditional restaurant in the heart of town with the look and feel of a country tavern. A darkening spring sky of cobalt blue lingers overhead and in the time it takes to throw down the first rakija of the evening and dive into a course of abundant mezze, night is upon us. I much prefer the stars set into this pure Balkan sky, particularly as I’m dining beneath them, to any conferred by Michelin.

And yet the food is astonishing. After feta-style cheese from a sheep fold in the surrounding hills, ajvar (a red pepper paste), a stew of butter beans, grilled green peppers, sweet local tomatoes, cabbage burek, cured meats and wedges of light salty bread, out comes a casserole of elk with wild mushrooms in an earthenware bowl the size of a car tyre. Excellent local wine is flowing — floral whites accompany the mezze but the elk stew calls for a powerful shiraz. So, too, is song. As the evening deepens most of the groups dining around me strike up drinking tunes, anthems and laments, sometimes at the urging of a small string band circling from table to table, but as often as not unaccompanied. I have not a word of Macedonian but the sentiments are laid bare by the tempo and tone. The West is in the grips of a vocal talent mania geared to the search for the next pop “idol”. Here in Macedonia everyone mucks in and song is something shared.

I have arrived early that day to join a small group tour of the country that until 24 years ago was mashed together with Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro in the unsteady matrix that was Tito’s Yugoslavia. As the plane slices through storm clouds on its descent to Skopje I turn to the local girl next to me. “So what exactly is Macedonia?” She inhales deeply, like a swimmer before taking a plunge, and sighs: “It’s complicated.” After a brief sketch of Balkan geopolitics she comes to the backstory. “It begins with Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia. He took the empire a long way — to India. His tomb has just been found in Macedonia … I read that on a web portal.”

Less than an hour later, after clearing customs, her point is hammered home with a statue of Alexander rearing up on his famed steed Bucephalus in the arrivals hall at Alexander the Great international airport, linked to Skopje central by (no prizes for guessing) Alexander the Great Highway. In the pedestrianised town centre, authorities have erected an outsized equestrian statue of Alexander — Iskander the Devil to his Persian victims — on a plinth supported by a triumphal column circled at its base by infantry raising their long Macedonian pikes, or sarissas. A little further on there is a fountain adorned with a nativity scene featuring Alexander and his mother Olympias. Another fountain sports a family tableau of young Alexander, his father Philip II, and Olympias, and atop it Philip stands with his fist raised in a power salute.

There is a lot of Alexander hoo-ha in Macedonia, symptomatic of a young and insecure country striving for identity. It’s comforting, on the other hand, to see that the incessant classicising is not entirely at the expense of other strains in the Macedonian story. Skopje is forested with statues erected during a civic makeover last year. On our walk through the town square on the way to the old Ottoman bazaar we encounter memorials to Macedonian saints Cyril and Methodius, the Roman emperor Justinian, a group of Bulgarian anarchists remembered for spearheading the revolt against the Turks (making Skopje perhaps the only world capital that celebrates the politics of bomb-throwing), and two long-limbed local girls modelled in bronze.

“Skopje,” a local offers with a wry smile, “has the highest rate of statues to citizens anywhere in the world.” The whole thing is as kitsch as it is costly, but it does have the benefit of telling, or perhaps declaiming, a story. And as there’s no such thing as a quiet Macedonian, this seems strangely apt.

The next day we drive west and by lunch we’ve arrived at the seemingly deserted village of Galicnik, nestled in a crease of the deeply forested Bistra mountains above the River Radika. Appearances are deceptive. Most of the stone dwellings of Galicnik turn out to be in pretty good nick; it’s just that they’ve been boarded up over the winter months and await the summer migration of their owners. Our host is Pavle, in his day a famed marksman and still, in his 70s, a sure enough aim to have shot a local rabbit for lunch. He and his wife, Borka, see out the winter months alone in Galicnik. Bears are in hibernation but the wolves venture close to the village, occasionally taking the dogs. While out hunting in the black wintry forests canopied with snowdrifts, Pavle claims to have seen the elusive lynx pursuing mountain goat, its favourite quarry.

After rakija accompanied by strong local cheese, the rabbit stew is placed on the table outside and we eat under bright spring sunshine surrounded by forested mountains, all apple green. The rabbit, sweetened with a caramelised onion ragu, soon disappears and the juices are mopped up with bread so that when a lone walker appears on the road we welcome him for lunch without anything to offer. The young man is French, and in good English he claims to have walked from Prague to cure a lovesick heart. Borka disappears into the kitchen with a sweet smile and emerges minutes later with an omelette. There is an expression of deep satisfaction on the solitary walker’s face as he takes his first mouthful.

The rest of the day passes in a rakija, rabbit and red wine-induced blur as we twist along the mountain road through the pristine Mavrovo National Park, stopping at the monastery of St John the Baptist. The compound is only a century or so old (the original 11th-century structure was sacked by the Ottoman invaders) and its chief glory is a beautiful hand-carved wooden screen supporting rows of painted icons. On the lower left-hand corner the woodcarvers, from a nearby village, have been allowed to depict themselves at work. Just as we are leaving, the monastery’s spell is broken by the sight of an Orthodox monk yakking on a white mobile phone.

It’s evening when we pull into our destination of Ohrid Lake and dawn before I get my first glimpse of the famed waters — among Europe’s deepest and most ecologically rich — emerging from overnight mist. The weather has turned. The sky is a slew of grey and it has rained overnight. From my bedroom window I gaze out to a snow-capped mountain range on the lake’s distant Albanian shore. Below and around me Ohrid town, a jumble of terracotta-tiled rooftops and traditional Balkan houses with overhanging upper storeys, wraps around a lovely crescent-shaped bay.

At the nearby monastery of St Naum that morning, in a tiny 10th-century church built to enshrine the saint’s mortal remains, a group of Greek pilgrims bursts into song when entering the beautifully frescoed interior. Put your ear to Naum’s crypt, it is said, and you catch the steady thud of his eternal heartbeat. One of our group kneels at the tomb to give it a try. When she raises herself up and dusts her knees, it’s with a disappointed shake of the head.

Ohrid may not have Lake Como’s campanile but it has retained a nice blend of tourist hangout, spiritual sanctuary and eco hot spot. Among its 200 endemic species is the Ohrid brown trout, although after our lunch at a lakeside restaurant there are several fewer of those. Straight off a wood-fired barbecue, they go very well with a cool white Macedonian wine.

This tiny chipped coin of a country, sitting landlocked above Greece, is crammed with curiosities. The frescoed interiors of its jewel-like Byzantine churches cast a fresh light on the story of art. Byzantine churches are not all about otherworldly Madonnas and fierce Christ figures immured in gold; there is a dynamism and realism to Macedonian ecclesiastical art. Its cuisine, blessed by influences from the Ottoman table, is at once generous and subtle. Even the wines, blending indigenous grapes such as vranec and international stalwarts shiraz and cabernet, are a revelation. The Romans, Slavs, Byzantines, Bulgarians, Serbians and Ottomans all held sway over these lands, and all left their mark.

At the ruins of Stobi the graffiti carved into the theatre seats suggest a Roman outpost that comes under the influence of Byzantium, for the inscriptions are in both Latin and Greek. In an exquisite gravestone at the site, two men and a woman are depicted in low relief with the boy god of healing. Telesphorus, a deity whose origins are Celtic. To say Macedonia lay at a cultural crossroads is to invoke a cliche, but it is no less true for that.

By far the saddest story is recounted by our guide, archeologist Metodi Chilimanov, on the ramparts of the ­ruined fort above Ohrid. He tells how the Medieval Bulgarian ruler Samuel sent an army from Ohrid against the Byzantine emperor Basil. “After a heavy defeat 14,000 of his soldiers were captured and Basil had their eyes put out,” he explains. “One in 100 of the men were left with an eye to lead the others home. Some villages on their route are named with the Macedonian word ‘blind’. It’s said that when Samuel learned of the fate of his soldiers, his heart burst and he died.”

The sweetest tale is told by the only priest at the Orthodox monastery of Treskavec, perched on a crag of Mount Zlatovrv just outside the town of Prilep. Father Kalist is a little uneasy at being asked to deliver the turbo version of a tale stretching back into pagan antiquity (the monastery sits atop a temple to Apollo and Artemis). “Every time we think we have an answer,” he says of efforts to probe the secrets of the monastery’s 12th-century church, “it only seems to raise more questions.”

Fire has destroyed the monastic living quarters and Father Kalist seems quite alone here. I walk with him outside the monastery walls and climb a rocky outcrop offering views of the mountains to the east. At my feet are two cavities finely hewn into the rock: graves from around the 5th century BC. The monk tells a little of his story. “I was an economist before,” he says, “but always searching. As a young man I was attracted to Buddhism and uncomfortable with aspects of Orthodoxy.” He pauses and splays out his hands. “But eventually I returned and found that everything that I needed was here.”

And so I find myself, towards the end of this miraculous Macedonian tour, talking about the nature of Christian mysticism to an Orthodox priest who traded his convertible for a cassock. The tour ends later the next day where it had begun, at restaurant Gostilnica Cardak, on a decidedly more Bacchic note. There is food, wine and song. It goes deep into the night. Sleepless, I stumble through a Balkan dawn to an airport named after a Macedonian warrior-king, giddy with strong drink and good company and wonder.

Peregrine Reserve’s Macedonia: Jewel of the Balkans eight-day itinerary includes accommodation in boutique hotels, private transport, airport transfers, authentic regional meals, private sightseeing, entrance fees, and a guide. 1300 369 291. peregrinereserve.com

This feature refers to the United Nations-designated Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedoni (FYRO) nd not the historical and geographic region in Greece known as Macedonia. *