Sunday

Today Gorem took us to a church and monastery about 40 minutes south of Vranje. We drove through tiny rural villages seeing some beautiful countryside. Farmers grow wheat here apparently. At this time of year the landscape is brown as nothing has been planted as of yet. It reminded us of Oregon in the winter.

The church is a Greek Orthodox structure built in the 11th century. It was relatively small and quite lovely. The exterior was white stucco and the entire interior was painted, frescoes I assume, the lower walls in a dark blue and brick red and from about eye level up there were numerous Biblical scenes and many icons of saints. Not knowing anything about the Orthodox religion, we didn’t know what the two small rooms behind the iconostasis were used for. I saw two bottles of oil each with a towel. I asked Gorem what they were for but his limited English prevented him from explaining the purpose of the oil. The floors were unfinished wooden planks. There were two ‘trays’ for lighting candles as you enter. I watched as Gorem approached an icon in the center of the church on a small stand about 3-4 feet high and kissed the icon that rested there then placed money on the stand. The setting was very isolated and the monastery was large with two huge wings. We never saw anyone there other than two people leaving as we were entering the grounds.

Next we drove on to Macedonia where we went to Skopje, a town of 870,000, about ten times bigger than Vranje. First we picked up Gorem’s cousin who lives in a nearby area because Gorem told us he was not familiar with Skopje. We visited an old fort, Tvrdina Kale that was built in the 11th century. All that remains are a few walls but you can get great views of the city from there. A river runs through the center of town. We had another gray and cloudy, cold day although not the bitter cold we had on Saturday.

We crossed the street to see a true gem of a church, Sveti Spas. The church was built below ground, since during Ottoman times it was illegal for a church to be taller than a mosque. The church has an iconostasis (a screen) 10 meters wide by 6 meters tall, beautifully carved in the early 19th century. We have never seen anything as lovely. The woodcarving depicted various scenes and had beautifully carved natural forms like vines and leaves. There were lots of icons on the walls and mounted on the iconostasis. Across the courtyard was a small museum and tomb dedicated to Goce Delcev, a national hero who fought for independence from Turkey and was killed in 1903 by the Turks.

We walked through the Turkish bazaar that was filled with all kinds of shops and almost all were closed. We headed for lunch and had a delightful experience in a restaurant that was housed in what used to be a caravanserai or inn where traders would stop off and rest during Ottoman times. The building dated from 1472 and in 1976 the building was restored. The restaurant had exposed brick and stone walls with arched ceilings and little niches. The bottom floor on an inn was used as a stable and the upper floors housed the travelers. We had a fabulous meal: mine was veal and mashed potatoes with gravy to die for and Ron had a vegetarian dish of roasted veggies that was equally good.

We ran out of time to see anything else as we were picking up Barbara who had spent the weekend in Skopje with friends she used to work with there. We drove home, went back out for dinner for the fourth or fifth time to Kykyra because the other restaurant was closed. Since we had had a large lunch we had soup and salad for dinner.

That’s the blurbia from Serbia.