Okay, so there was more to Macedonia (now called North Macedonia) than what the title suggests… but I’d be lying if I said a severe infection wasn’t the focal point of my time there.

Why Macedonia?

Upon concluding my time in Serbia, I decided to move one country South. And that was Macedonia… for no other reason than my aunt saying in passing that she worked with somebody whose family was Macedonian.

So I took a long bus ride to Skopje, the country’s capital. When I arrived, I took a taxi from the bus station to my AirBNB. Currency conversion is always confusing, especially when you’re going from one foreign currency to another. I must have wildly over-tipped my driver because he offered to be my go-to driver for the remainder of my stay.

The AirBNB was nice enough; it was another private space. My host was… interesting. I won’t repeat what he said, but let’s just say racism knows no borders. But he assumed that I would share his views, seeing as I’m American. So that’s a dandy brand that we’ve developed for ourselves on the global stage.

Let’s just say racism knows no borders.

Probably should not come as a surprise though.

The other off-putting thing was that he specifically instructed me NOT to give the WiFi password to the neighbors, as they apparently had garnered a reputation for conning other tenants into sharing it with them.

The apartment building was on a fairly ‘main’ street in a newer part of Skopje. Though it could have been the older part; the city was leveled by an earthquake back in the 60’s, and was rebuilt with classical stylings in order to appear historic and grandiose. I’ll get into more of that later.

There was a theme park/carnival just down the road that was out-of-season, or just not operational.

I think I drank the tap water right away. And that started the countdown on my biological calamity. I had been drinking the water in Serbia with no issue, and thought I would be just as fine in Macedonia. But different countries equal different infrastructure.

Exploring Skopje

I got two to three days of exploration in before it all started.

Skopje was an interesting city. Like I mentioned, the whole place had been leveled by an earthquake decades prior, so they rebuilt it in a way that looked ‘historic’… but it also looked ’new’… so the resulting architectural aesthetic somewhat resembled Disney’s Epcot.

They also steered very heavily into Alexander the Great as a symbolic motif. There were numerous statues depicting him as a chiseled warrior, all towering above this manufactured façade of a historic metropolis.

One thing that was very evident was the cultural clash between Christianity and Islam. That was the subject of my host’s racist quip, and Skopje did feel like the point at which two cultural oceans were colliding.

Calls for prayer could be heard throughout the city. Some people left to partake, some thumbed their noses.

I’m not sure if this dynamic has gotten better in the years since, but when I was there, it just felt like an ever-present tension.

The rampant scammers didn’t help my perception much. People trying to get money out of you goes with the territory, I suppose. But walking through the city center was like walking through a swarm of mosquitoes. I could see people clocking me and moving as I moved, taking turns aggressively courting me with whatever their game was.

Walking through the city center was like walking through a swarm of mosquitoes.

It wasn’t all bad. Turkish coffee was quite common here as well, and I’d become pretty fond of it in Serbia. There were bazaars galore, and brick-laden alley ways covered with colorful umbrellas (a trend that has since made its way to hipster-y neighborhoods in the US).

They also had a hamburger-type food that was similar to Serbian Pljeskavica, but not quite Pljeskavica.

After a couple of days, the sickness began

It started with cramps that got progressively worse. And then sweats. And then my body started getting rid of whatever had entered my system any way it knew how. I felt horrible, and was absolutely down for the count.

I obviously wasn’t eating anything, and I knew I was losing fluids pretty rapidly. During one of the fifteen to thirty minute windows between ’episodes’, I ran down to a market and grabbed the biggest jug of bottled water that I could find.

I forced myself to sip on that for the next few days. I don’t know exactly how long this illness lasted, but it was at least five days, maybe seven. And those weren’t days of, “oh, maybe I’m getting better”… the symptoms were fast and furious the whole way through.

It was a constant cycle of stabbing cramps, puking, and diarrhea… interspersed by short periods of anxious calm and cold sweats. I have no idea what cocktail of bacteria had entered my system, but whatever it was, that was the worst I’ve felt in my entire life.

That was the worst I’ve felt in my entire life.

At one point, something with the plumbing went bad. Maybe the hot water, or something with the shower? I’m not sure, but I would have remembered if it were the toilet… that would have been catastrophic.

But that meant that a maintenance person had to come fix it. He arrived smoking a cigarette, and continued to chain smoke (indoors), throughout the entire process.

There were two silver linings from this experience: I felt so ill that I fired a particularly annoying and habitually cheap client, and I’m pretty sure that I have a stomach of steel now.

Finally, I started feeling better. I had a bit of an aftershock a couple days after I started feeling ’normal’, but I may have just gone too hard, too fast with normal food and alcohol.

Making the most of a few healthy days

I had initially booked my AirBNB in Skopje for two weeks… sort of as a ‘feeler’, as I had no idea what Macedonia had in store for me. But the illness had left a bad taste in my mouth (literally and figuratively), so I resolved that I would keep on keeping on.

But I had a few days left and I decided to make the most of them.

I went out one of the nights and met a couple of guys from Germany while having a beer. They were friendly and had just been traveling through Kosovo. We ended up going bar-hopping and, similarly to the pub crawl in Belgrade, we ended up at a club that was formerly some government official’s residence.

I guess regime-change is pretty good for the nightlife business. It was cool though. People were vibing to some trance-y EDM music and it was a fun time… though probably not the experience my body was craving at that point in time.

The other noteworthy thing I did was explore Lake Matka, a reservoir inside of a steep canyon (I guess that would be Matka Canyon). It was honestly gorgeous, and almost made up for the two weeks that preceded it. Towering canyon walls, brimming with lush greenery, cascaded into unexpectedly turquoise waters.

Nothing I’d seen up to that point would have led me to believe that there was this tropical-looking ‘Valhalla’ just outside the city. I did a few hours of hiking along the perimeter and soaked up some much-needed sunshine.

The taxi driver who took me out there (and picked me up), claimed to have body-guarded Bill Clinton during one of his trips to the region back in the 90’s. He was certainly burly and looked the part (kind of like a Macedonian Bruce Willis)… but his story kind of sounded a bit too similar to the Serbian ‘apple-on-the-roof’ tale.

On to the next place

And just like that, my time in Macedonia had come to a close. I’m afraid this post paints the country in something of a bad light, but stomach illness makes it difficult to view anything with rose-colored glasses. Had I stuck to bottled water, I might have had an entirely different experience.

Stomach illness makes it difficult to view anything with rose-colored glasses.

I can’t say if I’ll be back or not, but one never knows. In any case, I flew out of Skopje and continued my nomadic journey East.

Next stop: Istanbul.