November 8th, 2026
My bus to Skopje left at 10:40 am from Niš and it was a pleasant trip…
The bus station in Niš.
An impressive overpass crossing right through a small town in Serbia.
…although there
was a little stress crossing into North Macedonia. Our bus pulled up to the border crossing and
stopped about 50 meters before the customs booth.
A border guard
came onboard and asked for everyone’s ID.
I was near the front of the bus and presented my Canadian passport. He asked what my purpose of my visit was, “Tourist”
I responded. “Where are you coming from?” “Niš”.
“How much money do you have?”, to which I replied that I had about 100 Euros
and $300 American. I later saw a sign
about it being illegal to bring too much cash into the country, which seemed to
be one of the border guards’ biggest concerns.
Happy with my answers, he moved on to the next person.
The guy in the row
behind me answered that he was on a business trip. The officer continued questioning the rest of
the passengers and then returned to the businessman and he was asked to get off
the bus and then I saw out of the window that he had to retrieve his luggage
from the storage compartment of the bus.
I thought, “Poor guy, that sucks to have be pulled aside at the border”.
While that was happening, the rest of us on the bus were instructed to get off the bus and walk up to the customs booth. One by one, people presented their passports and once cleared, were then told to walk to over to the other side of the lane, near the end of the covered border crossing area.
I walked up, gave the female officer my Canadian passport and she asked, “Do you have a hotel reservation?”. I pulled up a WhatsApp conversation and showed her the details of my accommodation in Skopje. She told me to stand on behind the booth, where another lady in her 50s was already standing. It seemed like we were both going to secondary questioning…oh dear.
The tall brunette border guard exited the booth, took us back to the bus to gather our belongings and then we followed her to a building off to the left of the lanes and custom booths. I was trying to figure out why I was singled out and I have to admit, my heart was pounding a little bit faster than normal, even though I knew that there was nothing that I should be worried about.
She opened a door
inside the building, and it seemed to be the locker room of the staff. There were three male guards eating their
lunch on a long table. Okay, this seems
a bit weird. The guard first questioned
the other woman, and it sounded like she was a janitor, but I wasn’t sure of
her nationality, whether she was Serbian or North Macedonian. The officer did a cursory search of her bags
and then told her to go and join the other passengers and the male guards got
up and left as well.
Now it was my
turn. I unzipped my backpack and opened
it up. She asked me what my job was and
knowing that it might be tough to explain, I’d already pulled up the Freedom
Flight School’s webpage on my phone to show her what a paraglider was. She performed a basic search of my backpack
and daypack. She found my money belt in
my daypack and pulled out my British passport.
“Why do you have two passports?”
I explained that I was born in England.
And that was it. She told me to
pack up my bags and head out to the bus.
I’m not really
sure what triggered the secondary treatment, perhaps it was random, but as
Naomi later messaged to me, single men travelling by themselves can look
suspicious…and you know us Canadians, we can be dodgy fellows…
Well, welcome to
North Macedonia Dave! This is the last
of the seven countries for me to visit that comprised the former Yugoslavia. The other six are Slovenia, Bosnia &
Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia. I visited the first five back in 2010 when I
had “Betty”, my troublesome campervan that I bought in England. If you look back in my blog back in August of
2010, you’ll see my trapse through that area.
Well, maybe not the best "first photo" to take of the country with what looks like a few power plant chimney stacks, but it is what it is.
As I’ve done for most of this trip, I decided to walk from
the bus/train station to my accommodation.
Google Maps showed me a few routes, and I decided to take the one that ran
along the river. That was a good
call. I must admit, I’d done next to no
research about Skopje, and I was quite surprised what I found.
Some nice autumn coloured trees along the riverside.
The first thing that I saw along the river was this crazy
looking, tall, brown sailing ship, which really didn’t look like it was seaworthy,
and it most definitely wasn’t river-worthy, especially when the river is only
4-5 feet deep! It became obvious as I got
closer that it was on stilts and it was or used to be a restaurant. It had definitely seen better days. There was another one further up stream that was
still operational and the sign said that it was not only a restaurant but a
hotel as well. Gosh, I couldn’t imagine
wanting to stay there.
The surprises continued.
Across the river where a couple of Neoclassical buildings, one with these
massive white columns that looked like it belonged in Rome or Athens. I later found out that it was the Museum of
Archaeology.
Then there were statues…and statues…and more statues. They were everywhere. I think I saw between 50-70 statues in my 10-minute
walk through the center of the city. I
did a search online later that evening and it turns out there may be upwards of
300 statues in this city!
A massive statue of Alexander the Great.
Since I hadn’t done any research before arriving in Skopje, but
I have to say, my initial impressions were totally not what I expected.
I went out for dinner at a place called "Pub Porta".
Let’s see what I discover tomorrow as I take a walkabout the city centre.
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