cultural experiences
Showing Family Around Macedonia
Scott Johnson - MAK 17
T
hey were grateful for the cool weather and the possibility of vegetables on a menu. I was grateful to
have visitors. My Aunt Keiko and Uncle Mel had just arrived in Macedonia at the end of May after
spending the past four weeks exploring Central Asia (think the ’stan countries of the former Soviet
Union: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).
“It was very hot,” my uncle succinctly summed up their experience the past month. “The food was pretty
much all the same from country to country. Lots of grilled meats. Mutton. Not a lot of vegetables.” They
had flown in from Istanbul. I did my best to give them a crash course in Macedonian culture and history as
we left the airport headed toward Skopje in a taxi.
“We’ve seen so many mosques and monasteries these past few weeks. I think I’m museumed out,” my
uncle added.
As excited as I was to have visitors for the first time since being sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer
in Macedonia nearly a year and a half ago, I was, admittedly, unsure of what to show them during their
seven-day stay in the country.
My aunt and uncle, who call Ellensburg, Wash. home, are not unaccustomed to traveling. They are more
often than not trekking around the globe from one exotic adventure to the next. My uncle, the self described black sheep of the family on my mother’s side, is a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer as well as
a returned Peace Corps volunteer (he was a business development volunteer in Crimea region of Ukraine
in the early 2000s). He met his wife while at his post in Tokyo in the early 90s. She worked for the embassy, and says she probably traveled more than he did before they married.
Name a region, continent or country, and probably they’ve spent some time there, including the Balkans.
They had visited my cousin in, interestingly enough, Montana, Bulgaria, in the late 90s during her twoyear stint in the Peace Corps. My uncle had visited the northern parts of Yugoslavia in the 1960s, and
they had both been
to Slovenia in recent
years, but this was
their first experience
in Macedonia.
Skopje
After checking into
their hotel room at Hotel Anja in the old city
mall with a view of the
Vadar River, I steered
my guests to Old City
House Restaurant,
a slightly hidden, but
beautiful restaurant
specializing in Macedonian cuisine not
far from the Freedom
Bridge and across
from the old national
ballet and opera building.
I continued cultural
14 – Pauza Magazine