Coffee, kelims and the call to prayer: an overland journey to North Macedonia
Share:
Manageable in scale but crammed with history and nature, North Macedonia is a perfect introduction to the underexplored west Balkans. Trains no longer arrive at Belgrade’s riverside main station, at the foot of the limestone scarp that gave the white city its name. Today, the yellow stucco facade faces a gleaming new statue, eight storeys high, which dominates the forecourt where refugees, mostly from Syria, camped in the late 2010s.
![[The Mother Teresa Memorial House in Skopje.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/23d301930fc8e92fbadac14aa0d0aa35f9b2f7e9/0_0_5760_3840/master/5760.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Our flight-free trip from London to the Balkans has taken just 24 hours as far as Budapest, via Eurostar and the Brussels-Vienna sleeper. But now here we are, gazing across a dusty bus station at a 23-metre-high (75ft) Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja. We had expected to arrive at modern Belgrade Prokop station for the final leg to Skopje. But in 2024 no international trains are running south into Serbia, and none at all on to North Macedonia.
![[The Stone Bridge over the Vardar River in Skopje.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6b172e86e11d4f02dc424386c674fb9316bd0aa0/0_0_5761_3852/master/5761.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Next year promises to be different. A new high speed rail-link between Budapest and Belgrade will shrink the six-hour journey we’ve just made by bus to three and a half hours. But by train it used to take all day. Eventually, faster onward train connections to Skopje and Thessaloniki will also be reinstated. I don’t want to wait that long, though. The excuse for our trip to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, is a cluster of book launches. But the real reason we keep returning to this small country, roughly the size of Slovenia, is that it’s every bit as beautiful and varied as its better-known cousin. Manageable in scale but crammed with history and nature, North Macedonia is a perfect introduction to the underexplored west Balkans.
![[The Horseback Warrior statue and fountains in Macedonia Square.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fc1e96bafa22f2c484e3d9dfbc75037425388e96/0_0_6000_4000/master/6000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
.jpeg?crop=4:5,smart&quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
.jpeg?width=1200&auto=webp)
