Macedonia

You might have guessed I am WAY behind on countries, in fact, I'm behind most of November, or at least what we've done since we've been back from San Diego. Making matters a bit more complicated, my camera died for good this time, and my phone camera has been cracked for a long time, meaning I had no way to take pictures. And when you have to rely on other people to take and then send you pictures in this house, you start to feel like a real nag. Luckily, I got a new phone on Black Friday and now- you guys! It's AMAZING. I just go to my blogger, and click the little photo and say 'upload from phone', and all my pictures are there. It's kind of amazing. But, that wasn't the case for Macedonia or the next 8 1/2 countries, so there's that. Going forward though, my blogging life has gotten a whole lot easier.  

Anyway, as it's the last day of the month, I'm going to try my best to get caught up. I've also caught a cold, and barely have a voice, so I guess it's a good day to get buried in my blog. 

I do have like 10 countries to get through, so I'm just going to make this quick, like way back in the beginning of this project, where every country just got a couple of paragraphs of fun facts and we moved on with our lives. 

Country number 145 goes to Macedonia, a tiny little landlocked country (just under 10,000 square miles) just north of Greece. 

Macedonia is one of the country's that was born in 1991 from the old Yugoslavia. After a big naming dispute, the country was officially named 'The Republic of Macedonia'. It's a bit of a quirky country with an interesting mixture of cultures and ethnicity. (You've got Turks and Serbs and Albanians)

So, it's no surprise that our landmark is also a bit quirky. Enter the capital city of Skopje (Scope-YAY!) and their bazaar collection of bridges and buildings and statutes. The statues are our focus here, as hundreds of statues have been erected within the city as part of a controversial makeover that began in 2010. 

At the heart of the city center, is a 72 foot tall statue of Alexander the Great. The statue is encircled by warriors and a fountain and is at the center of nightly light shows. Statues of former rules and saints line the streets of Skopje by the dozens- crammed into any available space. Macedonians don't all love the statues. They were expensive, and apparently not all are very ascetically pleasing, but more than that, the Muslim Albanian community is under-represented by the statues, which has caused quite a stir. 

In the summer of 2007, Macedonia suffered from catastrophic wildfires. In response, the following year, in 2008, the citizens created a campaign called 'Tree Day- Plant your Future'. An official non-working day was declared, and more than 150,000 Macedonians planted 2 million trees (symbolically, one for every citizen). The tradition now takes place ever year, in an effort not only to replace what the wildfire destroyed, but to offset deforestation of local woodlands. 

Macedonia may be landlocked, but it does have Lake Ohrid, one of the deepest lakes in Europe (It's 945 feet deep). It may even be the oldest. Lake Ohrid contains over 200 species that haven't been found anywhere else in the world. Some of those fish include eels with scales that pearls can be made from. It's also home to the Lake Ohrid Trout, it's been used in so many stews and soups throughout Macedonia it's been driven to near extinction and as such has been nicknamed the 'fossil trout'. 

Macedonia is also home to what might have been the world's first observatory. The megolitic observatory is so remote it wasn't discovered until 2001. The site might look like a random pile of rocks today, but it was used thousands of years ago to look at the planets and stars. 

Also worth noting: I love Macedonia's flag. It's one of my favorites. It's so happy and pleasing to the eye (and it replaced an old Communist flag too, so it has that going for it). The yellow sun is depicted on a red field, and it was adopted the day after my birthday in 1992. 

The boys made their Macedonia post cards. 

Calib's featured the mountains and trees of Macedonia. 

Peyton's focused on the rolling hills and included the flag in the background (actually more accurate would have been fields of poppies, which Macedonia is also known for). 

And Hayden's featured Lake Ohrid, and Kuklica- a stone town that's been formed over the last 100,000 years. But, Hayden took to it because of a local legend that says they were made when a man couldn't decide between two women so he planned to marry both of them- the second woman found out and turned everyone at the first wedding to stone. 

Macedonia's national dish is Tavce Gravce. It's unique to Macedonia, and contains beans, paprika, and other vegetables. Traditionally it's served with sausage mixed in and eaten with bread. It didn't sound bad, but we were having lunch, so I thought we should do something a little easier. 

We ordered what basically amounts to Macedonia's version of Nutella on Amazon. (I actually like this better, mixed with the cream the way it is, you still get the hazelnut flavor, but it's not as overwhelming!) We put it on some leftover cookies from Venezuela day. 

We also made Macedonia fruit salad, which is basically whatever fruit you have in season mixed with a little lemon juice and sugar. (We used pears, apples, strawberries and blueberries). 

And for our main dish we made Pastrmajlija, or what basically amounts to a Macedonia egg, butter and pork pizza. (note: we used butter instead of vegetable shortening, and we bought pizza dough from the Publix bakery instead of making our own) 

Of course, the pastrmajlija is supposed to be served with hot peppers, so we picked some up from the olive bar at Sprouts. To round out the meal we had Shopska Salad (Macedonian Chopped Salad). 

This meal earned five spoons up. 

The boys were split on the pizza. It was ok, but it didn't blow them away, but they were really happy with the collective side dishes, so they all opted for a spoons up on this one. 

Asa and I really liked the whole meal though, I would totally eat it again. Shout to to publix for the pizza dough. You guys didn't think we actually made the dough part of the recipe, did you? 

We colored Macedonia in yellow, right above  blue Greece, and to the east of Albania. 

That's 145 countries down, 51 to go! 

Next Up: Qatar