Skopje - the final leg of our trip to Macedonia

Statues!
Statues everywhere!
It's the first thing that strikes you about Macedonia's capital - from the 22-meter high 'Warrior on a Horse' to modern bridges sporting dozens of 'em.
174 kilometres and a 3½ hour bus journey brought us to the Republic of Macedonia's capital city and the final destination of this trip.
Skopje is an interesting and slightly surreal city.  The controversial Skopje 2014 plan saw the building of many of those statues, plus new bridges and grand buildings.  Much of the original architecture was destroyed in a devastating 1963 earthquake and the project aimed to recreate lost neoclassical buildings.  It's a little bit 'Las Vegas' though, especially standing next to the mock galleons moored on the Vardar river bank.

With a craft brewery, we were looking forward to a change from Skopsko and Zlaten Dab lagers.
And we weren't disappointed when we found ourselves at Kolektiv (Macedonia Square) within a short time of arriving.   This is a good bar on the central Square, owned by Temov, the cities microbrewery.  It looked great inside, but everyone was out on the terrace in the hot weather.  Admittedly it was much pricier than other places we'd been, but with some tasty food and beer, I felt it was worth it.  There were around 11 taps, serving up craft lager, IPA's, Stout and Fruit beers. 

Next stop was the Temov Brewery tap itself, Pivnica Star Grad, ( ul. Gradište 1, Stara Skopska Čaršija) located close to the citadel on the north side of the river.  In essence it's an elaborate shed, perched atop a hill, with the brewing kit visible to the one side. Outside there is a shaded terrace area with a small fountain in the middle.  
I wanted this - I expected this - to be my favourite bar of the trip, but it kinda let me down. Service left a lot to be desired and I can't quite get my head around why there were less beers at the brewery tap than they had down the hill at their own outlet, Kolektiv.
On the plus-side I did have my only stout of the trip here, the 4.5% Pistol Stout (many menu's had dark beers on them, but whenever we asked for them they were out of stock for the summer months).


Next stop was the obligatory visit to an Irish pub: St Patrick (Kej 13-ti Noemvri 8).  We didn't go out our way to go there, but as we walked along the riverside restaurants looking for somewhere to eat and watch the World Cup football this jumped out as the best option.  In the outdoor covered terrace they had a giant screen where we bagged the last unreserved table and had a hearty platter of good value food.  We stayed on to sink several Lasko Pivo's whilst watching Belgium beat Brazil in what turned out to be one of the competitions best games.

Much of the next day was spent climbing Mount Vodno for some wonderful views of the city and surrounding countryside.  Getting up and being atop this elevated spot was, for me, the best bit of my visit to Skopje and a thoroughly enjoyable morning.
Being veggie, I miss out on much traditional fare, but at lunch we managed to track down 
tavče gravče - Macedonian style baked beans.

I like my baked beans.

So it was a treat to have these alongside several other platters, dining at a restaurant by the riverside.  The beans were great, but the 'baked potatoes', that I was expecting to be a good rustic spud, were definitely McCains wedges. 

After a revisit to Kolektiv for a tasty double-IPA, we walked westwards from the centre to Kino Karposh (Radnjanska), roughly 20 minutes from the heart of the city.  This is a nice spot, with a chilled outdoor terrace and a bar, whilst the inside is characterful.   Here I picked a SuperNova from Serbian craft brewery Kabinet.  It was the most expensive beer of the trip - this worked out at about £3.50 - but it really hit the spot as a top-notch, strong, tasty pale ale.


We just had time for yet a bit more Skopsko in a bistro in the centre, before readying ourselves for the next days crack-of-dawn flight home.
Macedonia: it's been great.  It may not have been the kind of beer and bar madness that occurs on a trip to, say, Belgium or Germany, but we've had a couple of quality ales, visited some nice bars, seen some great places and taken home some good memories.
Nazdravye!

A Bit of Beer in Bitola

The second stop on our Macedonia Trip

We caught a bus for the 90 minute journey east from Ohrid to the city of Bitola.

The countries second largest city offers up several reasons for tourists to visit: ancient ruins, a National Park on it's doorstep and a pleasant centre full of churches, mosques and with a long pedestrianised cafe-lined street, Širok Sokak.

We kicked off with a bit of sightseeing, walking through the extensive park and down to the Roman ruins of Heraclea Lyncestis, where we were absolutely sweltering in the July sunshine.   
Back in the centre and just north of the small river we had a walk around the Old Bazaar.  
Here we stumbled across Bar - Čaršija (Титоввелешка 24) where we declared that it was certainly time for a refreshment break.

The quirky, welcoming Bar Carsija in Bitola

"We have many types of beer.  So, Skopsko or Zlaten Dab?"

The entry is through a covered archway, leading to a small courtyard and outside bar nestled amongst ancient buildings dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries.  The wooden-roofed section to the side has rickety bookshelves, beer posters and vinyl LPs nailed to the crossbeams.
It's a really atmospheric place and probably one of the nicest we found on our whole trip.
There were a few big-brand imports here (Tuborg seems strangely popular in these parts) but I ended up back on the Zlaten Dab.

Our next destination was Bourbon Street Pub (Leninova 17).  I should have guessed it was Bitola's Irish pub.  We stayed on a high table along the alleyway leading to the pub, so I didn't really explore the bar itself properly and see how much Irish paraphernalia they'd amassed. They did have a good selection on the beer list though, with a craft beer section.  I believe this came from Temov Brewery in the capital, so I skipped this, as I wanted to save that for when we got to Skopje.  Instead I picked a bottle from the local Bitola brewery, the 5% Bitolsko Piva.  

Green Army?  Whose Green Army?
Could this be a distant outpost of the Plymouth Argyle supporters club?

For our second day staying in Bitola we wanted to head out of the city a little and explore a bit of Pelister national park.  We caught a taxi to the village of Dihovo 5km away.  From this sleepy, charming village we followed a short trail up the river to a waterfall (spoilt only by the insistence of some visitors to leave all their rubbish behind).   We then followed a trail uphill towards the St Atanas monastery, giving us some elevated viewpoints back towards Bitola.  I'd love to have completed a much more extensive walk, but we hadn't packed the right gear for this trip and hadn't started early enough (uphill at 1pm in scorching sunshine had me sweating like a trooper and declaring myself as 'unfit').
But it was worth it to be in surroundings like this...

Returning to the village we called in at Villa Dihovo, entering with some trepidation as we weren't sure this was somewhere we could just stop for refreshments.  As it was we were given a warm welcome, sat under a parasol in the garden and served with great home-brewed beer.  The host here is Pece Kvetovski, an ex-professional football player, who offers accommodation, acts as a guide to the national park and has a passion for slow-cooked food with ingredients straight from the garden.  He's very keen to stop and have a chat and obviously proud of this wonderful spot.  As well as brewing the beer he also makes home-made wine and raika, although we didn't try these on this occasion.  The beer was a cloudy wheat beer and was of a good quality.  Pece modestly just calls it a hobby, but I wasn't kidding when I told him it tasted really good and was such a welcome break from Skopsko lager.

Pece's home brew at Villa Dihovo - apologies that I got a picture that doesn't do any justice whatsoever to the location and could, frankly, just be someones back garden in Dunstable.

We made a mistake on the way home, getting the taxi to drop us off at Connect Pub.  It's only once we'd got out that I realised we were on the edge of town and I'd been a bit misled by the marker on my tourist map.  Sorry, but there is no reason to head all the way out here if you're visiting Bitola, especially as Connect have another café/bar venue in the centre.  The Connect Pub was in a modern building with a large covered terrace in front of it.  There were 8 TV screens around the sides, which would be brilliant for watching football, but not so good when they're showing Gordon Ramsay on the Kichen24 channel, sound-tracked by Belinda Carlisle on the sound-system.  We drank a bottle of Skopsko.  Again. Then made the long, long walk back to the centre.

Bitola is a little off the beaten track for tourists compared to Ohrid, but it's a rewarding place to explore.  If I were to do it again I'd catch a taxi to the heart of the national park - although I'm glad we visited Dihovo and sampled Pece's home brew, which will be a beer-highlight of my trip.   Next up: Skopje.

The local supermarket ale selection.  Not a Punk IPA to be seen.

A Trip to Ohrid, Macedonia

A warm Sunday evening in July saw us landing at Ohrid airport, in the south of Macedonia.
I sorted some money out from a mathematically challenged cash machine (I can't have 6000 denars because it can only supply multiples of 500???) Huh?
Then we picked one of the countries top 10 worst drivers to take us the 9km into the lakeside town.
Bags dropped at the hotel, we headed straight out to sample some traditional Macedonian nightlife in, erm, the Dublin Irish Pub...

The Dublin Bar (Kej Macedonia), to be fair, is okay, although why pubs the world-over can't successfully come up with a new theme is a mystery to me.
With the second half of the evenings World Cup football game booming out of the TV, I found myself drinking local brew Zlaten Dab, brewed by Prilepska Pivanica.
A promo team were giving out scratch cards to anyone drinking the beer and I soon found myself the proud owner of a Zlaten Dab baseball cap and keyring. Unfortunately that seemed to be all the prizes they had - if there'd been a t-shirt and a golf umbrella to win, I may have drank myself under the table on the first night to complete my Zlaten Dab collection.

Zlaten's big rival in the country is Skopsko, brewed by Pivara Skopje in the capital and owned by Heineken.
We first sampled this next day, sitting on the outdoor terrace, under large canopies next to a small square at Magic (Tsar Samoil). It would be the first of many of these beers. With just 6 breweries listed on Ratebeer for the whole country, this wasn't going to be a trip with a huge variety of beer. By the end of the week Mrs PropUptheBar would declare that she'd had enough lager to last the whole year and never wanted to see another bottle of Skopsko ever again.
Skopsko is a 4.9% pale lager. In a blind tasting I probably would stand no chance of telling the difference between any of the big-name Balkan brewer's main offerings. But Skopsko never gave me a baseball cap and keyring , so I'm going to claim that Zlaten is definitely the best!

Local sweet-treat, Ohrid Cake.

Observations about the bars of Ohrid:
- There are loads of pleasant spots, all of which will serve you pretty much the same range of lagers, plus good local wines and bargain cocktails if that's what you fancy. There's some lovely places with terraces perched above the lake shore. Of these I liked Terraza Aquarius (Ulica Kosta Abrash), where we enjoyed a couple of beers watching the sun disappear for the day.

- A bottle or large glass of local beer will cost a very reasonable £1.20 - £1.50 on average in the tourist bars.
- They're very generous with peanuts.
- The concept of a smoking ban has come nowhere near Macedonian establishments - you can smoke everywhere in copious quantities.

Ultimately, this wasn't a place for my beer explorations, but it is a magical place to spend a few days, swim in the lake and explore the old town. The view over Lake Ohrid from the citadel or from the breakfast roof-terrace of our hotel was simply magical.

Picture-postcard view from Ohrid - the church of St John at Kaneo overlooking the lake.