Gostivar: Where all the old folks have great wrinkles around their eyes, bananas are pricey and the baklava is above average

Vucko returns?

Yes I'm going to wax poetic about Gostivar for a little--so anyone from Tetovo, kindly plug your ears and sing loudly to yourself, if you'd rather not hear it. Because I took a little (long really, but we'll get to that) trip to Gostivar today and was pleasantly surprised.

The running joke around here (meaning in Tetovo) about Gostivar is that it is the largest village in Tetovo, and that when the Olympics are held in Tetovo (only one winter-olympic cycle away, I'm positive--maybe we can have Vucko II?), Gostivar will be our (our? look at me!) Olympic Village. And yes, Gostivar does have a really different feel than Tetovo--the buildings are shorter, the sun is brighter, it's definitely got a different sense of City planning--with roads weaving around. There's also a sizable Turkish (which has maintained a sense of identity since the Ottoman times. In my other studies of the Balkans, I don't remember hearing a lot about other self-identified Turkish communities (it certainly was used as a derogatory term in BiH during the war) but does anyone have an explanation for why Turkish communities assimilated or didn't assimilate in various regions in the Balkans?)  community in Gostivar, so all official signs are in three languages, and many shops are at least Albanian-Turkish. And while they've got their fair share of ugly new (or new in the 70's as the case may have it) buildings (my favorites are the ones with tons of reflective mirror-windows which are tinted slightly blue or yellow), there were also a lot of really beautiful old doors, facades, plaster, and some really beautiful old faces (I'm thinking of one of the most beautifully wrinkled old women, selling eggs at one of the main intersections. I was to shy to ask if I could take her photo.) And after biking to Gostivar from Tetovo (30 km one way google maps tells me), well Gostivar looked like paradise.

"our" mountain (the one just above Tetovo) is the pointy one to the left of the tree

After a few snow-flakings yesterday, today was unbearably beautiful (smog and all) and there's a road out of Tetovo which I've been hoping to explore. One of the things I realized once I hoped on the bike is that, until the bicycle, my "Tetovo" had been as big as I could walk comfortably--or had need to walk. and really no bigger. It had several main arteries (Ilindenska and Iliria--which meet at this awkward oblong traffic-circle between the city square and the House of Culture--another delightful (and frigid) relic from the 1970s), and numerous side streets, but I rarely passed out of the city limits. And with a bike--my sense of scale has completely shifted.

Although perhaps today it shifted just a little too rapidly.


Anyhow, so there's a road leading over the highway (actually right at the end of campus) which leads "away"--and from where I've seen some of the most dramatic clouds since coming here. I knew vaguely that this road ended in Gostivar (the next biggest town between here and Struga--so a little further west of Tetovo), and headed off. and just kept going. and after a while it just seemed crazy to turn around--having a destination helped motivate me. And most of the time it was totally lovely--pleasantly crisp air, a lot of men out in their fields spreading manure or just moving things. flocks of sheep, the first green on some of the willows by the various streams that cross the plain/valley (this road took me over to the other hills, across the valley from Tetovo, so I got to see the entire range in it's new-snow glory. stunning). It was interesting, however, to note which language was crossed off of the signposts announcing the village's name--and then in which villages that hadn't happened (I wonder why: not enough hooligans? actual acknowledged/accepted diversity? and what kinds of insecurities prompted the crossings off in the first place) But man, I think a woman on a bike (riding alone at that) is really rare in these parts--about 25 k in, one guy actually stopped me and said (I think--we had some serious language barrier issues) "your face is really red." I'm hoping it was out of concern, otherwise, I think that's not exactly a winning pickup line--but probably not one he'll have many opportunities to use again, so perhaps not worth complaining too much about.



but I'm seeing just how concerned people are about what others think of them--in part because if/when you stand out, people let you know--they honk, call out to you, or perhaps the worst, just stare. Which is so interesting to me, because young people especially complain about not having enough private space--generally people live with their parents until they get married, and then the wife will move in with her husband's family. "public space"--the cafes, streets, squares and parks often times operate as "private space"--where else are teenaged romances going to happen--and that people would all for (to a degree) some privacy. except that everyone watches and presumably everyone also gossips. So it's hard to be--or feel--alone here. Which is what I loved about getting out on the road today--peacefully pleasantly alone. until I passed by a cafe--full of menfolk basking in the sun--and then I felt very much not alone (and very much alone, lone biker, lone woman).

Gostivar--what to say. The first thing I saw on the road in from Cajle was a totally abandoned factory--which makes me wonder what Gostivar was like a few decades ago (I also noticed, passing through all these villages, the remarkable number of empty storefronts along the main road--which makes me wonder how these communities may be hit by the economic crisis two-fold, through impacts on local economies, and impacts on the diaspora who send remittances home. I really want to map the openings and closings of stores in Tetovo--because I feel like there's a lot of turnover, and much of it feels totally unexpected, although perhaps that's because I don't know how to read the signs foreshadowing liquidation.) Gostivar also  has a beautiful (clean!?) walkway along both sides of the Vardar river--which just gushes. Like I can just imagine white-water rafting on it in a few months (although the high volume of water may also be due to the snow-melt).  there are is a surprising lack of supermarkets--or they're just a lot better disguised than in Tetovo--or perhaps I was hungry enough that I just couldn't see them for the life of me. The baklava (what Gostivar is also known for) is good--although baklava and biking are not my favorite combination (I think I asked for about five glasses of water--and should have asked for about 15). Honestly, the hardest part about Gostivar was convincing myself to get back up on the bike, but those two km from Tetovo's city limit to home were probably the longest of the day. but the best part of reaching Tetovo was being home.

We'll see how my body appreciates this excursion tomorrow.