Rocking and Rowing in Macedonia
- Anna Hall
- 17 minutes ago
- 3 min read
As much as I love Kosovo, I’ve also had a lot of fun exploring other countries in the region! This summer, I’ve been making the most of my weekends by traveling around the Balkans as much as possible. So far, I’ve visited North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, and Türkiye. These are places that I honestly didn’t know much about before coming here, but they have become some of my favorite spots in the world! In this blog, I’ll be sharing the highlights from my trip to North Macedonia, because one blog containing the stories of all these trips would be too long!
North Macedonia was the first country I visited outside of Kosovo, and I went with the other USC students in my cohort on a day trip organized by ISLA, USC’s partner organization. They made everything super easy for us by working with a local travel company and even booking our bus tickets to Matka and Skopje. All we had to do was show up to the bus stop on time! What I wasn’t expecting was the environment on the bus. As soon as we pulled away, Albanian wedding music started blasting through the speakers, and it didn’t stop for the full five-hour duration of the ride. People were up dancing, clapping, and singing along: very much not the vibe of the Soda Cap Connector in Cola. It was such a fun way to start off the trip. Our first stop was Matka, home to the oldest artificial lake in North Macedonia. I think it is the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen. As someone from the Midwest, I’ve seen a lot of lakes (shoutout Lake Michigan), but this one totally blew me away. It was so pretty I had to FaceTime my mom to show her, and because of the time change it ended up being 4AM when I called her. Oops. Sorry mom!
We chose to kayak through the lake instead of taking a boat or riverbike, and I’m glad we did. At the end of the lake, we even discovered a cave you could hike up to, but none of us realized there was a cave, so we had to do the whole thing barefoot since we’d left our shoes at the kayak dock. Not my best moment, but definitely still fun. After kayaking for what felt like hours, I never wanted to leave. But alas, we did have a time commitment for the next leg of the journey.
From Matka, we headed to Skopje, the capital and largest city in North Macedonia. The city has a strong Greek influence, and the architecture was absolutely stunning. We spent most of our time wandering around the Old Town, exploring the bazaar and peeking into local shops. I tried Gazoza, a Macedonian soda that’s supposedly pear-flavored, but to me, it tasted more like banana. Whatever the flavor actually is, it was super refreshing after being in the sun all day.
North Macedonia was the perfect start to my summer of weekend trips. Seeing both the natural Matka and the urban Skopje, I got a great look into all the different things that make the Balkans unique. I’m excited to share more stories from other trips... Stay tuned!
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