Wanderings: Ohrid to Bitola, North Macedonia

March 10, 2019

A cloudless and quite warm day today. I walked up to the Church of Saints Kliment and Pantelaimon this morning. The site, called Plaoshnik, was at the top of the hill overlooking the lake. The site is rich in history, with the remains of three Roman Basilicas. The Church was originally dedicated to Saint Pantelaimon, a physician. As with many religious buildings in the area, the building was converted to a mosque during the Ottoman era.

Kliment of Ohrid established a university nearby in the 800s C.E. Kliment was a student of Sts. Cyril and Methodias, who created an alphabet more suited for the Slavic languages (1) than the Latin Alphabet which had previously been used. Kliment simplified the writing of the characters and dropped a few letters to encourage its wider use. The alphabet, still used in much of southeastern Europe (and in Russia), is known in English as Cyrillic.

I had a nice conversation with a local guide, Veska, who provided some local knowledge, including a detailed description of the full-immersion Baptistry. The Baptistry had been in the Basilica courtyard, and featured very detail mosaics, including swastikas, which was one representation of the cross in early Christianity. She also showed me a Muslim tomb on the site, with rose bushes maintained by a local Turk.

She told me the lake was so clean (2) because it is fed by underground rivers from another lake on the Greek Border (3). The underground rivers pass through Carbon deposits, which act as a natural filter removing any impurities in the water.

A bus ride brought me to Bitola, near the Greek Border. A police office waved the bus driver away from the road to the bus station. He then drive around confusedly until stopping a few blocks from the station and opening the door. I alighted and begin walking towards the train station where I saw a crowd of people.

I had stumbled upon the "March of the Living: Israel-Macedonia 2019." The crowd was remembering the deportation of the Jews from Bitola to Treblinka by the Nazis on March 11, 1943. A rabbi travelling with the group offered a prayer for the many things Jews and Christians have in common, followed by young Israelis offering reflections, and singing a song. The Macedonian head of the local Jewish Cemetery and Memorial project told of her grandmother, whose dear friend was taken away that cold March morning 76 years ago (4). The Israeli ambassador (5) then led the crowd in placing flowers on the tracks to remember the dead.

I strolled to the center of town where there is a bell tower and some mosques. Bitola was an important city in the late Ottoman era, hosting a number of foreign consuls. The Russian consulate is still present on the main square.

(1) Called South Slavonic at the time and today sometimes called High Church Slavonic.

(2) Visibility is said to be over 20 meters/60 feet down into the water of Lake Ohrid.

(3) Called Lake Prespa, on the shores of which the Greek and Macedonian Prime ministers signed the deal late last year changing Macedonia's name and ending Greece's veto on North Macedonia joining NATO and the EU.

(4) I understood what was happening because when Israelis and Macdeonians talk to each other, they speak in the one language they have in common: English. The Macedonian woman who was the local host spoke in English without notes for about 15 minutes.

(5) The Israeli Ambassador's attendance explains the police waving the bus away from the road and the heavy police presence.