Luke, around the world.

I roll out of the minivan that took me to Skopje, and I pierce through a crowd of dubious Balkan grandpas offering taxi services. Just outside the station gate, there he is.

The Swedish-Chinese-Muslim-American guy is standing right in front of me with a look of utter shock on his face. What the hell, and let’s face it, he took the words right out of my mouth. The hell, I rejoin, and we both start laughing. He asks me which hostel I am heading to. It turns out he is staying at a different one, but we make heartfelt promises to meet again. J mentions a game, and, melting down in the heat, I don’t even bother to ask what game he is talking about. After a minute or two, we continue walking in opposite directions, never to see each other again.

The staff at the hostel are a bunch of Brazilians from Manaus. A long way from home, I try chatting them up, but they are preoccupied with Netflix and a gigantic beer bottle standing on a table in the common room. I think I understand what’s going on here, every day is exactly the same, check people out, check them in, get a large spliff, and fill the rest of their day with boring C-rated action flicks. Not tourists and certainly not locals, they are stuck in a limbo, disillusioned, dejected. The question I’m dying to ask the Brazilians is how long can you live like that before you go crazy? But I never get to ask that question.

Anyway, who am I to judge? I am stuck, too. Skopje is the hottest city I’ve visited so far, so I only decide to go out in the evening. It’s almost dusk and the streets are filled with… monuments. There is one at seemingly every street corner. A horseback warrior, once educated by Aristotle, rides away to become a youthful conqueror of the known world. The animal rears, and for a moment I can almost see Alexander looking across the stone bridge, towards the fountain at which his mother Olympia nurtures the child destined for greatness… 

Further away from the river I meet Mother Theresa, a common sight wherever there is a significant Albanian population. The saintess used to live in Skopje for eighteen years, and is now forever memorialized in stone, humbly inviting visitors to the museum located next to her statue. 

The impression that all these monuments are a great excuse for a money-laundering scheme starts haunting me the next day. As I am making my way towards the meeting point for a trip to the Matka Canyon, I encounter many more sculptures. There is Prometheus, and there is a bunch of people gathered at the table, a moustached man gesturing ominously from the red-star-stamped stand next to it. A triumphal arch, to commemorate this or that war, to remember a time of excellence… I get it, North Macedonia is full of history, but they must be breaking some record of monuments per square kilometer with this… overabundance.

A girl from Slovakia that I soon meet on an organized tour concurs, it must be a bribery funnel. Soon, we see no monuments, just nature, nature and viewpoints, and a cute little Orthodox church.

As a solo (and introverted) traveller, I don’t immediately reject the idea of group tours. I do not need to wear some badge of honour that I kept my journey strictly solo, that I had it tougher and cheaper than some artificial bar set by the craziest of vagabonds. That’s not what travelling is about, that’s not what joy should be about. A day trip like the one to the Matka Canyon is a great opportunity to meet new people, so I gladly take it, or I’m stuck with the Brazilians, watching Ben Affleck’s grimacing. 

As far as organized trips are concerned, the one to the Matka Canyon is a very successful one, partly because of meeting D. I immediately sense that we’ll see eye to eye on nearly anything, and it’s no surprise. We both hail from Poland, and we both travel a lot, although my resume pales in comparison to D’s African adventures. We both strive to be open-minded, a quality that is becoming increasingly rarer these days. 

The Canyon is a treat, too. The weather’s still excessively hot, but it’s cooler along the river we follow. Some people are kayaking; uphill, along paths set against the steep rocky slopes, we see hikers going deeper into the canyon. I don’t know it yet, but I should savour these very moments. Not every boat trip will be as peaceful as this one.

We eventually reach the Vrelo cave. It’s the first of many for me, and I can’t help but keep wondering how massive the temperature difference is underground. As we move through the cave, me and D take some pictures: both of the rock formations, and of ourselves. I need someone like D for every day of my trip, as I’m usually extremely shy in front of the camera. It has its advantages when creating stories or reels, as the main focus is always on what I see, and not on how people see me. D (I don’t think he means that, or at least he’s not deliberate about it) just makes me realize that I should accept how I look in front of the camera, and give myself some self-love.

The last part of our trip is the Church of St Panteleimon, a fresco-filled 12th-century chapel overlooking the Macedonian capital. This time, I enter alone. Only later will I understand D’s point that soon enough, all churches will look exactly the same. 

On our way back, we speak to the Slovak girl and pick up the topic of sculptures as money laundering tools. D jumps out of the minivan before the final stop, but we stay in touch. We will meet again, and quite soon, too.