Macedonia, Day One
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| Image credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Soborna_Church_Skopje1.JPG/1200px-Soborna_Church_Skopje1.JPG |
The first journal post is finally here! We are so excited to share our Macedonian “adventure” with our readers! After our plane had landed at Alexander the Great Airport, we rented a car and drove towards Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. Our first stop in Macedonia: the Church of St. Clement of Ohrid. This church is the biggest church under the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Alert! The Macedonian Orthodox Church (MOC in short) is NOT an actual church. It is a really big religious organization created Macedonia that has influence both in the country and around the globe that has over 5000 churches and monasteries. Now, back to St. Clement. The reason that we chose this place as our first destination is because we saw pictures of the church online and were interested in the domed architecture that is very different from the temples in Taiwan. St. Clement started constructing at 1972 and it took twelve years to finish. The interior is decorated with frescoes, the most important one being one of Jesus that covers an area of 70 square metres. On the way back to our hotel, we saw many other orthodox churches and monasteries, so we were curious-how many Orthodox Christians are there in Macedonia and what other religions are practiced here? After some research, we found that 64.8% of Macedonians are Orthodox Christians. 33.3% are Muslims and 0.4% are Catholics. The rest are small groups of atheists and Protestants.
Macedonia, Day Two
Walking around town, people used such weird language that neither of us can understand. It sounded funny and interesting, so guess what? WE DECIDED TO DO A RESEARCH ABOUT IT! The language they used is called, surprise, surprise, Macedonian. We were kind of shocked when we saw this because Macedonia is not a big, famous country like Germany or Italy. It is spoken as a first language by about two to three million people. Even though it is mostly spoken in Macedonia, it is also recognized as a minority language in parts of Romania, Serbia, and Albania. Another shocking fact is that it is taught in many schools in Europe, Australia, and even in the United States! By the way, Macedonian is really similar to Bulgarian. In fact, it is so similar that people usually get mixed up. Well, wish we can successfully communicate here!
Macedonia, Day Three
Today is our final day at Macedonia. We decided to dive back into older times and take a look at traditional Macedonian, specifically the region called Skopska Blatjia, attire. The reason why we chose that specific region is because it is a more rural area, therefore it has kept more traditions compared to the cities. The traditional clothing for Macedonia is called koshula. It is made using hemp (a plant that is grown for fiber) or heavy linen. The koshula has a T-shape cut, with wider openings and sleeves. Patterns consisting of traditional colours -red, black, gold, blue-are embroidered at the ends of sleeves and hems. The “9 flowers” pattern is very common and different variations of it can often be found on the koshulas. However, not all koshulas have complex patterns. Some only have simple patterns on the hem, collar, and sleeves.
