What I’ve been doing

Spent last weekend at a conference in the utterly beautiful surroundings of Lake Ohrid, in the southwestern corner of Macedonia.

Here is the fortress and basilica overlooking the old city:

And the church of Sveti Jovan Kaneo, which we have a painting of in our front room:

Tried to take a decent picture of the church at Sveti Naum, but it wouldn’t fit; if anyone better at photo editing than me feels like combining these three into a composite, please do.

Bagpiper at Ohrid

Springs at Sveti Naum

Our boat trip from Sveti Naum to Ohrid

Just a few pictures from the rest of the trip: this is me with Baba Tahir Emini, the leader of the Bektashi sect in the Arabiata Baba shrine at Tetovo in north-western Macedonia. The Bektashi are a dervish sect founded in the 14th century, preaching love, tolerance, women’s emancipation and the use of images in worship. Needless to say they get persecuted.

You don’t get a lot of white Europeans who are leaders of small Islamic sects. But it’s important to remember that you do get some.

Pristina and Skopje are neither of them especially photogenic cities, and anyway I was working too hard while there to be able to take many pictures. But here are two streetscapes from my Tuesday and Wednesday in Pristina, one from the hill overlooking the city, the other showing a Communist monument with two mosques behind it.

And here is the local national heroine, though of course she was born in what is now Macedonia rather than what is now Kosovo:

And finally back in Skopje, here’s the Macedonian government building where the Prime Minister’s office is, and a rather obscure visitor in front.

One thought on “What I’ve been doing

  1. For some reason, I am always under the impression that I am much younger than I actually am, hence the surprise! I would have read it in the 70s though, so it was already getting on a bit by then (well, by today’s high-speed standards).

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