The city through the eyes of Greek students: with lump in their throats across “ Skopje 2014 ”

Sudden influx of young Greek students which loudly and curiously browsed and dissected every part of the city center yesterday in Skopje was part of a scientific excursion of a group of 70 students from the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Eastern European Studies at the University of Thessaloniki “Macedonia”. Young Stela Traguda and her colleague Steljos Solemidis rested on the square, almost next to a muddy construction zone. They explain that the one-day visit includes visiting the city center, the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, lecture at the Faculty of Ethnology and Anthropology, chat with representatives from NGO Macedonian Centre for European Training and visit to the Greek Liaison Office. They say the visit to Skopje is designed firsthand to get to know our side of the story in dispute, the history and current political developments as they are represented in our country. – As students and academicians, we are interested to see and hear the other side of the story. Through our education in Greece, we know our side of the story and wanted to visit your country and to see how you represented your history so we can make a comparison and to have fully formed opinions on the case – says Stela. For her, as a student, it is necessary for the young not to stay limited and see things only unilaterally. She and her colleagues thought that the scenes in the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle have been too extreme, violent and bloody, especially if the museum is visited by young and students. Skopje left a positive impression of a dynamic and developed city. Stela is second time here, after her first visit in 2010. She likes the new look much more than the old one. – I see that there is a great development, progress, it is enriched with monuments, it seems to have room for further development. It looks much better now compared to then, at least visually, because I don’t know the society, and the quality of life. What I see is that there is a strong promotion and strengthening of the way in which it is promoted as a capital – she emphasized. The conversation slowly led to the monuments and buildings that are in front of us while we talk. “Skopje 2014” creates a lump in the throat, says Steljos Solemidis, despite the positive impression for the progress of the city. -I wouldn’t like to judge because I’m not part of the city, but, for me, the whole project with monuments, buildings, museum exhibits is a bit exaggerated. It seems that a good job of developing the city has been done. Skopje is a lively city, people are nice, dynamic. However, without trying to be a critic, I do not know how wise it is to focus the development of the state so much on tourism promotion of the buildings and monuments in the center – Steljos commented. Returning to the overall visit of Skopje, he said that it would have been better to invest in other key sectors as well. – In conversation after the lecture on Ss. Cyril and Methodius, we heard that they are working with many small funds and finance, and from what we were presented, it was clear that they were doing interesting and quality research. Perhaps it would be better to invest there than to go on a promotion of these elements that we see in the center – he noted. What is problematic according to them is that the project furthers the gap of disagreement and highlights the differences and problems in a period when efforts for resolving the dispute should be made. – Governments raise shields, walls between us, which creates a negative image. Although relations between the nations are good, there is always a tendency to emphasize the negative and the bad and any attempt to create a good climate to be prevented – said Stela with a tint of p