May
11
2010
By Robyn Hodson
About halfway between the northern Bulgarian/Macedonian border, on the road to Macedonia’s capital Skopje, is a hidden monastery set high up in the verdant deciduous woods of the Osogovo Mountains.
About the only thing rarer than the Alpine Newt in these parts are the monks. At St Joakim Osogovski, there’s only one left.
Dating back to the 1200s and carefully revamped and restored over the centuries, the monastery has always been an important centre of culture, religion and education. Today artists, architects and artisans from all over the world come here to celebrate their creativity and work in perfect peace.
Or so they think.
On route to Skopje, expectant tourists in stunning examples of Eastern European coach engineering creak their way up the twisty roads for a visit to the monastery via the restaurant, or for an overnight stay. The lone monk appears through a cloud of carbon monoxide usually restoring order by showing them down to the bar. Dinner is a deliciously simple affair and most often consists of shopska salad (similar to a Greek salad but with a light Macedonian sheep’s cheese), traditional bean dishes and tasty, grilled chicken fillets. Tourists and locals then mix it up over coffee (strong enough to put hair on your chest) and sweet ‘dough-nutty’ pastries dripping in syrup. And then, as if on cue, a toothless octogenarian villager will totter out of the cellar with a bottle of rakija…
Even slightly spinning, rooms are exactly as you would picture them in a monastery: white-washed with crisp linen, simple wooden furniture and each as neat as a pin. Surprisingly, they all have televisions, but it would seem irreverent to turn one on in the zinging quiet. Tiny balconies look out over panoramic mountain and forest vistas…and the air is so clean and the place so peaceful that the urge to abandon all worldly goods and turn to the cloth is quite overwhelming. If only you could find the cloth…or your worldly goods, for that matter.
Robyn Hodson is considering abandoning all her worldly goods in exchange for a private jet. It's really all about going back to the basics... If you're ready to find a private escape of your own, click here.