Day 4: Ohrid/Prilep/Treskavec Monastery - The Red Eggs

Awaking from a peaceful slumber at Antonio's fine place of rest, I showered and went out for a walk in Ohrid. I enjoyed a flavoursome traditional Macedonian breakfast by the waterfront and then promenaded my pasty flesh through the lovely old town. Lake Ohrid which gives the town it's name is apparently the deepest in the Balkans and very fetching to boot. After a bit of a wander, I settled down in a nice cafe for a cup of tea for 10 dinars, which is whatever one-sixth of a euro is. I got chatting to the owner and once he found out I'm a fiend for backgammon (tabla in Macedonian) he hooked me up with Dragan, a nice middle-aged guy smoking and drinking coffee in the corner. We whipped out the board and he promptly proceeded to hand me my ass in a rather humiliating fashion. Five to nothing. I tried to explain that in England I'm good at backgammon but he just laughed at me while wheezing on his cigarette. Apparently my powers are useless against short men with deep wrinkles. Who knew?

I went back to the hostel to get my backpack before heading for the bus and Antonio's mother stopped me to give me what I thought were two tomatoes. I thanked her, got in the cab to the station and unwrapped the paper towel, ready for some sweet juicy tomato-ey goodness, but lo, my plans were scuppered. They weren't tomatoes at all. They were red eggs. I was understandably surprised. In England if someone tried to feed you red eggs you'd report them to Health & Safety. The cab driver didn't know why they were red either, which wasn't a good sign, but he did teach me how to say "fucking monkey" in Macedonian. I got the 13:30 bus from Ohrid to Prilep (a two and a bit hour ride) and cracked open my red eggs. They were perfectly normal in every way but their colour. Still baffled, I descended at Prilep, ready for my pilgrimage up the mountain. Basically, as the Lonely Planet told me, there was a mountain about 10km north of Prilep at the pinnacle of which there was a monastery that would feed you and put you up for the night. I liked those odds.

I got a roll and a cheese burek and found a guy named Ratko to drive me to the path for the monastery for 5 euros. Once there, I began my climb. Wow. It's a one and a half to two hour trek up a very rocky and uneven path winding round and round the mountain. The book puts it at 6km but it felt like a million. I dragged, wheezed, whimpered and stumbled my way up the mountain and was rewarded with some of the most amazing views I have ever seen. In every direction, Macedonia just rolls out in front of you. You can see the snow-capped mountains in the north, the farm land and valleys all around. It was incredible. About three-quarters of the way up, I sat down on a rock, finished off the last of my water and just breathed in the air. The sun was hot on my face and all I could here was the occasional rush hour sounds of bees whizzing past me. It was a moment of such tremendous quiet and relaxation that if the monastery had been shut, the walk still would have been worth it. As it happens, the monastery was open, so I got even more of a treat.

The Treskavec Monastery has been standing there in one form or another since 400 B.C. (proven) and possibly even 2500 B.C. (still under investigation). The walk up the mountain is made even more beautiful because of the fact that the ground holds tons and tons of white marble which pokes through the dirt here and there, making the entire mountain glitter when the sun hits it right. For the past four years, a monk-in-training named Kalist has been running the monastery. He draws no salary, receives no benefits and subsists (and pays for the running and maintenance of the monastery) solely on donations, which are wholly voluntary. He made me and the other travellers who had arrived minutes before me some thyme tea, which is actually really good. They use thyme for tea because that's what grows there and they can't afford to buy tea bags. Kalist and I talked until sundown and then he showed me the church, which has stood for centuries completely unrestored and even escaped the fire that destroyed the rest of the monastery in 1990. Kalist and I walked through the church and he explained some of the frescoes and Orthodox symbols. At the altar, in a bowl next to the cross, were more red eggs. He told me to take as many as I wanted. I asked him why they were red. He didn't know either. All he could tell me was that the eggs are exchanged by religious people as gifts during Easter and traditionally, it is explained that the red egg is a symbol of the stones beneath the cross that got covered with Jesus's blood as he died. Just to clarify, the Orthodox congregants paint the eggs red. There aren't magical Easter chickens that lay red eggs. That would just be stupid. In no way did I ask or imply that that was what I thought to Kalist. In no way whatsoever.


He explained to me that he wasn't a monk, but rather a monk-in-training, which was the closest English words could explain his position. Basically, after training as an economist, he heard the calling and entered the Orthodox Church. The novices that enter the church as prospective monks are entrusted to a master who trains them, acts as their father confessor etc. After the master has trained them sufficiently, they are promoted to monks-in-training, where they stay until such a time that the Orthodox Church gives them the choice of leaving the order or taking the vows of obedience, poverty and celibacy that are the requirements of monkhood. If they take the vows and later leave the church or break their vows, they are excommunicated forever. If they choose not to take the vows, they are not punished. The process is similar to a pre-op transsexual being made to dress as a woman for a year or two to make sure it's what they really want before having their outtie turned into an innie. Except involving God. And beards. And robes. And inexplicably red eggs.

Other interesting things I learned about the Orthodox Church:

- Communion is administered with a spoon. Bread is soaked in the wine and fed to parishioners.
- Priests are required to be married before they can be ordained. And their wives have to give them permission.
- The most recent saint in the Orthodox Church was St. John Markovich who stayed at Treskovec for a while and then went on, among other things, to be the Archbishop of Shanghai and the Bishop of San Francisco before his death.

One of the frescoes on the wall was of a naked, malnourished, rather confused looking woman. Kalist explained to me that for monks this saint is considered the most important. Apparently, back in "the day", there was a prostitute named Mary who lived in Alexandria. She decided to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and, to get there, sold her body to sailors. Once there, she found that she couldn't get into the church, as if an invisible forcefield was blocking her. She broke down and wept, asking the Virgin Mary why she was being barred. A voice told her "You know why." Mary swore to change her ways and was allowed into the church, where she prayed and confessed. She then went and lived in the Sinai Desert for 17 years without food or water. A priest, crossing the desert to give communion to a far-flung parish, stumbled across her while congratulating himself for his piety in making such a long trip. Shocked by her appearance and devotion, he gave her communion and went on his way convinced that he should be less vain and more like Mary. A year later, returning to give her communion again, he found her body, untouched by sand or decomposition, dead next to the date of her communion the previous year written with her finger in the sand. In the previous year, the inscription hadn't blown away and her body hadn't been touched. She was made a saint and so was the priest who found her. In all Orthodox churches, they are side by side or facing each other, a symbol of the vanity of the priesthood and the desire of the monks to be true to their chosen path. Wild.

Kalist locked up the church and gave me his email address - yes, even a monastery on top of a mountain in the middle of Macedonia has wireless internet. Apparently all of Macedonia has wi-fi, built by the government.

I went to sleep in the dormitory and woke up at 6am the next morning to walk back down the mountain and meet Ratko, who would be picking me up at 8.