My responsibilities under the project shifted a bit for this mission to F.Y.R. Macedonia compared with previous visits and thus for once, I got to go on a field trip. Since the main focus of the project is institution building, I normally spend most of my time in offices and corridors in Skopje. But in order to follow up on project implementation this time, I had to go out to one of the regions and visit a local entity in the town Prilep. (F.Y.R. Macedonia’s forth largest town as I understood it.) After our meeting there, we had the opportunity to also meet with some farmers who told us how they perceived the effects of the project, and since they were really content, it felt very rewarding. (In addition to positive direct effects of the project, an indirect effect had been that a monopoly situation had been resolved and that they as a result now received higher prices for their produce.) And since we had some time between the two meetings, I got a quick guided tour of the town center, and bajadera-style cake with sweet (non-alcoholic) boza at the local patisserie.

The new park in the center of Prilep, with a brand new statue of Alexander the Great, or Alexander of Macedonia as he is called locally. If your spontaneous reaction after reading this is that you need to brush up on history, you’re not the only ones…

Boza and untraditionally shaped bajadera cake