30.06.2011
Macedonia tour, June 2011
We organized "Macedonia tour" for our Turkish Elektro maschinen partners from 26. till 29. June 2011. Around 90 people joined the tour.
The tour has started in Istanbul. The first city that we have visited was Sofia, in Bulgaria. We have continued our tour with a trip to Skopje, where we have spent the night. The next morning we had a sightseeing of the city and enjoyed a beautiful surroundings and especially Lake Ohrid.
Lake Ohrid straddles the mountainous border between the southwestern Republic of Macedonia and eastern Albania. It is one of Europe's deepest and oldest lakes, preserving a unique aquatic ecosystem with more than 200 endemic species that is of worldwide importance. The importance of the lake was further emphasized when it was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1979 and when, in 2010, NASA decided to name one of Titan's lakes after Lake Ohrid.
We have continued our tour with the sightseeing of the the city Tetovo. Tetovo is a city in the northwestern part of Macedonia, built on the foothills of Šar Mountain and divided by the Pena River. Tetovo is the home of several ethnic Albanian political parties and a population in which Albanians form a majority, Tetovo has become the unofficial capital of a predominantly Albanian region which extends in an arc from Skopje to Ohrid. According to a legend Tetovo means "Tetoo's place" and, according to myth, the town was named after the legendary hero Tetoo, who supposedly cleared the town of snakes.
Another etymology of the name Tetovo is that it comes from the Slavic word "hteti" meaning: wanting, wanted. Hence, the name Tetovo comes from its original roots Htetovo or a "place where we want to live". he initial /h/ sound was regularly lost in Macedonian. The Albanian variant is a direct adaptation of the original Slavic name (see -ovo/-evo).
The name of the city in Turkish is Kalkandelen. Kalkan is a kind of wooden rooftop, as this was the way all the houses were built centuries ago. We had a tour to Ohrids' Castle and we enjoyed the lunch.
The next day a sightseeing of the city Bitola followed. Bitola is a city in the southwestern part of the Republic of Macedonia. The city is an administrative, cultural, industrial, commercial, and educational centre. It is located in the southern part of the Pelagonia valley, surrounded by the Baba and Nidže mountains, 14 km north of theMedžitlija-Níki border crossing with Greece. It is an important junction connecting the south of the Adriatic Sea with the Aegean Sea and Central Europe. It has been known since the Ottoman period as "the city of the consuls", since many European countries have consulates in Bitola. According to some sources, Bitola is the second largest town in the country, competing with Kumanovo. It is also the seat of the Bitola Municipality.
We than crossed the border to Greece and visited Thessaloniki city, which is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the periphery of Central Macedonia as well as the de facto administrative capital of the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace. Thessaloniki is Greece's second major economic, industrial, commercial and political centre, and a major transportation hub for the rest of southeastern Europe; its commercial port is also of great importance for Greece and the southeastern European hinterland. The city is renowned for its events and festivals, the most famous of which include the annual International Trade Fair, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, and the largest bi-annual meeting of the Greek diaspora. Thessaloniki is considered northern Greece's cultural and educational centre. It is home to numerous notable Byzantine monuments, including the Paleochristian and Byzantine monuments of Thessalonika, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as several Ottoman and Sephardic Jewish structures. The city's main university, Aristotle University, is the largest in Greece and ranked among the best 250 universities in Europe. Because the city Kavala is located on the Egnatia motorway and only two-hour drive away from Thessaloniki we had a sightseeing of the city. It is the second largest city in northern Greece, the principal seaport of eastern Macedonia and the capital of Kavala peripheral unit. It is situated on the Bay of Kavala, across from the island Thasos. We have admired the panoramic view of the town that is nestled between the slopes of the surrounding hills and the northern coast of the Aegean Sea.
Our "Rheinland Elektro maschinen Macedonian tour" ended in Istanbul but we are sure that the impressions of the tour will last a lifetime.
