Fan Mail from Some Flounder

There is some reappearing graffitti in the center city- Biljana said it means freedom or terror, as opposed to freedom or death - the slogan for WWII. Biljana said this most likely refers to people's terror over the poverty and corruption in Macedonia and the fear of speaking out against the ruling political party. She said at least 30% of the people are unemployed yet all the money goes to the monument installations for Skopje  2014. Only about ten percent of Macedonians make enough money for a decent life - but expats are moving in to take advantage of the cheap prices/rent.

If Greece demands Macedonia relinquish its name, Bulgaria is now, according to my daily news feed called Balkan Insights!, demanding Macedonians stop calling their language Macedonian. Bulgaria says Macedonian is only a dialect of Bulgarian and that Macedonians are, in fact, Bulgarians, albeit a lesser and inferior subset of Bulgarians. Apparently,

My Macedonian friend said this maybe was true thousands of years ago but consider he said: My name is Leslie. If someone said I was Ana, who would be? I would still be Leslie. So there it is. This is Macedonia and people speak Macedonian. However, no one believes this will be resolved anytime soon.

Macedonia is a small country- only about 2 million pp in the entire place. Macedonians are quite obsessed about this and blame their size for all problems - the Chinese actually would agree that such a small place is scary. Perhaps they could send some of their billion plus pp here. I can see already that although I am not particularly observant, I now recognize lots of people on my way to work, whether they are people I know, crazy people, the stray animals, workers, or just other denizens of Skopje. It is becoming impossible for even me to get lost anywhere- and anyway someone would recognize me.

There has been a stomach virus/flu making the rounds. We have had unusually warm weather. So everyone is blaming the virus on the heat. Today, the crazy woman in the square was shouting unusually loud. It was already about 65 degrees before 9 am. So maybe the warm weather is hard on people!

David sent me a package- not particularly large. We thought it would be delivered to my office. It was not. I had to schlep to the main post office to get it and pay ransom for it. I was the only one there. No one spoke English but they were excited to see a package from America. The housing around the post office/railroad station looked particularly non-fancy.

Yesterday we had a training on forensics led by the head of the Skopje forensics lab. It is the only lab in Skopje. It is not accredited. The closest such lab would be in Sweden. Slobodan, the head of the lab, a former police officer and a lawyer as well as a forensic specialist, said his job is to use science to acquit people. I told him that was something I never heard any forensic person in the US say.

Yesterday, Macedonians protested unpaid bonuses from formerly state-run enterprises: