I’ll grant you that portions of this story do not pertain specifically to beer, although judicious quantities of Скопско пиво (Skopsko Pivo) were consumed in late May of 1987, when a bumbling 26-year-old hick from somewhere near French Lick (New Albany, Indiana to be precise) found himself afoot in Yugoslavia, a nation that ceased to exist amid horribly excessive violence during the 1990s.
Skopsko Pivo is still produced by a company that began brewing it in Skopje, North Macedonia in 1924 and was purchased in 1998 by Heineken along with a consortium Greek corporate investors. Back in 1987 it was a crisp, clean and competently rendered golden lager, and I’m curious to see how it tastes today.
In fact, right about now I should be finding out. In the interim, here is the tale of my previous visit to Skopje. It took place on a different planet; at least that’s the way it feels.
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May, 1987
The journey from Dubrovnik to Skopje by bus, train and my own two feet was an inadvertent and completely ridiculous exercise — a farce, if I’m to be truthful. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything because it led to an unforgettable experience in a place I’d initially not planned on going.
Tuesday, May 26, 1987 was Day 41 of my European excursion, beginning in the seaside city of Dubrovnik (now within independent Croatia) with a bus bound for Belgrade (today’s Serbia) at 5:00 a.m. The bus route to Belgrade included a brief rest stop in the scenic mountains at the brutalist WWII Tjentište War Memorial (a spomenik) in rural Bosnia — in 2025, known as Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At roughly three in the afternoon on a pleasant springtime Tuesday, after a ten-hour bus ride from Dubrovnik, I was standing outside the combined train and bus station in Belgrade looking for the many enterprising socialistic Serbs who’d be competing, capitalist-style, to rent me a room in one of their flats.
Or so I’d been assured.
I was mindful of the Let’s Go: Europe guidebook’s accompanying warning: “The difficulty of finding adequate accommodations is probably responsible for 90% of Belgrade’s bad reputation among travelers.”
The book helpfully advised bargaining with these inevitable room hawkers outside the station — and as an even better alternative, strongly recommended visiting a generally helpful tourist information office nearby in the underpass at Terazije Square.
The problem? There were no room hawkers outside the station, not even one....Read more
