Is the Macedonian nation a bunch of losers as Labina Mitevskaon my photo taken in Rotterdam a starlette from London, brazenly concludes in her column?
The late spring clean-up of trash, mainly clippings and whole newspapers, magazines, boarding-cards, bills and promotion folders, brought me, the other day, to a page of a Macedonian daily. A two-word title heads a text by Labina Mitevska, an amiable film actress I have interviewed few years ago during the Rotterdam Film Festival. The title may be translated as Unnatural Beauties but of what I personally understand Macedonian the meaning is somewhat more ambiguous, say "Extremely Beautiful Sights of Nature" though one could also understand it as "Unnatural Beauties of Nature".
Labina appears to be a firm fixture among the myriad of twinkling actors on the firmament of the European Film, but she is the shining Sun over the Macedonian cinema. Obviously a workaholic, between the shouts "cut" and "and roll", Labina, who lives in London, produces sort of column-journalism, more an occasional diary from various places. The local public or the entrepreneurial editors of the newspaper loved it. Maybe they still do but I for one do not see her texts any more.
Of what I have read, Labina writes well. Her direct, personalized approach allows one to get a glimpse not so much into the daily life of a film actor but into her views over different, aptly selected social topics.
This time she thread into the minefield of tourism development and compared an obscure resort on the Adriatic coast with the attitudes and philosophy of the provincial (albeit Macedonian) tourist chieftains and their army of various personnel. Whatever she said in this off-handed article affected me tremendously. Even the preposterously arrogant top of the Dutch Tourist Board would not be so 100% sure in the pronouncements as her, but THAT is not what I want to relay here. This blogg appears the day when after months (or years) of efforts "a monument" and "a square" dedicated to semi-gifted writer A. den Doolaard are being unveiled in Ohrid... as yet another attraction for a specific tourist public. I know that this fact would not you send packing or booking a holiday out there. But they have installed a collector for sewage water to keep the lake (created three million years ago) pristine and its endemic fish ( Lake Ohrid Trout or locally known as letnica plentiful and burgeoning for your pleasure. Elsewhere this specific fish is generally known, somewhat different in appearance, as lake trout).
Ohrid keeps its monuments in presentable condition. Cleaned up (expertly) in and around, the churches, built and decorated 800 years ago, are joy for any visitor. They have established a wonderful "Galichica National Park", reconstructed a 1000-years old Samoil Imperial castle, also built an airport, added superb hotels with all amenities, camping sites and you name it.
Under "and you name it" is an impressive list of painstakingly devised and laboriously kept-up internationally renown events (some shared with next-door town of Struga) like The Balkan Folklore Festival, the prestigious Summer Seminar (for all slavists specializing in Macedonian language), the incredibly popular (under the auspices of a Sheikh of Kuwait) Ohrid Marathon (in swimming the length of the lake), but also the international Struga Poetry Festival "The Bridges" which is so incredibly high-quality that its "Golden Wreath" laureates anticipate Nobel-prize winners. Then there is the ubiquitous Summer Festival featuring a list of celebrities like Carrera, Pogorelic, Oystrach, Cogan, some of whom held summer courses (like Mstislav Rostropovich if my poor memory serves me) for local or foreign students alike.
(The mighty springs of River Drim: the river flows through the waters of the lake. This rare photograph was taken by Josip Broz Tito the last and only real president of former Yugoslavia)
I mean the list of high-quality events is almost tiring. This stupid bait thrown as yet another attraction for the Dutch illustrates how desperate the local "tourist chieftains" are to attract ("and milk" as she says) foreign tourists. She is wrong: it was a Dutch adventurer-turned-singer-turned-flower dealer-turned whatever who pushed this idea of the monument for A. den Doolaard.
Labina Mitevska has been motivated to compare Portoroz (the Germans could call it "einem gestanzen urlaub") with Ohrid (a medieval pearl, protected by UNESCO as a treasure of the Human Race) as two tourist destinations for Europe. She is impressed with "Easy-Jet" flying into Portoroz (which she describes as a dead-pan sober, most unattractive place) from London and Frankfurt. Easy-=Jet does not fly to neither Lago di Lugano, nor Lago di Como or Lago Maggiore. Easy-Jet does will not fly you to either Bled Lake nor Bohinj Lake although both are in portorozean Slovenia. For Easy-Jet there is no Annesi nor is there Plitvice, Lakes, cover less than 2 percent of Europe's surface. Lake Ladoga in northwestern Russia is 17.678 square km, the largest in Europe but Easy-Jet does not fly there. Lake Constance is also known as the Swabian Sea (das Schwäbische Meer) but Easy-Jet does not fly you to Bregenz. Balaton Lake is the largest in Central Europe, it is called the Hungarian Sea but Easy-Jet skips its airport although others fly there. Why is it a tragedy they do not fly to Ohrid Lake nor to any of the Finnish one thousand lakes? Easy-Jet is not the gauging instrument for anything although Labina is impressed with it.
(A cover of a vinyl record of songs from the Ohrid Festival, a MRTV production) Fine with me, but the fact remains that she does not know a thing about tourism. Just like this NTB crowd here. THAT IS WHY this blogg.
Labina tells her readers that (allegedly well respected) "Guardian" alarmed its British public that the prized Ohrid Trout (Salvelinus namaycush) was doomed to extinction because of over-fishing. First it is not true: there is an Hydrobiological Institute (for Ichthiology) in Ohrid, something they have never ever had in Manchester. It is one of the better known around the world. She probably is ignorant of what does Ichthiology mean. So what with that story? I read it: great promotion for Ohrid. The paper (small circulation) also published (for free) a costly info how does one go to Skopje and Ohrid. Labina concludes her text saying that Macedonia has no road-signs (simply not true), that its people are unwilling to work (not true: best employed everywhere) and its promotional folders are crap (she had not seen the Dutch bunch), that the Macedonians are losers. And that is what makes me mad angry. She is a winner and the rest are the losers. That is absurd. The year her article was published (December 2004) she her sister and brother claimed that their "How I Killed a Saint" was a success of the Macedonian film and tried to persuade Europe that it corrects itself towards the people of their country. But she and her sister were even more confused in relaying that simple message.
Stupid spring-cleaning of drawers full with clippings! Sets a crazy train of thoughts.
Macedonia has dismantled or allowed to totally wither an institution like the Macedonian National Tourist Office where I was a Secretary-General before I left to head the Yougoslav National Tourist Office for The Netherlands. But those organizations were community-based, like the Red Cross, the NTO was law-supported and financed. Now there is nothing of the sort. There is a ministerial department. Maybe I should try to resurrect the Macedonian National Tourist Office. Maybe.
Tourism is a very complex, multi-disciplinary, extremely vital, strategically important industry conceived globally but designed and executed, by top professionals, locally.

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