In 1963, upon the occasion of a particularly malicious earthquake which levelled Skopje - the town was rebuilt from generous foreign donations. The harder the catastrophe, the harder the currency. Thus, calamities became an export industry, a major earner of foreign exchange and the opportunity of a lifetime for a few in exchange for the misery of the many. The aftermath Music drifts in with the fragrances of decaying blossoms - and with corpulent mosquitoes. The fragmented echoes of animated discussions.
People here talk with their whole bodies.
They lean forward and touch their colleagues. When they meet or depart, they kiss each other on the cheeks and hug passionately. It was, therefore strange to see the body language of the octogenarian President of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, with his much younger Albanian counterpart, Rexhep Mejdani. They stood apart and made diametrically opposed declarations about the future of Kosovo. Watching the old Communist apparatchik Gligorov, I was reminded of Milosevic, when he announced the Serb victory in Operation Allied Force.