In 1963, upon the occasion of a particularly malicious earthquake which levelled Skopje - they rebuilt it from generous foreign donations. Foreigners are willing to shell hard currency for this indulgence. The harder the catastrophe - the harder the currency. Thus, calamities became an export industry, a major earner of foreign exchange, the opportunity of a lifetime for a few in exchange for the misery of the many. The fragmented echoes of animated discussions.
People here talk with their whole bodies.
They lean forward and touch their conversants. 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 with his much younger Albanian counterpart. They stood apart and made diametrically opposed declarations about the future of Kosovo. Watching the old communist apparatchik Gligorov, I was reminded or Milosevic when he announced the Serb victory in operation Allied Force.