On the top of the mountain i meet my way.

Once again it is not me who decides where i will head next, rather it is chance. Or maybe i should say God since i am in a sacred place. What now is a monastery once was a temple to Apollo the a sanctuary, then a settlement and a monastery. It had a very special history and was destroyed and rebuilt many times.

After getting up, i sit on a rock, the leg of the lion. From the window of my room i could see this huge rock with a lions shape. Maybe 20 meter high it is an impressive sculpture of mother nature. I sit there, look at the rising sun and read a bit when i get a hone call from my good friend Vlad! How mice to hear a friends voice again! And specially in this amazing setting! I look down on the valley, can see a little bit of Prilep in the distance and the surrounding mountains. Right bellow me, before getting into the valley there is a smaller falter place with trees and very green grass. I guess there is a spring there and the trees probably carry fruits and nuts for the monastery.
However nice it s to be alone on a mountain, i go back to the monastery to sk for the way to the top. Goze knows the way, he has been here a couple of times and wants to go up today. So we start this short walk up. As we pass some whole in the rocks, Goze explains they are tombs, he also explains about a little bit of the local history of this place. it is a century old history and right as we are talking we pass a bunch of people excavating loads of earth to uncover ruins. Goze is slightly made because these people have no archaeological formation and even though they have only very good intentions, they might just destroy things. This is the beginning of a lot of talking, storytelling and project making. Goze is a photographer-sculpture-archaeologist from Skopje who earns his money trading with computers and digital slr cameras. He is here to get a little bit of rest and get away from his busy, full of projects life. But since he met me, he speaks about all this projects all the time. About the purchase of land in the south where he left his soul and in Turkey, th small resort he would like to make, the good deals on cameras, the art gallery project in Skopje... Very interesting active man i met today.
His knowledge about photography is useful to me, i learn a little more about it, namely the dynamic range... i was wandering what this BKT button was for... So you shoot several times the same picture and the use photoshop to put them together and get the right exposition on every part of the picture, lets say the bright morning sky and the kids playing in the shade of a house for example. Photoshop is everywhere, enhance contrasts, get some nice effects...
Soon we start speaking about the hidden beauties of Macedonia. There is a whole book about it and apparently i have already been to some, this place, the Trascavic monastery, the black dream in Sv. Naum, the Ohrid beaches, the Galicica national park... but i miss his favorite, number one spot. He makes me promise not to tell every one about this spot so you wont know where it is :) It is a magical place where the forest is centuries old and makes you think you are in snow white, where the ground is soft and where a part of the place is completely white and dead. Mmmm it would be nice to see this place! Well maybe we can go together! He has to get close to there to pick up something, we could use it to check it out quickly. Tomorrow we leave early in the morning? Deal! I can handle one more detour.
We walk back down and get into the monastery for a cup of tea and to clean up the big pot that as used to make Ajvar. What a tasty paste this is! Soon, supper is served, i share the evening supper with the future Monk Caliste, his mother and 5 other guests. A delicious soup with a couple roasted peppers. After supper, me and two other guests meet Kaliste for a historical tour of the Monastery. He starts the history around 4 centuries before Christ when this place was a sanctuary dedicated to Apollo, the piece remaining from this time is the hotel used for sacrifices. It has writings carved in it but these were not translated yet. Soon experts will come and clarify this. Some parts of the church are big white stones, these are from ancient times and were used as construction materials, so you can see a torso of what once was a Creek statue used to build the wall alongside other big, white carved rocks. These parts can be found in an exotic mix of local stone and bricks. Kalist explains that this is due to the numerous destructions of the church. Be it the Turkish invasion or a fire due to lightning, it was destroyed many times but always reconstructed by the faithful local people of Prilep. In the 18th century, every craftsmanship of Prilep had the responsibility to rebuild one room and after it burned down again in the 1990s, it was all reconstructed despite the low living standards at this time. Some people went around houses and gathered money in these difficult years in the former Yugoslav countries and collected enough to reconstruct the whole monastery.
I go to sleep early, i am tired and want to rest. The night is cold again but I think my head got used to it and i dont bother anymore to have it in the cold cold night.