The Great Skopje Earthquake, 1963. Fifty years later

The exhibition catalogue.

One summer morning fifty years ago the whole Macedonian capital city of Skopje was woken up by a massive earthquake. It was 5.17 AM; many people, panicking, ran to the streets still in their bed clothes, leaving their homes and belongings behind. Nearly 80 percent of the city was destroyed beyond repair as a result of the catastrophe, including many valuable historical buildings.

The earthquake itself took less than a minute but the imprint it left in the psyche and lives of the local people has been long-lasting. Over a thousand people were killed; a few thousands were injured.  Stories from the day of the earthquake and afterwards are still alive in the city's folklore.

To commemorate the 26 July 1963 earthquake, a temporary exhibition was opened earlier this year at the Skopje City Museum. It displays artifacts, photographs, newspaper clippings, maps, videos - all related to the catastrophic event.

The building that now houses the museum in 1963 was Skopje's train station. It too was heavily damaged during the catastrophe. The hands of the clock on the outside wall of the building stopped at the time of the earthquake, and have not been moved since.       

Inside, besides the temporary earthquake-dedicated exhibition, one can see seismographs on display (try to stamp your feet on the floor a bit heavier and you will see a mini 'earthquake' made by yourself). There are also a few recreations of after-earthquake premises: a destroyed 1960s kitchen, a hospital tent, street signs of a tent city (yes, for a couple of months following the event Skopje's population indeed lived in tents). 

The museum itself, of course, is interesting to visit not just because of this exhibition. Downstairs, there is a concise but valuable exhibition of historical artifacts related to the history of Skopje (some of them several thousand years old), and the temporary exhibitions are always changing. The institution won the local 'museum of the year' title in 2012.

Going back to the earthquake topic, an interesting thing to keep in mind is that the catastrophe happened during the Cold War. Macedonia back then was part of the socialist Yugoslavia.

The catastrophe, in a way, was an ice-breaking event between the Eastern Bloc and the West. Both the socialist and the capitalist countries sent aid to Skopje and helped the Macedonians to rebuild their capital city (for this reason today in Skopje we see many streets named after various countries and cities - in order to honour the support and help they provided to Macedonia). Although much of the help was genuine, one could also see a certain competition of helpfulness (who are better and more generous: the East or the West? the socialists or the capitalists?).  

Although officially socialist, the former Yugoslavia was, perhaps, one of the countries that had the least enemies back in the day. For example, the Yugoslavian passport was a valuable document that enabled its owner to travel to nearly every country around the world (as opposed to ID documents of USA, USSR, and their 'friendly republics'' that only enabled free travel within their own ideological camps). When the great earthquake happened in Skopje during the Cold War, cynically as it sounds, it was a uniting event where many people could for a while forget about their ideologies and simply be humans.
 

The picture of the famous clock on the outside wall of the present Skopje City Museum; its hands have not moved since 1963.

Text and photos (c) Agne Drumelyte, 2013.

Pernik. Does one need to carry a baseball stick there?

Kukeri ritual dance (scaring away evil spirits) during the Pernik's Surva festival. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

 

''Hahaha! Pernik!!!!!'' says my Bulgarian friend when I mention to her my intentions to visit the former miners' town of Bulgaria. Pernik nowadays is a topic of many Bulgarian jokes, along with other towns like Dobrich ('best' drivers) and Gabrovo.

Pernik, however, is special. It is the town where ferocious, always ready to start up a fight men live. They wear miners' hats with flashlights, drive old WW Golf cars (the plate numbers always start with 'PK'), and when they do start a fight, the earthquake can be felt even in Sofia*. That's if we believe what the jokes tell us.

Pernik became known as a mining town at he turn of the 20th century but actually it's much older than that. The area has been inhabited since centuries BC, although nowadays probably the oldest remaining construction in town is the medieval Krakra Fortress (you have the option to switch off the rather annoying musical effects at the top left corner of the linked website).

Much of what we see in the streets of Pernik today is the 20th century socialist architecture, including a heavy memorial dedicated to miners. There is also a large park and a grandiose Palace of Culture (communists did indeed love public 'palaces'). In the main street there is no shortage of cafe life, and people are actually quite friendly. The whole town is surrounded by picturesque hills. River Struma flows through the town, carrying empty packets of crisps and other rubbish.

At the end of each January Pernik becomes the venue of the large - and international - Surva festival (apparently, it's the biggest of such kind in Bulgaria and one of the largest in the whole Balkans). Men (only they are allowed to perform) dress up in voluminous furry costumes, put on scary looking masks and dance & parade through the streets of the town. As they move, copper bells attached to their costumes make the noise that is meant to scare away evil spirits. These are the local men at their scariest, as far as I have witnessed.

Surva is a pagan event, and some Bulgarians believe that it can be traced back all the way into the Thracian times (Thracians were the people who inhabitted present-day Bulgaria before the Romans & later the Slavs arrived).
 
Interestingly, Pernik itself is named after a pagan deity - the Slavic god of thunder Perun. Perhaps that's why Pernik feels somewhat like a sleeping force: peaceful at the surface but able to wake up and get into a rage if carelessly provoked. Besides the (jokingly) ferocious reputation of its residents, Pernik lies at a geographically intense location: mountains around; coal underground; and occassional earthquakes.  

PS already on my way to Pernik I realised that I had forgotten my camera so please excuse the lack of original photos at this blog post. Below you can see yet another arguably hilarious Bulgarian joke about a WW Golf from Pernik.

* Pernik indeed was the epicentre of the June 2012 earthquake. The quake, over 5.5 Richter scale points, broke some windows and destroyed a number of buildings in town. It could also be felt in Sofia. I remember waking up that night at a flat in Ovcha Kupel from the sensation as if someone was standing at the back of my bed and, for some reason, vigorously shaking the whole furniture. Yes, it was Pernik.   

Bulgarian jokes. Image: http://chlenat.bg/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/pernik.jpg

Text and the top photo (c) Agne Drumelyte, 2013.