Zdravko and Deita

Sunday at Sveti Naum Monastery, on the shore of lake Ohrid, close to the border with Albania. My grilfriend and I are looking at the little craft shops on the way from the parking to the monastery, passing a slow day after the mountain trail we did the day before.
We stop at a shop where I see a beautiful prayer chain, 17 golden-brown pearls chained together, with two silvers ones on every side and a big silver carve in a medal-like 20th pearl. I bought it because I fell in love with it...I just had to...

"Where are you from?"

I looked up. Was just studying the properties of my Orthodox-Christian prayer chain and didn't expect that the shop lady was going to talk to me after my purchase.

"Belgija -Belgium..."

And that was good enough. Driven by curiousness like "What on earth makes two Belgians come to Macedonia?", asks Deita, the shop lady, us to come in for a coffee. She and her husband Zdravko are selling all day long, and want to use this calm moment to have a chat with those two young Belgians...named "us"...
We talk about our lives. Compare it, measure it from the point where we are both living, and then come to the conclusion that these people have the same behaviour, although they live in a Balkan country. It's a question of "Do traditional Balkan people truely exist?" I should answer "yes" to that question, but I refuse. It is too early yet to conclude...
Zdravko asks where I've bought my Bradt Travel Guide on Macedonia. I answer him honestly that you can buy these things in specialised book shops, in Belgium and he answers "oh, really?", his eyes filled with little lights of joy, his mind thinking something like "Do they really have books about Macedonia in your country?". He looks closer to the cover and laughs when he sees the picture of a mosque, points at it with his finger to his wife and says something in Macedonian.

"Europe wants muslims, not us"

After that he asks if there are muslims in Belgium, and if yes, how much... I say yes, but haven't a clue how much (I said 'One million', but that can't be true, will check it on the web...). Zdravko immediatly asks me "And you never have problems with them?" I repeat "sometimes in the big cities" (trying to balance between political correctness and reality), and think by myself something like "not especially with muslims", but Zdravko is now thinking something like "See, that's a problem of everywhere". After that he says that many Macedonians, especially the younger ones, want to live in the European Union, but that Europe doesn't want them, but feels more for people from islamic countries to migrate to the EU. For Zdravko, only people from Algeria, Morocco or Turkey are easily travelling to and working inside the EU, and Macedonians, he says, are always sent back. "Europe wants muslims, not us..." , he quotes, that being one of the quotes of our journey in Macedonia...Islam seems to be a primal concern in this part of the world...

Yes, Balkan people do exist, I conclude. But I'm not quite sure about that...It's always this thin balance between religions. After one hour and a half chatting with Zdravko and Deita, accompanied by the strong 'Macedonian' (Turkish) coffee, we leave. It was a nice chat, a chat I would consider typically Balkan, facing the problems of former communistic, centrally governed countries that transformed into liberal society experiments, boasting (too) many different opinions and cultures, (too) many problems and a poor economy. But Zdravko and Deita smile, and keep on selling their crafts, earning money that they can use for their children's studies in the future...and for a better life in the future, in a modern Macedonia...