At an altitude of 994 metres, we reach the Cornelian Cherry Pass in the far east of the Albanian high mountains. The small mountain road leads over a white line to a simple border hut. Despite the summer, it is cold up here. A border official in a fur hat asks for our passports: "Welcome to Macedonia."
"I thought the country was called North Macedonia..." I reply meekly. "All rubbish," says the official in fluent German with a Rhineland accent.
"Our country has been called Macedonia for over 3,000 years and was the largest empire in antiquity. We only had to swallow the prefix 'North' so that the Greeks wouldn't block our accession to the EU." After the crash course in Macedonian history, the official kindly hands back the passports: "I was a Yugoslavian guest worker in Duisburg. Welcome to the empire of Alexander the Great."
Through the mountains down to Ohrid
After the border, the narrow road leads steeply downhill again. The view opens up. In front of us is a sea whose distant horizon blurs with the mountain peaks. Strictly speaking, it is an inland sea, but more than three times the size of the Müritz. Lake Ohrid is an inland body of water that is hardly known in Western Europe and is full of mysteries. It is considered the oldest lake in Europe. At depths of up to 288 metres, it holds a number of secrets.
An hour's drive east of the Albanian border lies the town of Ohrid. With 39,000 inhabitants, it is not only the largest town on the lake of the same name, but also one of the oldest places in Europe with a history stretching back more than 5,000 years and well worth a visit. A dozen sailing and motor boats and several excursion boats are moored in the old harbour in front of the town centre, waiting for guests. Just a stone's throw from the quay wall, our charter company Filip Vasileski and his skipper Nesch Savanovic welcome us to the Belvedere restaurant. A long table is being set up under old plane trees in the restaurant's garden. We have to shake a lot of hands.
I ask skipper Nesch to show us the charter boat. Nesch's real name is Nebojsha, he speaks fluent German and has his own business as a dental technician in Hanover. However, he spends the whole summer in his home country on Lake Ohrid. As we walk with him to the lakeshore, the late afternoon light gilds the incredibly beautiful old town centre of the historic town. It's like being in a lavishly designed film set. But for which film? The architecture of the houses, whose upper storeys get wider and wider and provide shade for the narrow streets, is reminiscent of similar places in Bulgaria and Turkey.
The towers of countless churches and mosques are reflected on the smooth lake. The ringing of the bells mingles with the muezzin's call to prayer from the domes of the white minarets that rise into the sky.
I immediately have the feeling that I have arrived in a melting pot of cultures and religions, with several motorboats with bow anchors and shore lines parked in front of the promenade. Young people pose for selfies. Some women wear ankle-length black dresses and headscarves, others wear high heels, hot pants and bikini tops.
Our arrival is celebrated
Nesch shows us our little boat. It is seven metres long, very elegantly finished in mahogany and has benches covered in white leather. Somehow it reminds me of an elegant Dutch tucker boat. Nesch proudly explains: "It's not a Dutch sloop, but a Macedonian kayak, a traditional steel riveted fishing boat." I look at him in disbelief: "Macedonians go fishing like that?" "No. We had the mahogany interior made ourselves. But the hull is riveted by hand from sheet steel according to a hundred-year-old tradition. The shipyards are the backyards of the Roma families living around the lake. They pass on the craft and are the only ones who still work this way today."
I ask Nesch to go for another walk around the lake in the evening light. "No, it's already too late," he replies. We'd rather celebrate your arrival today. You are the first charter guests from Germany. We go back to the Belvedere, where a Roma group with two violinists, accordion and double bass has set up next to our long table. The waiters are serving up mountains of grilled peppers, aubergines, courgettes, meat and sausages. All accompanied by an irresistible red wine from the Monastery Winery. Toasts are celebrated and endless bottles of the monastic red are poured. As the Roma band plays the songs we don't know, which are always about "Makedonija", the men lie in each other's arms and sing along passionately.
A "city tour" by boat
Early in the morning at 3.30 pm, Nesch finally explains the boat to us. There is an outboard motor and a switch for the position light. That's it. When I ask for a nautical chart and a harbour handbook, the Macedonian scratches his head in embarrassment. "There's only a municipal harbour here in Ohrid. The other harbours are mostly monasteries."
A thousand years ago, Lake Ohrid was the religious centre of the Christianisation of the Balkans. Boats were an important means of transport in the high mountains, which were difficult to access.
Most of the monasteries are therefore located on the water and have a jetty. To this day, the monasteries are the centres of the small villages on the lake. Crafts, agriculture and fishing are practised here and wines have been made here for over a thousand years. I ask Nesch if he would like to join us on the trip. His eyes light up. He is happy that he can show us "his" lake - and we are relieved to have a guide who knows the area. And so we set off. In the few hours that we still have light, Nesch shows us the lake side of Ohrid from the water.
The picturesque old town rises above the lake like an amphitheatre. A dozen different ethnic groups live side by side here in a very small area. In addition to the largest population group of Macedonians, there are mainly Albanians, Turks, Roma, Serbs, Bosniaks, Wallachians and Bulgarians.
Each group has its own religion, which is why there are 365 churches and dozens of mosques in the small town. "So you can pray in a different church every day of the year," says our skipper as he steers the boat close to the shore.
Close to the harbour, one fish restaurant follows the next. Each restaurant has its own jetty. As the sun sets, we reach a dominant rock in the west of the old town, on which the Church of St John of Kaneo is enthroned. It is the most photographed motif in Ohrid.
Driving at night is still prohibited
Nesch reminds everyone to return. All boats must have left the lake by 9 pm. This regulation is intended to secure the border between North Macedonia and Albania. Around a third of Lake Ohrid belongs to the neighbouring country. Only one buoy marks the largely unguarded border. The ban on travelling at night on both sides is intended to prevent smuggling.
In 2022, when we were travelling, pleasure boats were not yet allowed to cross the sea border to Albania because there was no border station on either side. However, both countries have long recognised nautical tourism as an economic factor and are working on a solution for cross-border boat traffic. As Albania and North Macedonia are candidates for EU membership, it is to be hoped that the current maritime border will be history in the not too distant future. However, we still have to exclude the Albanian shore on our trip.
A monastery and a priest as winemakers
Our journey first takes us westwards. The outflow of Lake Ohrid is located in the far north in the village of Struga. After 285 kilometres, the waters of Lake Ohrid flow into the Adriatic Sea via the occasionally raging Drin River (Macedonian: Drim). In Struga, we moor at the promenade just before the needle weir, which regulates the water level of Lake Ohrid. Below the weir, one restaurant follows the next on the banks of the River Drin. Here you can get a large fish from the lake and delicious wine for little money.
The next morning, I want to know from Nesch where these wines are made. We travel just a short distance by boat to the centre of Ohrid, where we are picked up. After a few minutes, we enter the picturesque monastery of Saints Kusman and Damjan. The priest Dimče Gjorgyieski has hands like a blacksmith and an engagingly friendly smile: "Welcome to the Monastery Winery, says the priest", leads us into the cellar where a winemaker is bottling red wine from oak barrels.
"We produce nine different types of wine and around 10,000 bottles a year." The priest takes a dark red Merlot from the shelf, expertly twists out the cork and fills our glasses.
Swirling the red wine in his glass, the bearded priest lectures: "There are three of us doing the work here, a winemaker, a priest and Almighty God." He sees my questioning look and adds: "The winemaker makes the wine, the priest prays and God makes sure it tastes good". Not a bad job, I think, to be the priest in such a business. You can even find him on the internet: www.monasterywinery.com.
The western shore: to Kališta and Radožda
In the morning, we set off across the lake to Kališta on the west coast. Albanians, Macedonians, Serbs and Arumen (Macedonian Romanians) live side by side in this village of 764 people on the shore. The towers of their mosques and churches point to the same sky.
The harbour belongs to the Kališta monastery, which is famous for its medieval frescoes. Attached to the monastery is a hotel with a beach bar, so that souls are always catered for. Five kilometres further south is the village of Radožda. This is where the Albanian border runs. We moor at the jetty of the Dva Bisera fish restaurant. The restaurant is built on stilts out on the lake. There is fresh catch from the grill, served with hand-carved chips, cucumber slices and onion rings in large portions for little money. Everything tastes delicious.
The Orthodox Church of St Michael the Archangel, carved into the rock, is a cultural and historical highlight above the fish restaurant. It is considered the most beautiful early Christian cave church in the Balkans with frescoes from the 14th century.
The eastern shore: Unesco World Heritage Site Sveti Naum
Our last day trip takes us along the eastern shore to the south of Lake Ohrid. Halfway there is the Bay of Bones, now an archaeological museum, where we moor. Human skeletons and tools from the Stone Age were found on the seabed of the bay. Archaeologists then built a village on stilts out on the lake, as it might have looked about a thousand years before our era. As we continue southwards, we pass the Zahum monastery, which can only be reached by boat and has its own pier.
However, the highlight of the south is the Sveti Naum monastery, which is located directly on the Albanian border. The priest Naum was a pupil of Cyril and Methodius and founded the monastery around 895 in order to translate the Holy Scriptures into Cyrillic. The site is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The monks of Sveti Naum and the neighbouring monasteries created the foundations of the Cyrillic script here 1100 years ago, which is now used by 165 million people in eleven time zones.
We moor in the monastery's own harbour. At the foot of the monastery hill, fresh water bubbles up from mighty karst springs and feeds the lake. It is the source of the Black Drin. The water comes from an underground outlet of Lake Prespa, just fifteen kilometres away, which is 849 metres above sea level - 154 metres higher than Lake Ohrid itself. The karst springs, which extend one kilometre inland, can be explored by rowing boat. The cold fresh water of the Black Drin invites you to take a refreshing dip.
Fresh trout and real Ohrid pearls
You should definitely visit the Ostrovo restaurant right next to the monastery. The restaurant's terrace is built on stilts over the karst springs. It serves trout, eel and carp from Lake Ohrid as well as traditional Macedonian dishes such as snails in earthen pots, spinach pie, stuffed cabbage leaves and, of course, stuffed peppers.
It is also one of the few places where you can buy the original Ohrid pearls. Plastic fakes are available in many souvenir shops. However, the production of the originals is a well-kept secret that is passed down from generation to generation in just two families.
The pearls are made into necklaces, bracelets and earrings. The most prominent wearer of this extraordinary jewellery is said to have been Queen Elizabeth II.
Our trip to the holy places on the shores of the mysterious lake ends at the Sveti Naum monastery. It is quite extraordinary that a boat always docks at a monastery steeped in history. But Lake Ohrid is also an attractive boating area for boaters who are not interested in religious history. The monasteries are not only used for praying, but also for thinking and trading in terms of the market economy. There is good food and excellent wine everywhere.
And along the 30 kilometres of east coast between Ohrid and Sveti Naum, you will not only find countless sacred places, but at least as many beaches. Without having to search for long, every crew quickly discovers a "personal" beach where they are absolutely alone. The lake, which has so far been spared from mass tourism, is so clear and clean that it is a joy to jump from the boat into the water.
