Skopje is the capital of North Macedonia, with about 400,000 inhabitants. It is located in the north of North Macedonia, surrounded by the Shar Mountains, Skopska Crna Gora, and the mountains of Jasen National Park.

In Skopje, city buses operate as public transportation, but they are not entirely reliable and do not fully run according to their schedule. However, if one travels daily along the main boulevard routes, there are usually more options for which line to take, and it is possible to commute with them daily. Apart from buses, there are also taxis in the city, but one needs to be careful and only call them through the official app or BeeRide, to get a reasonable price. I did not use taxis. Most locals commute daily by car or buses.

The airport is located about 18 km from the city, and buses run from there every 2–3 hours; otherwise, it is also possible to get to the city by taxi.

The history of Skopje is closely linked to the great earthquake in 1963, which destroyed up to 80% of all existing buildings. The city was then almost entirely rebuilt (partly according to the urban design of Japanese architect Kenzo Tange – from his plan, for example, the wide city boulevards were realized), and it is difficult to find original historical buildings there. On the other hand, several interesting brutalist buildings have been built (for example, the Post Office or Makedonski Telekom).

In the center of Skopje, it is possible to visit the Old Bazaar, with renovated original houses and mosques. Not far from the Old Bazaar there is also the city fortress with views of the city, the State Opera building, or the National Philharmonic. However, among locals, the Old Bazaar is considered more of a tourist trap, and for young people today, the real center is rather the Debar Maalo district, with many cafés, bars, pubs, and “kafanas” – local restaurants.

In Skopje, I often went for walks through the neighborhoods of Debar Maalo, Karposh, and Aerodrom, visiting brutalist landmarks, the City Park or the Airplane Park in the Aerodrom neighborhood, or walking along the river. I definitely also recommend visiting the local cafés – among my favorites were The Dudes Specialty Coffee, Lipa Coffee, Rutina Coffee House, or The Edge Specialty Coffee, a café with a Czech owner living in Skopje :).

In the surroundings of Skopje, there are several interesting places for trips that can be reached by public transportation. The first is Mount Vodno. You can take a bus directly to its base and hike all the way up, or go to the middle of the hill and start walking from there. From halfway up, you can also take a cable car to the very top. At the top, you will find beautiful views of the city and surrounding mountains, with the possibility to have a drink at the upper cable car station and see the telecommunications tower at the summit, which has been under construction for several years. If you want to hike up in summer, I recommend starting early in the morning when it’s not unbearably hot yet :)

Another place is Matka Canyon, which I definitely recommend visiting on a week day, when there are fewer tourists. There you can rent a paddle board or a boat, or take a boat trip to the Vrelo cave. When visiting the canyon, you definitely shouldn’t miss the Shishevo Monastery on the other side of the canyon – it’s a magical place that not all tourists go to.
I had also planned to go to the old Roman aqueduct, the Monastery of Gorno Nerezi, and the Macedonian Village, but unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time for that.

Traveling outside Skopje is a bit more complicated – the best option is definitely to go by car, which I didn’t have available, since I came by plane. In North Macedonia, there are mainly intercity buses, but it’s quite difficult to get information about their arrivals and departures (if you want to use them, definitely ask IAESTE friends for advice!). There is also a train, but it is very slow and more expensive, and then there are also intercity taxis, which people usually arrange through Facebook groups.

Because traveling on your own without a car is not easy, it was great that IAESTE friends took us on trips :) Over the summer they organized four trips outside the city for us, and I was able to participate in two of them (the city of Bitola and the wedding festival in Galichnik), and I really enjoyed both :) IAESTE organized transportation and accommodation, and then we went sightseeing with them, then also to eat, and in the evening to a bar. If I had known earlier, I would have extended my internship to be able to join as many trips as possible and perhaps also go with them to Krushevo and Lake Ohrid :)

In any case, I recommend visiting Lake Ohrid over the weekend, even if you don’t manage to go with IAESTE – you can get there by bus. I also really wanted to go hiking in the Shar Mountains, but unfortunately, that didn’t work out due to extreme heat, fire risk, and poor accessibility. Instead, I went to Lake Mavrovo and the Bigorski Monastery in Mavrovo National Park, which I definitely highly recommend if you figure out how to get there.

I worked at the architectural studio Tetraktis. At the time I was there, it had 8 employees. Even though it wasn’t a big studio, it has been operating for quite a long time and I got the impression that it is well known in Macedonia.

My work was assigned and also consulted with me by the head of the studio, Mr. Jordanov. He regularly welcomes international interns into his office. He wanted the interns at his firm to mainly gain new experience and broaden their horizons, which is why he also took me along to various meetings or site visits of their projects.

Almost all of the other employees were just a few years out of school, so only a few years older than me. They had a great team spirit and welcomed me among them, helping me not only with work but also with other things related to life in Macedonia. I got a lot of great tips from them.

Overall, I felt comfortable at the studio and I am grateful for the opportunity they gave me.

Most of the time I worked on conceptual design solutions. This means that when a new project came in and the boss, after the first consultation, had a rough idea of how he would like to approach the design, my task was to draw out that approach, test several variants, and then prepare a few drawings and renderings for the best option, which we would then present to the client at the next consultations. Once an agreement was reached, the design would be further developed, but that was taken over by someone who stays at the studio permanently :). What was nice about being assigned this type of work was that I got to try working on several different projects with different people, even though I was only there for a short time.

Sometimes it happened that I needed to consult my next steps, but the boss didn’t have time for me. In that case, I would go to my colleagues, who were at that time working on the new website, and I helped them rework models or create new renderings. On some tasks I also worked together with other colleagues. Sometimes I had to look up information in local standards or laws, and luckily there was always someone to help me with that.

What was great for me was that the company also took me along to meetings (even though I don’t speak Macedonian and only understand a little :)) – I went with them to a meeting at the city hall, with a construction company, and to a construction site visit. The conceptual designs I worked on were presented to clients in English by me.

My working hours were from 9 to 5, but when I needed to leave earlier because of trips or events with IAESTE and other interns, I could always arrange it in advance. Overall, I had a really nice experience at work.

My salary was 18000 MKD per month, which is approx. 7200 CZK. From what I heard, this is the minimum wage that students on internships in North Macedonia must receive. I got the payment in cash in the middle of my stay for all 6 weeks, which was nice in the sense that I did not have to exchange money in the exchange office for euros by the end of my stay, and instead I just paid everything in cash for the remaining 3 weeks.

12500 MKD I paid as rent for accommodation, the remaining money I approximately spent on food, maybe they also covered part of traveling by local public transport. The flight to Skopje, other trips, spending in cafés, bars and restaurants I paid from my saved money :).

If you stayed in Macedonia longer, it is certainly possible to arrange better and cheaper accommodation, then the salary would cover more expenses. Even so I definitely recommend to enjoy and travel in your free time during the internship, so have some reserve :) plus, the rent will most likely need to be paid in advance – I had to pay it about a month and a half before I left for Skopje.

At Tetraktis, all the employees spoke English and I had no problem communicating with them in English. Sometimes we had to search for words, but that was usually solved in Czech-Macedonian or through a translator.

Overall, I would compare the knowledge of English in Macedonia to the Czech Republic – young people spoke English, older people mostly to some extent as well, only the oldest generation not always. In shops and restaurants, there was almost never a problem with English. It must be said that I mostly stayed in cities and not in villages.

Surprisingly, Czech and Macedonian have quite a lot of similar words. Therefore, whenever I spoke with someone who didn’t speak English but wanted to have a conversation, we always managed to understand each other somehow – I spoke Czech, the other person Macedonian, and then with hands and feet. During my stay, I had several interactions this way, and it was always very nice :)

Accommodation was probably the thing I was most dissatisfied with. My accommodation was arranged through IAESTE, and I was told it was an apartment that I would share with two other interns. The rent was 200 euros per month. When IAESTE offered me the place, I asked to change it because I checked and saw that it was 6 km away from my workplace (Aerodrom – Karpoš 2). I was told that the commute by public transport takes about 30 minutes and that buses run frequently, so I eventually accepted it.

The accommodation was indeed in an apartment, but the landlord had turned it into a kind of “hostel” – he rented out individual rooms. I had my own room with air conditioning. In the apartment, besides me, there were two other IAESTE interns and two completely random people to whom the landlord rented rooms (which no one told me about in advance). There was a small kitchen in the apartment, but it was falling apart and very dirty. Halfway through my stay, the landlord replaced the kitchen furniture, but he took away the old stove – so there was a new kitchen counter but no way to cook food :D. The apartment also had an enclosed balcony that served as a “smoking room” – the only place in the flat where smoking was allowed. However, the doors couldn’t be properly closed, so whenever one of my flatmates smoked there, the smell spread throughout the entire apartment :D.

I lived in the Aerodrom district, next to the main street. There was a bus stop right in front of the building, a shopping center nearby, and a bakery across the street.

The biggest issue I had was commuting to work and to hangouts. According to the timetable, the bus ride was supposed to take 35 minutes, but during rush hours it often took up to an hour one way. So if I wanted to go to work and back during the day, and then go again in the evening for a hangout and return afterward, I sometimes ended up spending more than 3 hours a day commuting, even though Skopje is a relatively small city. Because of that, I often stayed in cafés between work and hangouts so I wouldn’t have to go back and forth. Sometimes, when I returned from hangouts late in the evening, the bus that was supposed to come according to the schedule simply didn’t show up. Then I had to walk home alone at night for about 4 km. Maybe if I had lived with another girl from the interns, we could have gone together, but the guys I lived with usually did their own thing and often didn’t go to hangouts at all.

From the first week, I tried to change my accommodation through IAESTE, and I was always told they were working on a solution, but in the end, nothing happened. My colleagues and employer offered to help me find a new place and arrange the move, but the IAESTE members told me I should only deal with them about it and not with my employer or colleagues. However, when I dealt only with IAESTE, they kept promising something but didn’t help me at all in the end.

Around the fourth week of my stay, I gave up trying to change accommodation and just stayed there. After me, another intern moved in, and she had exactly the same complaints about the place as I did.

I would definitely recommend checking carefully what kind of accommodation IAESTE offers you, and if necessary, find your own place or try to change it with the help of your colleagues or friends. Most of the other interns lived in nice apartments with good accessibility, but for me, accommodation caused a lot of complications.

The IAESTE members picked me up at the airport on the day of my arrival and took me to my accommodation, even though I arrived at 2 a.m. That was very helpful, because otherwise I would have had to wait about 3 hours for the next bus. In the following days, they also helped me get a local SIM card.

The IAESTE Macedonia committee is very active, and there were several organized events each week. Every Monday we had a weekly meeting to follow up on how everything was going, to see if anyone had any problems, and to sort out organizational matters for the upcoming trips. Besides that, a few IAESTE members organized several hangouts during the week. For example, we went bowling, to the cinema, to play billiard, and several times to bars. Sometimes we interns suggested doing something, and the IAESTE members arranged or organized it for us – for example, we went to play board games that way.

In addition, IAESTE organized weekend trips, which I already mentioned. I definitely recommend going for your internship in Macedonia during the summer holidays so you can take part in as many of them as possible :). This summer, the weekend trips included the Galichnik Wedding Festival, the town of Bitola, Lake Ohrid, and the town of Krushevo.

Since I lived far away, IAESTE members who lived in the same neighborhood sometimes gave me a ride to or from the events in their cars, which was also incredibly helpful :)

All the other international students I met were also interns through IAESTE, from different fields. We regularly saw each other at IAESTE events, which took place several times a week, and sometimes we also met outside of those to go for coffee, ice cream, or to a bar. When we didn’t have a weekend program with IAESTE, we organized smaller trips just among ourselves, such as going together to Matka Canyon.

Along the river Vardar in Skopje there is a long cycling path and it is good to go running there. At the same time there are outdoor workout playgrounds and several other playgrounds, e.g. beach volleyball ones. To the beach volleyball playground we once went to play volleyball with other interns and people from IAESTE, afterwards my friend from IAESTE invited me to play volleyball with her group. I used to play volleyball and I really enjoyed that also in Skopje I had someone to go play with :). Besides that, I often went for walks around the city. In Skopje there is also a boulder hall, however I did not have the opportunity to try it out, and some other interns also went to gym frequently - that is also possible.

At the same time the European Youth Olympic Festival was held in Skopje. It lasted a week and the sports disciplines were freely accessible to the public, we used to go there in our free time with friends to watch and it was a great experience. Some other interns also used to go watch football matches.

For cultural events I was probably unlucky, I was told that during the holidays not so much happens :). It is in any case possible to visit local museums – I visited the archaeological one, the House of Mother Teresa, and the Museum of the City Skopje. I recommend to visit all of them, they are not expensive (some are even free :)) Very interesting for me was exactly the Museum of the City Skopje, which is in the old building of the former Railway station, part of which survived the big earthquake. Inside there is a small exhibition about the earthquake and about the buildings that were destroyed in it – information that I was not able to find anywhere else. In Skopje there is also the Macedonian Philharmonic and the National Opera and Ballet, at both buildings I however only looked from the outside and I did not see any performance or concert.

Macedonian cuisine is amazing and has something for everyone. It includes various types of cheese, which are eaten as appetizers or in salads — especially the famous “Shopska salad” — as well as many vegetable dishes such as the traditional “tavče gravče” (baked beans), roasted eggplant, pepper spread called ajvar, or baked mushrooms. Main dishes are usually meat-based, such as the traditional “pleskavica” (burger meat filled with cheese), and are typically served without side dishes. Instead, appetizers or salads are used as accompaniments.

Traditional Macedonian restaurants are called Kafanas, and they are definitely worth visiting. IAESTE members will recommend the best ones, where you can enjoy delicious food at a good price.

Macedonian cuisine is also known for its wide variety of pastries from local bakeries. I definitely recommend visiting Silbo, a well-known bakery in Skopje, and trying different kinds of burek or the traditional pizza-like dish pastrmajlija. In addition to that, you can find many other sweet and savory pastries there, all of which are delicious and quite affordable.

Because calls to the Czech Republic from Macedonia can get quite expensive, and also I could not use data within the EU framework from my operator there, I bought a local SIM card from the operator A1. The SIM card can be bought in shopping malls, and they register it under a name, need a few documents and ask a couple of questions, therefore it is good to arrange it with the help of a friend from IAESTE.

The SIM card cost 400 MKD (approx. 160 CZK). After the purchase I had unlimited data for free for a week, then I always bought a package for a certain period in the A1 application. During my stay I mainly used the package of 50 Gb of data with the validity of 30 days, which cost again 400 MKD. With my family and friends at home, and at the same time with those in Macedonia, I mainly called through Messenger or Whatsapp, and for that the data was fully sufficient. When I exceptionally needed to call from the number, I topped up a little credit. In the offer there are also roaming packages for other Balkan countries, which I later used during my trip/journey home.

Apart from that, at the accommodation as well as at work I had a connection to wifi.

Buy tickets for the local public transport through the official Skopje Bus app, but check bus departures via the JSP OTG app. The app has live bus tracking and shows only buses that are actually coming – unlike the official Skopje Bus app, which shows a planned timetable that isn’t always accurate. The JSP OTG app is entirely in Macedonian (and written in Cyrillic), but if you ask an IAESTE friend to save the stops you use most often, it will make getting around the city by public transport much easier. Also, everything displayed on the digital boards at bus stops reflects the actual bus departures.

Get a SIM card from a local operator with data; it’s not expensive, and IAESTE friends can help you with it.

Don’t make a mistake with accommodation. Find a place near your workplace or in the Debar Maalo neighborhood, where most group activities take place, so you don’t have to spend 2–3 hours a day commuting by public transport across the city as I did. If IAESTE offers you accommodation far away as the only option, try to find your own even if it’s more expensive. During the summer months, it’s also very hot in Macedonia at night, so it’s definitely best to stay somewhere with air conditioning.

It’s definitely useful to be able to read Cyrillic, but after some time spent in Macedonia, you will learn it.

Be sure not to forget to bring a head covering and plenty of clothing for hot weather, including shoes. At the last moment I packed sandals, and I ended up wearing those most of the time, since it was unbearably hot for sneakers and other closed shoes. If you go on a trip to the mountains, however, it gets cold at night even during the summer months (below 10 degrees), so it’s good to have a few warmer pieces of clothing as well. It’s also useful to bring Euros so that you can exchange cash before you receive your salary – Czech crowns cannot be exchanged in exchange offices here.

For girls, it’s nice to have a scarf with you. If you want to visit a mosque and they don’t have one to lend you on site, having your own comes in handy.

It’s also great to bring some Czech food and drinks to share with friends, or for an international evening with IAESTE. We had such an evening, and Czech wafers (lázeňské oplatky), gingerbread, and Kofola were a big success – if you have some space left in your suitcase, I recommend filling it with food and drinks :).

Finally, don’t forget important documents, ideally both your passport and ID card in case you loose one, any necessary medication, and chargers for your phone/laptop.

The best benefit of the internship is definitely getting to try working in your field in another country and in an international environment, while also experiencing life in a different country with everything that comes with it. You gain local friends who act as your guides, allowing you to experience the local life and culture much better than through typical travel.

The team from IAESTE Macedonia was amazing in the way they organized several activities and trips for us each week and spent a lot of time with us in their free time. I made good friends among them, and I hope I will see them again someday :).

It is a very active committee, and I don’t think the IAESTE commitees work this well in every city.

Sometimes the organization was a bit chaotic and many things were arranged at the last minute, but after all, they are volunteers and everything worked out in the end :).

The only thing I would have wished for is that they had helped me change the accommodation I mentioned.