From the Bluegrass to the Balkans: Living, Loving, and Leaving Macedonia

Descripción

Benjamin Shultz considered himself to be a worldly, educated, and well-traveled student of culture, ready to take on any adventure. After completing a Ph.D. in geography and teaching at an American university for a few semesters, love took him to Macedonia, his wife’s home country, where he encountered a whole new world for which all of his previous travel and studies had left him unprepared. Almost immediately after his arrival in 2013 he began documenting his experiences as he negotiated completely different social customs, navigated notorious Eastern European bureaucracies, and learned a new language. While there he discovered a proud nation and beautiful culture that places a strong emphasis on friendship, family, and enjoying life, but at the same time suffers from political corruption, poverty, and a lack of opportunity that pushes thousands of young people to emigrate permanently. At times comical, at times serious, this book gives a glimpse of what life is like in one of Europe’s smallest and poorest countries as it struggles to transition from its socialist past, even 25 years after gaining independence from Yugoslavia.