This fact shows neatly, how deep the historic connections between Greece and Macedonia run. For example, the famous Alexander the Great was Macedonian, but he became the ruler of Greece. Greece and Macedonia are very similar in climate and topography (apart from the fact of course that Macedonia does not have access to the sea), so in a way Macedonia could be called the Greece for price-conscious travellers.

But it is so much more than just a beautiful place for tourists. However, after the fall of communism, things looked bleak for Macedonia. With the separation from Serbia, it lost the markets for its industrial sector, which led to a significant recession and high unemployment figures.

Luckily for the country, the politicians turned to the only cure that seems to exist for the post-communist syndrome: Radical free-market reforms. The effect has been a good one. For example, Macedonia's IT sector, and this is quite remarkable, grew by 64% in 2007. This fact gives us a strong clue, in which direction Macedonia is headed: the future of technology. So accordingly, it has been ranked as the fourth best "reformatory state" out of 178 countries by the world bank.

Macedonia is, despite its cultural proximity to Greece, a Slavonic nation, so it comes with everything Slavs are famous for.

A deep-rooted hospitality and a sense of culture, poetry and art which is elementary and essential, often joyful, but perhaps even more frequently endowed with a strange melancholic beauty. In Macedonia, the Cyrillic alphabet is used, and most of the population belongs to the Orthodox Christian faith.

It is predicted that in the coming years especially two factors will be decisive for its economic development: Trade and tourism. European-Union membership is another prospect.