GLAM/Newsletter/August 2018/Contents/Macedonia report
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WikiCity tour in Kočani and Vinica
On 19th of August, the first tour of the WikiCity project has been conducted in Kočani and Vinica, two close cities in the eastern part of Macedonia. Considering the main idea of this project to take photographs of the cities, their historical landmarks, important and notable buildings which are home of institutions as well as part of the cultural heritage, we came up with the idea to organize a joint tour with the bicycle crew "Milton Manaki" which regularly make tours visiting cultural and natural sites attended by cyclists who are also amateur and semi-professional photographers sharing a lot of decent quality images on the social media. On a bright sunny, although very hot day, dozen participants with four cars traveled to Kočani where the 50 kilometers long tour started firstly visiting the city of Kočani's landmarks including the municipal building, medieval (guard) tower, church of St. George, Monument of the Freedom with the well known mosaic, Center of Culture and old traditional houses in the historic city center finishing with the Railway station which is the last and easternmost train terminal in Macedonia built in the early thirties of XX century. The group then headed to the town of Vinica which is located only 10 kilometers south of Kočani. In Vinica after a several photo shoots of the new main square, municipal building, the new church, kindergarten, Center of Culture and Library, the group was welcomed by the director of the Museum of Vinica where they were given a tour in the Museum as well as on the archeological site of Viničko Kale (Vinica Fortress) on the hill at the outskirts of the town where the well known early Christian terracotta icons have been found. The tour continued through several villages on the foothills of Plačkovica mountain to the village of Morodvis where the archaeological site of the early Byzantine city of Morobizdon with the ruins of the important episcopal and basilica buildings are found. Riding through several other villages in the valley of Bregalica river on a beautiful landscape with plenty of rice fields with ripe rice ready to be harvested the tour ended up at the starting point in Kočani. Throughout the entire tour participants have been instructed about Wikipedia, uploading images on the Wikimedia Commons and also they were reading existing Wikipedia articles about the sites and places that had been visited. In the forthcoming period after they will upload all of the images they have taken on this Wikicity tour editing activities are planed for the images to be used.
