Travelling 120 km from Skopje to Veles on the Skopje – Gevgelija highway, and then the road that goes past Stip, it takes about two hours by car (and a bit more by bus) to get to Kocani. Some prefer going to Kumanovo first, and then the road that goes past Sveti Nikole, considering that road to be less tiring.
On the eastern side of the town, the road leads to Makedonska Kamenica, Delcevo and the border with Bulgaria (65 km), in the direction of Blagoevgrad. On the southeastern side towards Vinica, the road leads to Berovo. On the northern side, towards Osogovo, there are three roads going from Kochani – one along the valley of Kocanska River to the artificial lake Gratce (6 km), then a mountain road through Jastrebnik to Lopen; the second one goes through the village of Beli to Ponikva, and then on a dirt road also to Lopen, that continues towards Kriva Palanka.The third one goes through Pripor and Rechani to the base of Carev Peak, the highest point of the Osogovo Mountains. On the northwestern side, the town is connected to Probishtip and Kratovo.
The bus station in the town has a capacity of 14 buses and there are 5 departure and arrival platforms. Passengers are provided with a comfortable stay in an air-conditioned room and there is also access for the handicapped people.
You can also get to Kocani by train. The railway that connects the town with Stip, Veles and Skopje was built in 1926. The prominent Macedonian mime, actor Trajche Georgiev, with whom I have spent numerous sleepless night in his birth town Kocani, recently published photographs of the Railway Station on the internet – as it once was (right after it was built) and now. It is really impressive how magnificent the buildings from the past seem to us.
The "heir" of Ege
The town is at an altitude of 350 to 450 meter and is located between the 2252 meters high Osogovo Mountains and Plachkovica, on the northern side of the Kocani Valley, spread across the two sides of Kocanska River, at the spot where it leaves the Osogovo region and expands its valley.
According to Vlado Pavlov, researcher and author of the book “The truth about Macedonia”, the town of honey, Kocani, is the “heir” of the ancient Macedonian capital Ege.
“At the end of the Miocene and the beginning of the Pliocene, this valley was flooded by a freshwater lake. The lake started to drain later. But the drainage was interrupted several times which created routes along the valley’s sides. After the lake drained, the rivers extended their beds, so the lake Ege was named Korito – Korinton and the town of Ege was renamed Korinton” – says Pavlov.
There are thermal springs near the villages of Dolni Polog and Banja. Yes, this Macedonian town with a population of around 30.000 and the headquarters of the municipality with the same name with characteristics of developed town culture is known for the hot waters. However, it is even more famous for its high-quality rice. And the people from Kocani are masters at preparing many delicious meals (salty and sweet) from rice. In Kocani, it is mandatory the people to prepare rice with cheese every Friday, no exceptions, as Blagoj Penov has taught me. Done Donev, professor, poet and actor, convinced me that “rice and water has made us, the people from Kocani, a bit of fools…” And you could never tell whether he was joking, or was being serious.
The rice from Kocani is “Chinese”
The temperatures in Kocani are relatively high, with little rain. Maybe that is an important condition for the production of quality rice in the fertile Kocani field which ends 8 km south of Kocani, at the point where the mountain Plackovica starts to rise.
To set things straight – the rice from Kocani is not an authentic fruit from the Kocani region. It was brought from the distant China via a “customs fraud”. As it is still told, it happened this way: A long time ago, a man from Kocani was in China. Some say he was working there, others say that he had a strange dream that the Chinese emperor chose him and invited him into his luxurious castle to teach him something that would make him eternal and remembered forever.
Others, including me, think that he was a traveler that joined the famous man from Korcula Marko Polo in his journey to China. I don’t know whether it was because of that, but when I went to Korcula at Marko Polo’s stone house, I thought of the towers in Kocani. The medieval towers in Kocani are considered to have been built during the second half of the 17th century. Two of them were built in Kocani, on both beds of Kocanska River, and one in the village Dolni Polog. They were Bey Towers at the time and had residential-defensive function, while the other was clock tower. They were built from massive stone walls and remained as the only marks of Kocani’s past.
In 1957 the two town towers were put under the protection of a law. The medieval tower on the right river bed in the center of the town proudly dominates the space with its 18.5 meters. It was renovated in 1978 and now there are numismatic and archaeological collections and a homeland department in it. It is a museum which has to be visited. And now, let me return to the story of how rice made it to the Kochani field.
So, the man from Kocani was in China. He got there, worked whatever he worked, and after many years he decided to return to his homeland. Amazed by the rice, the basic food in China, he decided to take some with him and plant in the Kochani region, hoping that it would grow in his region, where hunger sometimes hit hard. He took some of that white gold thinking that he would pass all the kingdoms on the way home without problems. But, nothing good can happen without overcoming some difficulties. It is like that, both in real life and the stories.
While entering the kingdom where his birth place was located, he found out that it was forbidden to enter rice. Probably even back then, the authorities took care of the domestic agriculture production. He stopped to rest and to think what to do because there was no way that was going to give up on his intention, especially “at the door step”. He thought that entering geese was not forbidden. He bought several geese, fed them with the rice and then slayed them. After entering the kingdom, he cleaned them and took the rice out of them. That is how he transferred the rice from China, started to grow it, which gave the region a new mark and a new product. The place where the rice was first grown got its name after that man, and the man, it is said, was called Kocho.
And so, Kocani was called after Koco and Kocani is the town of rice. When the time came after the first harvest of the Kocani rice, Kocho taught the people how to eat it by using chopsticks. But he also said that if they had no chopsticks, they could eat it with their hands. And so, even today, some people from Kocani still eat rice with their hands, citing the tradition.
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