The years of wear and tear have left Skopje looking neglected. Scaffolding indicates something is being held up, not being repaired. Apartment buildings have cracks running down the faτades and even balconies missing. Paving has subsided, and weeds and grass are growing through the gaps. Green spaces are muddy and strewn with debris.
The Macedonian capital is a friendly city and people will chat to you, ask for your opinions and buy you a drink. There are restaurants and bars everywhere.
The parts of the old city that survived the 1963 earthquake give some indication of what Skopje was like with its Ottoman houses and mix of Orthodox churches and mosques.
Thanks to that earthquake and to 1960s building techniques - especially the liberal use of concrete - as well as the appalling state of the economy and the country's political instability, there is little chance of much remedial work taking place.
Macedonia is a strikingly beautiful country. Eating at a former monastery in the mountains overlooking Skopje, with customers dancing and drinking, it is easy to forget that quite close is a village where the Hague War Crimes Tribunal is investigating the deaths of Albanian villagers. It is also investigating alleged mass graves of kidnapped Macedonians near Tetovo.
Driving from Skopje to Ohrid you pass what Macedonian friends say are policemen. They sit in sandbagged emplacements with heavy machine-guns poking out. They wear camouflage and body armour and check cars carefully.
On the banks of the stunningly beautiful Lake Ohrid the hotels, built for the holidaymakers from all over Tito's Yugoslavia are empty. The only evidence of recent residence in one hotel was a fading notice addressed to NATO troops. It warned them of the consequences of returning late to the hotel and urged them to be courteous to the local people.
The country is tense following the summer's fighting. There are rumours that people are quietly moving from areas where they are in the minority ethnically.
Macedonians of all ethnic background have been given little time to digest and discuss the NATO-brokered agreement which they have had to accept and implement.
There is no doubt the treatment of the ethnic Albanians has been appalling. But, as far as many Slav Macedonians are concerned, the Albanian minority has achieved concessions by terrorist means. Outside the parliament building in Skopje there is a permanent protest against constitutional changes.
Macedonians believe the international media has been unfair to them. At a meeting of the Journalists Association, called to discuss a new code of conduct and partly intended to stop the attacks the ethnic media make on each other, one journalist asked if there was any way to stop the foreign media from supporting "Albanian terrorism".
Macedonians see the Albanian Macedonian guerrilla leader, Ali Ahmeti, being interviewed in Western media, even though the NATO General Secretary, Lord Robertson, has described his National Liberation Army as "a bunch of murderous thugs".
Macedonians feel they do not have many friends. Bulgarians to the north-east claim Slav Macedonians are Bulgarians. Macedonians believe Albania and Kosovan Albanians want to make Macedonia part of a Greater Albania. The Greeks, of course, oppose Macedonia even being called Macedonia and insist the country be called, awkwardly, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM.
Some observers in Skopje are pessimistic about the immediate future, but the controversial changes to the constitution have been adopted and it seems unlikely that there will be fighting in winter. What has started though is electioneering. The Social Democratic Union, the second largest ethnic Macedonian party, has pulled out of the West-backed national unity government, calling for immediate elections. The Prime Minister, Mr Ljubco Georgievski, whose party is in coalition with two Albanian parties, prefers an election in April, presumably when the effects of this month's donor conference are felt within the economy.
The question remains, however: Are the people and media ready for free, peaceful elections?
Michael Foley is a lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology.