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Day 46:

Two days in Kosovo was enough to rock our worlds. Everywhere we had been provided tourist information centers, shops selling worthless trinkets, and a wealth of travelers sifting through to see the sites. Not so in Kosovo. We had started to get that "Not in Kansas anymore" vibe in Montenegro, but here is completely hit home.

We stayed at the only cheap place in Pristina, Guesthouse Velania. It is basically a cross between a youth hostel, a retirement home, and an M. C. Escher painting. There are seriously staircases everywhere. After we arrived there (that's a story for another day), and after the heat got turned on, it was all right. Snow a week after swimming in the ocean was a surprising and not exactly welcome change.

Pristina was not what we expected, but then again that may be because we didn't know what to expect! With the exception of the main arteries, there are no sidewalks or crosswalks. People just walk off to the side in the streets and cars drive around them. At first this was terrifying (especially crossing streets), but we got used to it surprisingly fast.

The people are incredibly friendly and nice. Whenever somebody I've talked to has come back from a place as troubled as Kosovo and said "the people there re the nicest I've met," the cynic in me has written it off as that person subconsciously trying to sound cool or justify their going to such a place. The cynic in me has been humbled. I think the reason for everyone's kindness is that it's not overrun by tourists. Internationals are few and far between, especially Americans, and Kosovars are excited to see the international community taking an interest in their little country.



The food is amazing. We had ethnically Albanian dishes that consisted of meat, egg and cheese baked in a bowl and flat bread baked alongside. It's amazing. I am excited that while we may have left Kosovo, there is more of this quality food ahead of us in Albania.

We had a hard time figuring out the attitude towards Americans here. People always gave us a surprised look when they learned we were Americans, but we couldn't tell if it was a positive or negative reaction. With the number of American flags, and the attitude towards Bill Clinton, we figure it was positive. Bill is so popular here that people started naming there kids "Klinton." Check out this picture taken near the intersection of Bulevard Nena Tereze and, yep, you guessed it... Bulevard Bil Klinton:



Let me steal a paragraph here to plug in an ever so brief history of Kosovo. This is leaving out a LOT of details. Kosovo was the heart of Serbia until the Ottoman Empire took control in the late 14th century. For 500 years, Sebrs (Orthodox Christians) moved out and Albanians and Turks (Muslim) moved in. In 1912, Serbia took Kosovo back from the Turks, and settled where there was room. In WWII Albania took control. Kosovo was then incorporated into Yugoslavia (though Albania wsa not), and remained with Serbia after the breakup. Serbs complained of ill-treatment at the hands of ethnic Albanians, tensions heated up, and ethnic Albanians declared independence from Serbia in 1990. This was a problem because Kosovo was not divided into Serbian and Albanian sections, the two groups lived together.

War broke out in 1992 and in 1999 the genocide began. If genocide is to ugly a word for you, you can use ethnic-cleansing instead. Serbia started bombing the heck out of Kosovo, so after a few verbal shots across the bow, NATO bombed the crap out of Serbia. Kosovo has been a UN Protectorate since 1999, and Kosovo declared itself independant in 2008 (yes, again). In the last decade, reprisals against Serbians have been more common than violence directed at Albanians. Serbian Kosovars boycotted the election and established their own council in the town of Mitrovica.

As you can see, it's complicated. We spent most of our time in the Albanian region of Kosovo, where the Orthodox churches that haven't been destroyed are protected by KFOR armed guards. KFOR is Kosovo Force, the NATO troops that are keeping the peace. Most Serbs, but not all, have fled to the north, and most Albanians to the south.

Here's the little bit that we have learned first hand from being here. For one, most Kosovars do not harbor feelings of hate for other people groups. One police officer spoke with pride of the diversity in his town, Prizren. "Where else in Europe can you find a Mosque, an Orthodox church, and a Catholic church all in the city center?" he asked. He very much wanted to impart everyone's desire to move on and get along.

The other main observation is that Kosovo is ready to move on. Construction is happening everywhere, the economy is starting to get rolling, and EU membership is the hot topic of conversation. People are not sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. It is very cool to see.

Lastly, it has been awesome to feel like we are walking through history in the making. The hilltop park near our guesthouse had a war memorial and memorial to the late President, who just died in 2006. Roadside memorials flying the Albanian flag abound. It is very different than seeing a memorial from the French Revoultion or something like that. It is fresh and real, and that made it somewhat emotional in a vague way for me.