Kosovan Revelations

The bog-standard Macedonian road, aiding my almost begrudging movement from my Turkish teahouse existence in Skopje, was transformed into a huge, raised, snaking highway through the green mountain valley as we entered Kosovo. The surface was smooth and the opulence on display from the first minute into this country was a little bit of a shock. Pristina was the goal, and it wasn’t long before we reached the capital city famous among Balkan travellers for… well… containing nothing of interest.  

Pristina

In Skopje I had met Joey, a plucky Brit who, in time, would wheedle me off my horrifying propensity to search out human interaction. We got off the bus together and walked towards the hostel we thought we were staying in, only he had booked the wrong one and ended up across the square from me.  

After a short meandering walk beneath a mess of tower blocks, we got to the main road and walked straight towards the centre of Pristina. Along the way, many 1^st XV calibre sidesteps were thrown down to get along the busy streets unscathed, my large rucksack stuck faithfully to my back with the combined strength of the straps and my perspiration. Along the pavement far ahead, something stuck out from the drab concrete towers, a hint of pigment, perhaps even trio of colours. As we got closer and people parted, we saw that it was more than a hint of colour, there was a lathering of punchy tones filling various shapes; there were stripes and stars, stars and stripes and a jingling of freedom danced on the air. The American flag stood proudly, yet on a weirdly purposeful slant, up above the road on an enormous poster. There too was the Kosovan flag, star spangled but without the stripes and instead the yellow outline of the country sat neatly in the middle. However, these flags alone would mean nothing, they needed something to bind them, to unite them. Perhaps a man? A man who stood for and presided over many things: International cooperation for the establishment of peace, a countrywide economic expansion and a legacy of sexual misconduct that the American public brazenly overlooks. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Bill Clinton the 42^nd President of the United States of America.  

His face sits between the two flags and beneath it all, a statue of Bill waves happily to the masses wandering up and down Bill Clinton Boulevard. Ignoring the Skopje-esque quality of the statue, I was mainly taken aback by the strangeness of the scene. Kosovans have nearly as high an opinion of America as America has of itself, but why? Well, during the 1990’s Yugoslavia began a systematic campaign of terror against ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslavian region of Kosovo. This led to the repression and expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians into nearby Albania. Bill Clinton authorised the use of U.S military force in a NATO bombing operation against Yugoslavia in 1999 and a few months later, the ethnic cleansing ended. In 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia and is recognised by over 100 members of the United Nations.  

Leaving Bill behind, we passed ‘Hillary’, a clothes shop chain celebrating Hillary Clinton as a fashion icon (it’s about time), we nipped past a cathedral, up a long, lovely pedestrianised street and to the hostels. From the offset, my hostel owner was almost aggressively disinterested in human interaction, a stance I would usually get behind but not when you’re supposed to be there to help. If you want to be a misanthrope, if you can’t wait to throw away the societal pressure to engage in small talk with people you don’t know, like or care about, then do that in your own time. Go and read a book somewhere peaceful, listen to death metal, create papier mâché sculptures of Disney animated animals, whatever makes your brain happy. But as a receptionist you have a duty, suddenly your allegiance to your fellow Homo Sapien must overpower your honourably intended lone wolf syndrome.  This is a social imperative akin to welcoming someone into your home. Help them, put them at ease, that is your job. This man didn’t get the memo and continued to stare despondently at his computer, so I decided to get out of the hostel pretty quickly and go for a wander.   

Sights

In cities once under the hammer and sickle of some form of communism, buildings are one of three things: incredibly dull looking places devoid of style or emotion, some abstract work of oddly shaped sculpture passing itself off as a functional building or something of such grandiose proportions that you start to question how this whole ‘equality’ thing was really working out. Most of the buildings in Pristina fall under the first category. It isn’t a beautiful city, but it is home to the national library, a must see when in the country and a building that solidly sits within category two. The library is architecturally controversial. It has 99 tessellated domes of varying sizes, which appear to rise like overly enthusiastic loaves of bread from the random assortment of grey cubes. Each grey cube has dimensions unto itself which lets it stick out in any direction or hide from view behind the more keenly prominent sections. Windows face outwards but, like the rest of the building, they are covered with a tightly attached metal net. The metal armour is a tessellated pattern of triangles and hexagons and at the corners it bends to smooth the jagged angles of the building. From up close the building was a little ugly but, take a few steps back and the odd bulbous nature of the thing, covered with its chainmail, was quite impressive. Surrounded by a green park, I found an empty bench to enjoy the peace and quiet. As I sat reading, the city produced a constant drone of car engines, construction machines clattered away, and people’s voices rose and fell in amongst the din. However, irrepressible bird song could also be heard, unwilling to be drowned out by the sounds of citylife. The smell of summer still saturated the air, vibrant and floral scents came to me on a cool breeze which hinted at the coming winter. Maybe that’s why the city felt so busy, so vibrant; it was a final anticipatory rush for stimulation before the approaching harshness of winter, a frenetic last stand against the inevitable. 

Other than the library, there was the new gleaming catholic cathedral which was dedicated to Mother Teresa. The place was empty and had some strangely enthralling stained glass windows. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but they were funny. Maybe it was something to do with the strangely emotive faces of the people immortalised in glass, or the fact that one of the priests looked like Pedro Pascal, I don’t know. But I stood looking up at them for a while finding them funnier by the second. I decided to leave before the inside laughter became outside laughter.  

Yes, that was it for Pristina, nothing more to note on the sights of the city. But like most cities that appear as the featureless footnote to the rest of the country (Dushanbe, Kuala Lumpur and Riyadh I’m looking at you) there is always a good fun to be had, and most of the time that means good food.  

Food and Drink  

Pristina has an incredible restaurant/bar and coffee shop scene. People are always out and about in the city, it’s teeming with young stylish people drinking and eating to their heart’s content. This is probably a lot to do with the demographics of Kosovo. As the youngest country in Europe, 65% of the population is under the age of 30. And so, in stark contrast to the UK, Kosovo felt energetic and hungry.  

The first restaurant I went to in Pristina was Liburnia. It was a stunningly beautiful restaurant with vines and greenery filling the space which gave it a pastoral feel. I visited the place with Joey and ate the famous Albanian dish of Elbasan Tava (called Tavë Kosi in Albania). It was a lamb shank cooked until incredibly tender and then served in a baked sauce made from yogurt and egg mixed in with a roux. It was a James sized portion and very tasty, Kosovo was off to a good start.  

Things would get even better at Tiffany. At the hostel I had met another Englishman called Tom, whom I invited to join Joey and I for dinner. Neither Tom nor Joey inspired particular interest or disinterest from me, they were the standard travelling example of seat fillers. Eating alone in a nice restaurant can be a bit rubbish. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy eating alone, whacking out my phone, a book or sifting through the multitude of memories and mistakes that circumnavigate my brain at any given time, but it is nice to have company too. Dinner has always been a time for coming together. It’s the time when our slither of the Earth turns its face from the sun and our habitual activities of the day come to a close with its departure from the sky. A time for the hunters to gather around the fireside and share the fruits of their labour with the tribe, or perhaps a time to gather around the TV, as a family, as a couple, with hot plates of food on cushions on laps and forget about the often more sedentary labours of work and school. So, despite not clicking with Joey or Tom, our meal at Tiffany was very enjoyable, the convivial spirit of dinner time found its way into us too. The restaurant was a simple and traditional with a sparsely decorated open plan interior room with open folding doors onto a patio bordered by trees. We sat outside on the Mediterranean style patio, where wine was pouring lavishly, and laughter was splashed around just as effortlessly.  

There was no menu and instead the waiter asked us our preferences. Would you like starters? Would you like salad? Dishes from the grill or from the oven? Which country or region would you prefer your wine to be from? This was a revelation in ordering. I was quite happy to leave it up to the waiter to choose our meal, and when the Kosovan red wine came out, we were already impressed with how tasty it was. The food followed suit. We ended up with a bowl of beautifully colourful non-leafy salad, a selection of cheeses, dips and breads to die for and a selection of mains from the oven. One of these mains was the Elbasan Tava again, although this time it was many notches above the one from Liburnia due to the richness of the sauce. We sat and enjoyed our food and wine until it had all sadly gone, and then went to a nearby bar for some Raki before bed. 

While dinner is without a shadow of a doubt the king of meals, breakfast and lunch are also a part of life. Breakfast is a matter of post sleep desperation and lunch is more like a necessary chore, however, I chose to do both (on different days) in the White Tree Café. A place that inspired in me a strength to ignore the allures of bakeries and to rock up at a posh café full of well-dressed people for food. My first trip there was for a late Wednesday lunch, I didn’t expect it to be busy, but it was rammed. Not a single seat inside. So, I sat out on one of the tall tables on the pavement.

Firstly, I had an incredibly tasty iced coffee. It was just an espresso poured over ice cubes, but the coffee must’ve been some of that stuff collected from the arse of a civet and then brewed by someone meddling in some unspoken conjunction of dark magic and Victorian engineering. Levers, presses, wide eyed mutterings, mysterious machines bellowing steam, cauldrons, incantations and precise hand movements, that’s coffee making. I’ve seen amateurs at work, labouring like the sons of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Buendia family in search of the secrets of Melquiades’ manuscripts. The need to divine the secret of transmutation, of turning base metals into gold, or the bitter berries of some tropical bush into something delicious is a hard-fought battle. A quest for deific knowledge, one that consumes personality and human decency. Just like how Jose Arcadio Segundo locked himself in a workshop reusing filthy bed pans, wasting away to a husk of a man in order to reveal the prophesy of an old gypsy, hipsters tie themselves to coffee machines until they can both seriously describe a coffee as ‘leguminous’ and spit across a room with such accuracy as to reach the face of anyone suggesting they would touch a cup of instant coffee. In other words, they are both symbolic of a societal regression. In the case of my Kosovan cafe, gold had been formed and prophesies deciphered, the coffee was divine and I’m glad that I will never know how the hell they did it. Some secrets should remain hidden. Other than the coffee, I consumed an utterly fantastic plate of bruschetta. A dish that makes you understand the importance of natural, untampered with produce. Sat there in the sunshine, with a mild coffee buzz, I thought I’d push the boat out. I ordered a bowl of pasta. It was fresh, spicy and worth every penny. In fact, my coffee, bruschetta and pasta only cost me £8.50. What a steal.  

Prizren

Prizren was somewhere I had been excited to visit all the way through my trip so far. The old city, tucked into the forested foothills of the Sharr mountains in southern Kosovo looked stunning online and I was excited to just relax there after a busy week. The bus journey was filled with views of tall hills covered with thick forests, there were no gaps in the foliage but autumn colours were starting to appear in places, while closer to the road pink flowers dotted undulating fields. Joey and I got off the bus and straight away I was disappointed, the part of the town we were in wasn’t picturesque at all, and I was very hungry. After a walk down to the river, passing a church covered in barbed wire (a casualty from the war), we entered the old section of the city which, even on first inspection, didn’t do it for me. It was tiny, filled with souvenir places and cafes that, on the most part, looked naff. The hostel however, was fantastic. Beautifully designed and run by a lovely local (Rita) and a few of her friends, I ended up spending a lot of time in there.  

All those Gap Yah touting idiots were right… I have found myself

It was Prizren that I had an uncomfortable epiphany. During my time in Pristina I felt a bit weighted by a feeling of discontent, but the food and freneticism of the city helped to smother it. In Prizren, my dissatisfaction with the city had combined with my pervading feeling of irritation. I lay in the hostel to figure out what was up with my brain. It all boiled down to a feeling of unhappiness with how I was travelling. The fast pace of backpacking, of two or three days in each place was draining me. I felt a lack of cultural connection and a lack of time to understand the country. I felt disconnected from the people I was meeting, new people every day, most of whom I shared very little in common with. I realised that my trips to Saudi Arabia and Greenland had altered what I wanted to get from travel. Those trips (my most recent solo outings) had been longer and more difficult than anything before. I had immersed myself more into the daily life of people and pushed my limits both mentally and physically. After two weeks in the Balkans, I just felt a bit bored. It wasn’t that the countries didn’t offer opportunities for adventure and cultural insight, it’s that I wasn’t pushing myself to find those opportunities. I wanted to meet people like Carl in Greenland, Abdulrahman in Saudi Arabia and Firas in Jordan. Thoughtful people from all walks of life who have made me think about who I am and what I want from life. I think the superficiality of the hostel life, of hostel interactions and the isolation from the local populace was starting to drive me mad. I didn’t want the same self-entitled nonsense from a drunk Australian or the faux spirituality from another hippy white girl. The backpacker trail had been fun while it lasted but I had decided I’d be focussing on adventures that will push me mentally, physically or both from then on. It was in this hostel that I decided I would go back to Jordan, to enrol myself on a language course for Arabic and see where that takes me (more about that in due course).  

I’m of course lucky to be in the position to choose which direction I want my life to go and perhaps it’s ridiculous to complain about being in a Kosovan city in the mountains without a job or responsibility. However, recognising your situation, understanding what makes you happiest and then doing everything in your power to work towards it, to change course, to attempt something new or difficult, to break the mould is a hard thing to do. What we want from life changes as we change as people, as we gain new experiences. And changing your life to accommodate your growth as a person is difficult, but necessary. I’m currently back at home, gaining experience ready for a yearlong PGCE (the longest I will’ve been in the UK continuously since the age of 18) but it all leads somewhere, to some adventure. And in the meantime, I plan to save, and to plan something short and sweet to keep my feet itched and my travelling fires fed. 

A Majestic Fort and a Musical Fraud

To yank myself from this negative headspace I knew I needed some exercise. Outside it was pouring it down, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t mind getting wet and in fact I sometimes feel like a walk in the rain, the cold water against your face, and wrapping your body up against the elements is good for you. A strange primal connection to nature.  

So, I walked; I was heading to the fortress on the hill overlooking the city but not via the quick steep route, I had planned a circular route that started by following the Prizren river upstream and then leaving it to head up a large gravel track into the woods. Underneath the weight of the rainclouds the forest was dripping quietly, and all colour seemed to jump out of the relative darkness. The rain soaked my hair and face and cleared my head by the time I made it to the enormous fortress, which had one of the most expansive views I have ever seen. From the far mountains which were lit by far away and untouchable sunshine (which lit a snaking road on one hillside, turning tarmac to lustrous metal for a brief time) to the white minarets of a mosque which were rising from behind a steep mountainside to my right, the whole of Prizren unfurled below me. It sprawled from the Ottoman centre tucked below and out onto the plain, the minarets were the only structures daring enough to rise to meet the consistent heavenly onslaught. I sat and watched the view from atop a wall and soon an Ecuadorian American guy came over and started chatting to me. He was lovely and had been travelling for 16 months, doing street art and other little jobs to keep the money coming in. His art was great, little pen drawings in amazing detail.  

Back in the hostel and feeling refreshed, I got chatting with Rita (the owner) and one of the receptionists (Reggie) who taught me some Albanian and then two new volunteers turned up who were really nice too. That evening I had a terrible dinner at a recommended restaurant and thenceforth consigned myself to pasta and pesto for the rest of my time in Prizren, something I didn’t mind at all.  

On one of my four evenings in Prizren, Rita told me about the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra coming to town and that it was only ten euros for a ticket. Having never seen a live professional orchestra and seizing the opportunity to seem sophisticated, I decided to go. I went with a northern British guy I had met in Sofia (as you may be able to tell there was a veritable plague of us Brits in the Balkans in 2022) and he decided to go dressed like he was about to run a 10k and was still a little sweaty from his day’s activities. Now, I’m not a fashionista, I don’t dress particularly well, and I will happily take clothes from Emma’s dad, my younger brother or random Jordanian men instead of buying my own. However, even I was a little embarrassed to be associated with the absolute state next to me. He was wearing a Stoke/Middlesborough/Sunderland football shirt, short running shorts and dirty running trainers. I had dug out a shirt and jeans. Everyone else it seems had come in their finest dresses and suits.  

The old cinema built in the 1950s and forced to close at the end of the 90s, was housing the performance. We got settled in, excited to see the orchestra and the renowned pianist whose name I can’t remember and who I cant find anywhere online, was the man a fraud? Well, it would explain some of what we saw. It began with a slow piece of music while the large projector screen above showed part of a miscellaneous Western and part of a Charlie Chaplin film where he eats his shoe, on repeat, for ages. From there, the performance continued in an equally strange way. Some sections were very rousing and emotive, especially when the excellent singers came in, while other bits were jumpy, discordant and just straight up odd. The pianist must’ve been extremely good because I think only the best pianists can make that much jumbled noise and pass it off as a masterful performance. I couldn’t do what he did, that’s for sure, but nor would I want to. Is it too much to ask for something that sounds nice, rather than something unpleasant but arty?  

On my final evening in Prizren, I had been gifted the perfect day for another final walk to the fort. While my first trip up there was a necessary, much needed detox, this day was purely for somewhere beautiful to read and take in the sunset views. On a new and more secluded perch, I put my book away as the sun began its approach to the horizon. I stood in the gentle warmth of an evening that refuses to be held in the stifling saturation of summer nor to descend into the anticipatory last hurrah of autumn. Music was playing in the centre of the old city and the river glistened excitedly as it rushed towards a cascading blanket of fuzzy green beyond the houses. The far away mountain, on which a cloud usually nestles into its sunken crest, was clear and sunlight poured downwards from its dark ridges. The city was thrown into shade as the the forest, which rode the lurching bow wave of foothills, was washed by the aureate beauty of the sun’s sputtering farewell. 

My walk back to town, down the steep hill and into the old town, was a slow one. Watching as the lights came in the city and deciding on which bench, I would sit and listen to a podcast that evening. 

Final Thoughts 

I left Kosovo on the next day. Joey, my eating and travelling partner, had left the day before so I was alone again. That was a good thing. Despite a week of organising my thoughts and coming to understand my brain a little better, despite good food and refreshing walks, I still felt no drive to socialise. I was excited for Albania, to continue the Balkan backpacking odyssey as a twosome, but until then I would quietly find my own places to be. It turned out that my next and final location before Albania would be the perfect remedy, satisfying my need for beauty and tranquillity.