2022 in Kosovo (Prishtina)

October 8, 2022 : the Balkan sightseeing trip coach got to the hotel in Skopje, [North] Macedonia and then some of us took another coach to Kosovo beyond midnight:

now:

• Serbia still sees Kosovo as Serbia
• Kosovo says they have split from Serbia since 2008
  • Kosovars mostly speak Albanian
• yet not all in the "United Nations" acknowledge Kosovo as its own land

"the whirlwind trip"

the trip went by quickly:

• 20:00 : hopped on an unbranded, 15-seater from Skopje that evening
• 21:00 : crossed into Kosovo, at Hani i Elezit (or Elez Han) at about
• 22:00 : got to downtown Prishtina
  • Saturday night also made it hard to get into the downtown but somehow we made it
  • a dozen or so of us took a snapshot of ourselves by the Bill Clinton Statue at the crossing of "Tirana" and "Bill Klinton" streets
  • walked eastward and found the Katedralja Nënë Tereza (Mother Teresa Cathedral), as Mother Teresa had her Albanian roots in what became Yugoslavia and then [North] Macedonia
  • next to that, another street was named "Xhorxh Bush", indeedly named after George Bush (either the first or the second)

others in the "trip within the trip" ate and drank at a nearby bar, but two others and myself went to look for some meaningful spots in Prishtina:

• Newborn Monument
  • instead of the Prishtina, a word-marker spelling out "NEWBORN" made up of seven "letters", spelled out a hope for new beginnings
• Biblioteka Kombëtare e Kosovës (National Library of Kosovo)
  • looked at the outside of their book buildings
  • crafted in a other-worldly, other-timely shape, it was something to behold at night!
• a newly-rebuilt Burger King with scrolling messages, written in Albanian, but with all the branding of an "American restaurant"
  • gave me that "familiarity within the foreign" feeling

"is Kosovo, Serbia?"

with what little seen in Prishtina, I saw nothing Serbian here:

• streets were marked in either Albanian or English
• they traded in euro, not Serbian dinars
• Albanian-speaking Kosovo to Serbia felt like what French-speaking Quebec was to English-speaking Canada, if one wanted to see "Kosovo as Serbia"

still, after the wars of the late 20th century:

• Kosovars and Serbs seem unwilling to go back to the old days of fighting

back to [North] Macedonia

shortly after midnight, it came time to go back to Skopje:

• got back to my room at nearly 3 a.m.
• trip was for those "country-chasers" who wanted to get the "passport stamp" and "bragging rights"
• yet, for myself, it was about making the most out of the short time to "soak in" the land of Kosovo