Photos: Prizren, Kosovo

Picture 1: This is a view across the river that was right outside of the hotel we found to stay in. The cafe that we would frequent is just past the mosque. There were a great many eateries that way as well.

Picture 2: The hill above Prizren had interesting ruins. I have no idea what it used to be since it was just walls and they were very nearly gone as well. Lots of space though. It also snowed during our walk up there and this was the pretty sweet view that we got on top of a thick portion of wall that was still there.

Picture 3: A public fountain. You can occasionally see people cupping their hands and drinking out of it. I’m not sure I would have only because it was really cold and my gloves were always on. This square was also very near the cafe we went to a lot. While people watching, we were astounded by the number of young people that went by in both directions. I joked that it may be the same group of people going around and I may have been right. It felt like the entirety of Prizren’s teenage population had gone by us.

Picture 4: The local beer of the area. I include it because it wasn’t half bad. Because I seem to have a problem with German beer and desperately miss my microbrews of the Pacific Northwest, this beer is honored with a photograph because it was awesome in comparison. Should you go, order a Peja.

Prizren, Kosovo

So I was pretty nervous about Prizren after Pristina. It wasn't that I disliked Kosovo, it just didn't seem to be ready for 'tourists' (I hate that word) just yet. Prizren was very different from Pristina. Imagine something like a turkish quarter or two to three story buildings with many alleys and narrow streets with markets and meat vendors dotting the storefront along with open markets at central locations. That was what the whole city was like. Quite a difference from the city we came from of skyscrapers, large streets, and a university. Upon arriving in the bus station and not finding any hint or tell of hostels or even hotels in the area, I reached a breaking point in my shyness and began asking anybody for information because I didn't want to wander what appeared from the bus to be an even more confusing town. Hostel? Hotel? That's how it went and finally one guy in a travel agency spoke English well and advised us to try the Hotel T*****. He said it was about 20€ a night which was better than nothing and as I said before, it seems Kosovo wasn't ready for travelers yet so they might not have hostels at all. We headed for city center and every 500 meters or so I would ask a person for the hotel and we would receive additional directions...that weren't working. Jeff noticed a lot of people delivering tea, just like we would see mailmen or pizza delivery people on foot. Having come from a background like that, he suggested we snag the next delivery guy we see and sure enough, the directions from him were impecable. Kudos to Jeff the Idea Man.

We see the hotel sign and walk hesitantly up the steps and into a room that has tellers sitting at stalls with a few people talking to them and a man in a suit at the door. "This is a hotel," I say haltingly as we look around and the man at the door says, "no, this is a bank." Seriously, the dialogue and rhythm of speech was right out of a movie. We chuckled, apologized and the man told us it was the next door over. To be fair, the hotel sign was directly above the room we were in but also over the bank sign. We get to the hotel, speak with the gentleman, who we believe in retrospect spoke better German than English, nail down a price and get 3 beds for one night, later to be two nights. It was raining now outside so we took a late siesta and hoped the rain would stop. It didn't really but we went out later anyway and found ourselves at a little café run by a very nice gentleman. We settled on machiatto's with Bailey's regardless of price because we were tired and wanted some alcohol and caffeine at the same time. Friends, right now, a large coffee with alcohol is 1€ I kid you not. We got another one and then headed to a pizza place for dinner which had an amazing calzone and the Kosovak beer for 1€ (I mean the beer was 1€). Thus ended the first day in Kosovo (don't forget Pristina). This day was also my birthday and I turned 27 while drinking and eating in Kosovo. Cheers!

The second day, it was snowing. I prefer snow actually over rain only because it is easier to deal with. Your shoes stay perhaps drier than stepping in puddles and you can dust yourself off when it accumlates too much on your jacket. As such, we braved the weather and climbed the hill to the fortress ruins above Prizren. It was a nice hike and quite peaceful in the snow. There weren't a lot of people about and the visibility was not too hampered by the snow. Afterwards, local lunch and a dessert followed by more coffee. Since traveling always involves a budget, I was pleased with how cheap things were. We wanted to try some brandy but they said they only had whiskey. Whiskey all around then while watching dubbed Discovery channel! We splurged and ate out again at the pizza place and had the same waiter. After eating, paying and tipping him, he came back less than a minute (seriously that fast) to ask if we would like anything on the house, espresso...whatever. A little confused at first, we politely replied that we could go for an espresso. So again we were blessed by the generosity of the people here. We shook hands with him on the way out and thanked him heartily.

Saturday morning comes around and there is now ice on the ground. Our hotel host advises that it is better to take a taxi to the bus station for our 0845 bus to Skopje. It was only 2€ but the problem was the taxi driver didn't seem to know what a bus station was. I guess I thought that was a universal phrase like coffee (kafé, kaffee) or beer (bier, bire). We tried "bus, skopje" and another taxi driver tried interpreting and eventually they figured out where we wanted to be going. A little later and we're on a comfortably warm bus, heading out of Kosovo and into Macedonia. Pictures to follow.

Photos: Podgorica and Pristina

Picture 1: This was a park in Podgorica. It was just outside of and across the street from the Mall of Montenegro. We sat and enjoyed the view of a school packed with kids and the peacefulness of being off the bus. We also ate some Jaffa brand cookies that tasted a little like the smell of lemon dish soap.

Picture 2: I just had to include this. It is somewhere on the way to Pristina on the night bus. This was the overnight bus that decided people don’t need or want to sleep on a bus that travels all night. The loud music played all night and the lack of any kind of ventilation gets a 7 out of 10 for uncomfortableness. But at the second of two bathroom breaks, the establishment had a little display up. This little guy was in there along with some deer and an enormous bear.

Picture 3: In Pristina, they have the main university for Kosovo and this is their library. It’s pretty much a normal building but the outside has additional metal work that makes for a really cool effect. I imagine it as being a product of a grad students final project in metal art or architecture or both.

Picture 4: Also in Pristina, and one of the primary reasons we stayed so long since we couldn’t find lodging, is a monument to Bill Clinton. Yes, the former president of the US. Not only is there a monument, but there is also a huge billboard with his face and the street is named Bill Clinton Boulevard. It was amazing. He is honored due to his role in the independence of Kosovo.

Pristina, Kosovo

So our first stint in Kosovo was the capital, Pristina and unfortunately seemed to be a continuation of the capital syndrome first observed in Podgorica (e.g. not a lot going on here). There was one thing we wanted to do here since it was just a stop over on the way to Prizren, but during the trip we decided to try and find a hostel for the night. The one thing we knew we had to see here was Bill Clinton Street. Yes, thanks to our former former President's actions with regards to Kosovo, he got a street named after him here and it was a must that we find it. Well let us start with Pristina was a little hard to navigate. And on top of that, for all the pomp and talk about it, there was not a lot of english or german being spoken around here and communication was dicey. There was also no map of the city available at the bus station. So we picked a direction and started walking. This isn't exactly a travel blog so if some traveler is reading this just comment that you'd like more info and we can email.

It was a nice enough day in that it wasn't freezing and there wasn't a strong cold wind. We walked for a spell heading towards what appeared to be Lady Liberty on top of a squat cube shaped building. On the way we passed many US flags. It was quite interesting. Liberty was sitting on top of an international hotel that looked too expensive for our meagre budgets, so we pressed on and found another hotel that looked shoddy on the outside but the inside turned out to be lovely...and expensive. Discussion ensued and it was decided we should find Bill Clinton Street and then proceed to Prizren that day. Recall please we have no map. And we're looking for a street and we hesitate to try and talk with anyone. Errrr. Let's keep walking this way! (Have I mentioned yet that eastern Europe enjoys not putting up street name signs?)

Down the street, some interesting graffiti leads us to the University of Pristina's library...which when I walked inside had an "American Section!" Rae and I stay outside and elect Jeff to go in an try to find a map. He is gone so long that Rae and I begin planning what the rest of the trip would be like without him. Little did we know he would come back in sparkling triumph. Ok, so he wasn't sparkling for real, but he was triumphant at getting a map, information about the possibility of student housing...and the location of Bill Clinton Street! The student housing thing sounded iffy from the beginning so we only gave it a half-assed attempt because we were already in the mindset to get to Prizren that day (which turned out to be good, but that's told later). We looped up and around the block and came down to Bill Clinton Boulevard (yeah, not a street). Jeff really wanted a picture next to it but when we passed the first sign, which was tiny and in the middle of the road, we kept walking past and didn't see another street sign again. We did however find the statue of Clinton which was backed by a ginormous poster of him on his street. Then we saw (finally) another street sign and now have photographic proof there is a street named after him in Kosovo.

We headed back to the bus station via a neighborhood and more of downtown and that's really all I have to say on Pristina. We hopped on a bus in the early afternoon and headed for Prizren and hopefully a place to sleep. I admit that with the first city in Kosovo down and all that I'd heard from Rae about this place, I was thinking that I wasn't going to like it here. Let's get to the next blog to find out why I was mistaken.