24 Hours Down, 2,136 To Go

My first 24 hours in Kosova have been an adventure. Before coming here, I really had no idea what to expect. These past 24 hours though has been filled with friendly people, good food, and a surprisingly nice apartment. A lot of the preconceptions I had about Pristina are true; the city is not beautiful and old communist block buildings stand tall throughout the city. On the highway, I passed many abandoned-looking brick houses with trash strewn about them, however parked outside were newly purchased Audis, BMWs, and VWs – so the people living there can’t be doing that badly

Shpresa, which means Hope, picked me up from the airport. She is one of my coworkers (I sound so professional saying that) at Women for Women. She’s a Kosova National and thirty years old. She has been extremely nice and helpful this past day. First, she took me out to a traditional Albanian dinner. I had some beef in a tomato soup-ish/broth/sauce with miscellaneous vegetables. I cannot really do it justice seeing as it was a hodge-podge of ingredients and I could not really identify them all, but it was pretty good. After dinner, I had my first Albanian coffee. I later learned that here they drink coffee at least ten times a day – perfect for me. We had a traditional Turkish coffee, which is often served here, and I really like. It is served in a very small cup, but it’s incredibly thick and strong so it evens out.

After dinner, I went back to my apartment and settled in a little. Well, okay, I still have not unpacked at all. My apartment is (mostly) furnished, so I expected everything to already be here. Today I realized I do not have any bowls or silverware, and I have not bought any yet, so eating has been interesting. There is one knife and I am just sort of stabbing everything.

Bright and early Sunday afternoon Shpresa picked me up and we drove to a grocery store. She explained to me that we had to go twenty minutes outside of the city, because it is a lot cheaper and there is a lot more variety. And by variety, I found out that this store is like a larger Walmart, only filled with crap. Suits, jewelry, wigs, right near food, ovens, there is even two isles dedicated to different kinds of cooking oil. Among all of the options, I could not find any crackers (I will miss you dearly TLCs) or olive oil, and I’m not really used to Albanian brands, so it took a while. The most interesting part of it was the cheese. I ended up buying Happy Cow (which is actually Austrian), but there was a huge barrel of cheese. Shpresa convinced me to try it, so she took the huge knife tied to the barrel and reached in. I peered into the barrel and saw a huge lump of cheese – probably 15 pounds or so – in some weird looking oil. I tried a little bit of it, and I tried as hard as possible to resist throwing up. It was really sour and tasted like it had been sitting out there for maybe a week or longer… I guess I don’t like Albanian cheese.

After shopping, we got another coffee and a sandwich. This time I ordered a makiato; coffee here is only 50 cents at most restaurants, which is how I guess everyone can afford to drink so often. Shpresa then took me back so we could each “rest” for 3 hours. Then she picked me up again for dinner at 6, this time with a friend in the car. Shpresa can’t really speak English very well, though we got by a little, so having a friend around just made it so speaking English wasn’t necessary at all. She then asked me if I wanted to go to Mitrovice, and I said yes because I had no idea where or what it was, and figured she wanted to go. An hour and a half later we arrive in another city and pick up her other friend who had two of her kids with her. So the six of us are jammed into this little tiny European car, and then (I think) they started arguing about where to go. We drove another twenty minutes, this time into the mountains, and we stopped at this huge restaurant in the middle of nowhere with a gigantic playground complex outside of it. The kids ran onto the playground, while the four of us just stood there and looked at them. For some reason, this restaurant wasn’t good enough, because they decided we should all pile back into the car and go somewhere else. Ten minutes later, we end up in an identical looking place, again with a huge playground. It’s around 7:45 by now and I’m pretty hungry and looking forward to dinner.

This restaurant pleased them more, because we walked around for ten minutes looking for a table. Every table had a weird assortment of people sitting there; usually around two kids, one young twenty-something mother wearing tight clothes make up, and of course heels, her husband who looks like a Kosovar version of Guido, with spiked short hair and pretty tan, maybe a friend who looks like one of them, and then a little tiny grandmother wearing a moo-moo and a cloth tied around her head. I am not sure if the other women with us ever ate, because when we ordered, everyone ordered ice cream and I ordered fish. I felt a little silly being the only one eating out of 6 of us, but I got a whole fresh fish grilled with French fries and a salad and a local beer for 3.5 Euro. We sat outside for about two hours while the kids ran around playing and I slowly ate my fish.

Once we drove back into the city, we stopped at a bridge. Shpresa said that this bridge divided the city between north and south; we were on the south side where Albanians lived, and Serbians lived in the north side and we could not go. I asked what would happen if we tried to go, and her friend laughed and responded, “they will beat us, or kill us, or do whatever they want with us!” She laughed, but she was serious; maybe laughing is just a way to deal with the sad reality of the tension in this area. We parked next to the bridge, and it just looked like an ordinary bridge to me. We got out of the car, and I was worried they were going to take me near the bridge, so I nervously said, “oh.. we don’t have to go near it just for me,” and then they poked fun at me for the next couple of minutes pretending they were going to give me to the Serbs. I looked around and noticed a heavy police presence; there is a twenty-four hour police guard on the Albanian side. It probably is not a coincidence either that the UN headquarters for this city are adjacent to the bridge; the bridge has sparked controversy and violence throughout the past ten years, and is a hotspot for ethnic clashes. Don’t worry, we didn’t cross it! Though I was worried we might!

We settled down at another restaurant and ordered more coffee of course. There were around twenty kids running around yelling, while all the adults were sitting at their tables chatting and not really worrying about the kids at all. Afterwards, we drove home.

This is a small summary of my first twenty-four hours. I haven’t even included my favorite parts, because I’m reserving those for separate entries about my views on the cultural differences, ethnic tension, how everyone here gets married when they are twenty, how cheap the food is, all that fun stuff. Sorry this entry was so long, I hope you made it to the end!