Best Friends Forever!

So this was my first officially weekend in Kosova, and it went a million times better than I could have expected! I have been sitting around a lot, being a little sad that I don't know more people and whatnot, but this weekend I met a lot of great people, and made some Albanian friends I'll maybe see again this week or weekend. Here's a quick replay:


Friday, after work, I met up with two Polish girls traveling in Kosovo for a couple of days. We hit it off right away; they were a lot of fun and wanted to have some adventure like me. We made plans for Saturday, and we walked around the city exploring the tiny old town. "Old Town" here isn't actually like you would imagine an old town to be like; there isn't some sort of walled city or cute little charming streets with beautiful marble cobblestone or something. In fact, "old town" just means that's where there are a couple of mosques and maybe two older buildings. Almost all of the old buildings were destroyed by Serbians when they came here, as they tried to erase the older Albanian culture. Furthermore, many old mosques never survived, so they built new ones. We even saw one that had a shopping center at the bottom of it! Ha. Even though 90% of the population is Muslim, you hardly ever see any women with their heads covered except for little old ladies. I can hear the call to prayer though from both my office and my house, but I actually like being able to hear it. The biggest mosque in the city, and the oldest, is under renovation right now, so sadly I couldn't visit it.



Saturday night we were out drinking coffee. Walking around the city, you see more people drinking coffee and juice at cafe/bars rather than beer, even at night. I've tried the local beer, Peja, but when a girl orders beer I always feel like I am being judged a little bit or something. Well, it depends where you go. Anyways, as we were sitting at a table outside, a weird looking teenage guy comes up and tries to sell us peanuts out of a big bucket. I nicely say "no thank you", and as soon as he hears me speak english, he goes "America!" He then forgets about his peanuts completely, and starts telling me about every single family member he has. "My mother's name is Maria and I live with her.. My brother's name is blah blah and he lives next door..." then he moved on to his friends, "I have a great friend from Sierra Leone, do you know where that is?" I say yes, of course, it is on the west coast of Africa, to which he replies "it is in Africa" and again, I say yes, and he goes, "in the west", to which again I say yes, then he goes "the west coast of Africa.." well this continues for a while, because apparently he thought I didn't know anything about geography. Then he keeps talking about fish, and how his friend eats fish all the time.. Well he talked about anything you could ever imagine talking about. I felt kind of badly for him so I just sat there while my friends laughed at me for talking to this kid for so long. Finally a group of people behind us told him, "Hey don't you have work to do?" and the peanut kid looked at them, then looked at me, and kept talking. The guys behind us five minutes later told the kid to leave us alone, and I guess he got the hint, because after twenty minutes or so he shook my hand and left. A good thing did come of this though: the people sitting right behind us started talking to us, and I made my first Albanian friends! (well besides my best friend the peanut kid).



The table of our 6 people, all from Kosova. The two younger guys had moved to Australia 10 years ago, as most people here fled during the war, and they have lived there ever since. This was their first time back in those 10 years, so they spoke english very well and had a weird Aussie/Eastern European english accent. They said Aussie things like "mate" and "heaps" but their english still wasn't perfect obviously. They had their uncle with them, who was maybe fifty, and spoke hardly any english. Two of their cousins who were brother and sister and moved to Germany for 5 years during the war, and another female cousin who had stayed here. They were really nice, and they said they were going to a club and invited us along, so we said why not and went with them. We walk for about 10 minutes and arrive at a place with about three huge clubs right next to each other; it all looks a bit run down and depressing from the outside. We get to the one we were going to, "Club Flirt", where all of the security guards have on shirts that say "Security Flirt" on it. I had a really good laugh about that. We get past the long line, I'm not sure why, and Almire, one of the guys from Australia, says that anyone can go in, people just aren't smart enough to say the right things. I guess he was pretty 'smart'. We get past this little booth where you have to pay to get in, and so the polish girls and I are talking about whether we want to pay or leave, and then Almire says that they already paid for us. Well it was only 2 Euro, but still. We later realized that men here pay for everything, even for people they don't know at all. In fact, it's rude to tell someone not to pay for you, because doing so is an honor, especially if you are a foreigner. They consider you their guest in this country and want to do everything to make you have a great time here. It's really generous but sometimes it's a little much, I don't really want to feel indebted to someone. Anyways, we get into the club, and they are blasting some old-school DMX. Almire turns to me and says, "you'll feel right at home here!" and it was true; throughout the night they played older Black Eyed Peas, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, J.LO (Jenny from the Block!) and some other classic 90's hits. The sad part though was that no one was dancing. If you looked across the room, you see hundreds of young women wearing tons of make up, really tight dresses and five inch high heels. Well I was definitely out of place, I don't think any of the clothes I brought with me really help me fit in here. Well, since I am a foreigner, I can get away with it here a little bit. Anyways, the guys bought everyone drinks, and we hung out and talked at the club. It was actually really fun, and even though it was a bit cheesy, they told us it was the coolest club in Pristina right now. Where we were standing was outside, and since it is so hot here, it was nice to have fresh air. A whole half of the club is outside, and that's where most people were hanging out.



I tell them I'm going to the bathroom, and one of the girls grabs my hand and decides to take me there. She was twenty years old and didn't speak hardly any english, but she was really eager to be friends and help me. We wait in line for the bathroom, and considering it is the "coolest" place and was packed, there were only two stalls, with no lights, and no toilet paper.. great. Anyways, we walked back to the table and Bina stops me. She looks and me, holds my hands, and says to me, "best friends!" I laughed a little, and said "yes", because after all I didn't want to offend her by reminding her that we could not communicate at all besides this moment. She looks at me again, and looks a little more serious this time and she says again, "best friends forever!" Then she takes out her phone and says "number", so I give her my phone number, and we're officially best friends forever. Her other cousin sees us, and she comes over as well. She speaks more english because she lived in Germany, and we start chatting a little bit. She keeps telling me I speak too quickly, so I try to slow it down a bit, but it was still difficult to communicate. I told her I wanted to buy Albanian music for my friends, and asked if she could recommend someone for me, and she says, "we will go to market together and I will buy you every cd you want for you and friends!" People here are really so nice. She got my e-mail address and told me to call her whenever I want, no matter the day or the time, and that we should hang out a lot more. I don't know if we will really see each other, but it's really nice to know that people here are friendly and so welcoming. Albanians are seriously the nicest people I've ever met.


Sunday, the polish girls and three of the Albanian guys and I all hung out. The guys had offered to take us to Mirusha Waterfalls, a place I really want to go, and it is 2 hours outside of Pristina. Sadly, because we only got home past 5 am, the guys slept in too late and we were up waiting for them for a while. So instead we went out for coffee (of course!) And then the girls and I decided we wanted to Gracanica Monastery, which is about 10 miles outside of Pristina. The guys though refused to go inside, as it is a Serbian monastery and they were scared of what would happen if they went inside. The monastery itself is located in a small Serbian enclave, where everyone speaks Serbian and they use the Serbian Dinar as money instead of the Euro. The guys were nice enough though to drive us to the monastery, and then they drove away. Upon seeing the gates of the monastery, we noticed a couple of swedish military guards stationed outside of it. Most Serbian cultural/historical areas here are under 24-hour military watch; in 2004 there were many Albanian attacks destroying monasteries and historical monuments. The NATO-KFOR forces are stationed there, and each country has different units and bases all around Kosovo. We smiled at the swedish guys and walked in. The monastery itself is beautiful, but smaller than I thought it would be. There were no other tourists there, but there was a wedding on its way out. Everyone was holding hands and dancing and playing music, but almost as soon as we entered they danced their way out.


We walked around the monastery a bit, and noticed on the door there was a sign that said no pictures and no guns allowed inside (well, that makes sense!) If you read the wiki article I linked to the name, you'll find out more about the monastery - I don't want to bore everyone who isn't as interested in the historical facts. After we walked around for thirty minutes or so, we went behind the monastery where we saw where the Swedish KFOR forces lived. It looked like a tiny little shack with a huge swedish flag draped over it. I thought it looked a little depressing, and I wouldn't really want to live there. Of course there is the whole thing of doing a good deed by being a peacekeeper, but those guys looked so bored. On our way out, we ran into a big group of Italian KFOR forces who were also visiting the monastery. We chatted with them for about fifteen minutes. One of the guys was super friendly and used to live in Chicago, so we had a good chat about the US. We took a picture with them but I can't upload it now because of my internet problems. After that, we ran into Portuguese KFOR forces, but they weren't as friendly. We walked outside of the monastery and meandered a little bit around the village, but there were hardly any people on the road and it was a bit boring.


So, having no ride as our Albanian friends had left us there, we decided to try to hitch hike back! Well, I know what you're thinking, but it is a common practice in eastern Europe and my friends had done it all the way from Poland to Kosovo, so they were well-practiced. A lot of cars full of guys would stop and try to pick us up, but even if we had wanted to join them (and we didn't!) there wasn't room for us anyways, those guys just thought they were being funny (and they weren't). After about give minutes this little old man drove up and said we could hop in, so we did! He was going to Pristina, so that worked out perfectly for us. It turned out he didn't speak much English except for "oh, America!!!" and "Cousin in US", but the girls spoke to him in Serbian. The man though was incredibly nice. After we got back to Pristina, he took us out for coffee and paid (like I said, men here always pay for everything!) And then we said bye because we wanted to go eat, but then he took us out for pizza! We went to go pay at the counter, and our waiter told us that our friend had already paid for us and it was taken care of. Then we talked about going to see Kosovo Polje, where the Battle of Kosovo was back in the 1300's. And once again, our new friend offered to drive us there, as it is about 15 minutes outside of the city. There are three monuments there. One is a big stone tower which is exactly where the battle took place. Slovakian KFOR forces also guard this at all times, as it is a Serbian monument. Our Albanian friend had to show his ID to get pas the guards, but we did not, probably because we're young women and we're obviously foreigners. Once inside the area, we saw a lot of the army men there hanging out, walking around, relaxing. This place is in the middle of nowhere once again, but not even with a small town right nearby as like the monastery. We saw where they lived, which looked like big metal boxes. There were places to load and unload your weapons, etc, and big army tanks. To me, this was much more interesting than seeing where the battle took place. The battle though is the most important thing in Kosovar-Serbian relations though, as it establishes Serbian presence in Kosova as early as the 1300's, and shows that something pivotal in their history happened in this land. We walked up the tower, where once again sitting on the top was a single soldier, looking incredibly bored. It was his job to just sit there all day in the burning sun. There was a great view though of the countryside and Pristina from afar.


The other monument we went to was a temple of some sorts, a five minute drive away. The temple was built over the exact place where the Turkish Sultan was killed during the battle. We had to ask the two little old ladies that lived there to open it for us and let us in. There were Turkish graves outside and beautiful flowers growing in the backyard. It was a charming little space but not incredibly interesting. We couldn't go to the other monument because it was a mile walk and you couldn't drive and it was getting a little late.


Our new friend dropped us off at my house, and then we went for a drink on this street filled with little cafes. The bar scene was pretty active for a Sunday night. We wanted to go there, it was the same place we had been the night before, because my friend thought the bartender was pretty cute. It turns out he felt the same way, because right before the bar closed at 12 he sat down with us. Everyone left except for us, so the 4 of us were sitting outside. Then three of his friends joined us which was really fun. It's so interesting just to sit and talk to locals, whether it is about politics, daily life, or anything really. Their english was ok so we could talk a bit; one of the guys kept trying to tell me about his girlfriend who went to live in Belgrade (which he said was very dangerous for an Albanian), but he kept referring to her as "he" or "him" or "his" so it was really funny. I kept trying to correct him but the grammar wouldn't really stick. We talked about a lot of things like corruption, music, money, school, traveling, blah blah.. but it was great. I think I'll go back there another time and hang out with those guys again since they were so friendly. When I left the bartender says, "now we are good friends!" So apparently everyone here becomes good friends really quickly.


Sorry I can't add pictures to these entries yet, but I will as soon as I can! And now you can see why I didn't update this weekend, as I was busy trying to meet people and have some fun!