Notes from a Trip Part III

~The Denouement~

The view from the bar on the 9th floor is virtually a 360 degree panorama of Prishtine (I am now using the Albanian spelling of the name because good luck finding a Serb in this city). At night, with the snow falling and lights twinkling, it looks nice and peaceful. But the paradox of this situation does not escape me: sitting at the highest point in the city, looking down, are westernized Kosovo Albanians and international staff, drinking and living well. We, and I say 'we' because I am just as guilty as them, live better than 90% of the country, we are exempt from many of the rules (which begs a debate on the validity of 'rule of law' when it only applies to some), and we have executive powers here.

As I stuffed salty peanuts into my mouth and drank German beer, I wondered if I was a modern colonist? Sure, I wasn't running slaves, and the work being done by the International Community was technically empowering the local population; in colonial times, the locals would have been used to extract wealth, which would have been sent back to the Father / Mother land. Today the set up is different, but I cannot help think that all roads still lead to Rome.

The international community entered Kosovo on a humanitarian mission, protecting local populations of Albanian nationals from Serbian aggressions. They succeeded, and then set about rebuilding the region, but not as a province of Serbia, rather as an independent state, with its own institutions. Now Prishtine offers many of the comforts of western life: fancy bars, Karaoke and bad cover bands (all singing in English), nice apartment buildings, casinos, prostitution and a thriving drug trade. 

As I pondered this, I was being grilled by an ethnically Turkish Kosovar woman. It was twenty questions, but I only really remember telling her that I was listening to a lot of Cake and Clash songs at the moment. I told her to look them up on Youtube, and she told me I would find work in Kosovo, that she never learned German even though she had dated a German guy for a few years. She insisted she loved the language and would still like to learn it. These less-than-subtle comments were not lost on me, and I began to urge D and A, the German contingent, to take me to dinner. They obliged, but not before I at least took the contact info of my new, ethnically Turkish Kosovar friend. It is the polite thing to do, after all.

We ended up at a fancy place with only international customers; no serbs, and Albanians were only featured as staff. Despite the fancy-ness of the place, the Maitre d'Hotel still greeted me with welcome man! Well, I was wearing a baseball hat. We ate well, drank even better, then went to A's apartment and crashed.

I awoke to a German Breakfast setup, and two middle-aged women staring at me: Der ist aber schone wach. Wilst du Kaffee order Tee? Tea, if you have it. 

The day was spent walking around Prishtine, in the snow, and sitting in a café called New York Bagel, which did serve bagels, or something resembling bagels. As we sat around, we slowly amalgamated internationals, all German speaking and didn't interact with locals until we needed more coffee, or went to the popular (with internationals) music shop Ginger (where the proprietor is Kosovo Albanian). There is not much more to say about Prishtine. The evening was spent with more internationals in a Japanese restaurant and western style bars. I drank a bit too much, then we went back to A's place and I crashed out.

~The Bridge that Divides~

I stood on the Albanian side of Mitrovica and looked across the Ibar. I felt like a voyeur, staring at a car crash, staring at the misery of other peoples lives from a safe distance. But my conception of what the bridge looked like was wrong. I guess I had only seen a few pictures from the height of the tensions, when the there was a military presence. Now the bridge is open, with only a few shifty Kosovo police keeping order. Despite the bridge being open, no-one uses it. Serbs don't want to be seen crossing to the Albanian part of town, and vise versa. So now it is just an empty bridge, symbolic of division rather than unity. It could come to mean something else, but as long as the society here is allowed to slowly segregate itself, then it will remain empty and divisive. A tragic reminder of a more peaceful time, and the failure of the international community to forge something sustainable, based on mutual respect between the ethnicities. But maybe that is as it should be, yet I cannot accept that segregation is any kind of a solution. Separate, after all, is never equal.

The remainder of the trip was un-eventful and the Mini, sans catalytic converter, held its own, no problem. But I did make a mental note of how ironic it was that D was responsible for monitoring the recycling program in her building at work, yet she was driving round without her catalytic converter.

As we passed into Mitrovica North, the villages took on a Serbian feeling, both in architecture and construction. We passed no more burnt homes nor any more monuments to the KLA martyrs. There were also no more flags, at least no more Albanian or Kosovo ones. I couldn't help but think that one day, Mitrovica north would one day be part of Serbia again. As we passed into Serbia again and began the final stretch home, we were both tired. Conversation dropped off, we listened to the Clash and Moondog, and I began to think about leaving Serbia, leaving the Balkans, and how things were going to turn out. I left Kosovo and all the misery behind me, preoccupied, once again, with my own situation.

Finally, the snow had stopped falling.

Notes from a Trip Part II

The fact that cell phones with Serbian networks don't work in Kosovo is symptomatic of the folly of the whole situation. Serbia wants to maintain the claim that Kosovo is still theirs, yet they won't allow their networks to function there, essentially forcing the local Serbian population to take the Kosovo carriers (which are using Monaco numbers, don't ask me why), as they are subject to Kosovo energy supplies (except in Mitrovica north, where Serbia provides well for the Serbian communities).

But we were lucky to break down at a gas station attended by an man who loved Germany and Germans. He had lived there for two years as a Gastarbeiter during the war, and earned enough to buy a small farm for his family. Wuppertal ist super! He now worked at the gas station and cared for a cow and tilled a bit of land. His life was clearly tough, but he managed.

After taking a look into the engine and cleaning off the spark-plugs, he couldn't seem to find the issue. Instead of abandoning us though, he ran across the street and called over a mechanic to take a closer look. This young man spent a good hour checking everything and concluded that the catalysator was blocked. As he was making his assessment, he handed out cigarettes, as is the custom in Albanian communities. Then, cigarette in mouth, he continued to work on the engine. I wondered to myself, how safe that really was.

While the mechanic managed to get the engine to start, he said we should not drive to Pristina / Prishtine because it could really f' the engine up. What to do? The kindly gas station attendant offer us his cell phone and we called D's friend, who's car was also at the mechanic! But she said she would go get it and come rescue us. We would just have to sit tight for an hour or so. With the falling temperature and darkness, this was a less than fun prospect.

Once again the man at the gas station showed his kindness and took us to the back room of the station, and lit the wood fire for us. For the next hour we sat there with him, talking about his time in Germany, the agriculture of Kosovo, and of course, relations with the Serb community. Wir sind alle Menchen. Wir mussen zusamen leben. He said he never discriminated against Serbs when they came to his business, but he did think they were the troublemakers in Kosovo. But he just wanted to leave that all behind and face the reality that they lived side-by-side. It was hard to tell how much of what he said was what he thought we, as Germans or Internationals, wanted to hear, and how much was his opinion. But I chose to take him at face value because I have no reason not to.

As the attendant was showing us pictures of his kids, his boss showed up. The man was gruff, old and broken. He sat next to me in the back room, rolling a cigarette, and he seemed so sad, so tired of life. He reiterated the sentiments of our friend, that people needed to get along, but Serbs were the issue at the moment. But he did it with such tragedy in his voice, that I could not help but wonder what all his eyes had seen growing up as an Albanian in Kosovo. I never found out because D's friend showed up to rescue us.

These two men had shared their space with two total strangers, and given me a valuable insight into how people were living here, at least on the Albanian side. It was clear that there were so many issues in Kosovo, and not all of them were the result of tensions between Serbs and Albanians. It seems there is a growing disappointment with the central government and the lack of progress in ten years of International administration. People were living hard lives and had only seen the top dogs get richer, but nothing much had trickled down. Then there is the issue of bad water management, lack of agricultural development despite good soil conditions and plenty of arable land, and finally Leute in Kosovo haben zu viele Kinder. Das ist ein Problem, aber ich glaube das ich Kinder haben muss. Aber nur zwei. Andere Leute haben mehr.

By now it was really cold and dark out. The mini was covered in snow, but D decided she had to try and drive it to Pristina / Prishtine anyway. So I got in the car with her friend and we drove slowly behind her all the way to the city. We made it all the way without further problems, I quickly made good friends with A, D's friend, and soon enough we were on the 9th floor of the OSCE Building, drinking with the international community, looking out over the city.

Not for a moment did the snow stop falling. Welcome to Prishtine.

Notes from a Trip Part 1

At 22.00 I got a text message from D. "Do you have a sleeping bag?" No, I don't, but I'll bring a blanket, I replied. My thoughts turned to the trip. Where was I going? I had visions of sleeping in the car surrounded by thousands of wild eyed locals and internationals. Better get some sleep now, I thought.

We set out at 0630 from Belgrade in a 1996 Mini; the morning was cold and the sky light grey. I was surprised at how many people were on their way to work at that time. More, it seemed, than at 0800, a much more civilized time to be stirring. Neither of us had checked the weather, and ultimately there would have been no good reason for it, our plans were set. We were going to Kosovo come hell or high water.

The E75 heading south is a flat, boring road passing through equally dull and flat country-side. We passed the time talking about work, D's job application, and going through her CD collection. The mini held its own well, and though I had to jam my wallet into a small gap in the dashboard to keep the stereo from disconnecting, we drove in relative comfort. Our musical influences for the drive ranged from Cake's Fashion Nugget and a Beastie Boys mix, to Bertold Brecht's Die Dreigroshenopa, and I ate a lot of kikiriki. Just past Nis the sky grew dark and snow began to fall; it wouldn't stop until we were in Mitrovica two days later.

While the road became more interesting as we passed into the Presevo valley, the journey was largely uneventful. We turned off the highway at Bujenovac and made for the border. The road leading to Kosovo was in bad shape and to hope for a snow plow was folly. Fortunately the ground was warm enough that most of the snow melted into slush, and anyway, there wasn't much chance of building up speed on these roads. We climbed steadily in the short distance between Bujenovac and the border. But it was enough so that had the feeling that we were passing into Moriea from Rivendale. I looked around for hobbits, but only saw stone faced Serbian Police officers. Crossing the 'administrative line' was rather painless, thanks in part to the Dip plates on the trusty mini. From there it is a short jaunt through the demilitarized zone to the Kosovo border. Again we passed with no hold up. The Kosovo guard, upon seeing D's Italian passport, remarked buona sera. Neither of us informed him that it was only 11.00.

Once inside Kosovo I felt like I was going somewhere I wasn't supposed to. As if my parents had forbidden me to go, but I snuck out and went anyway. The difference is also instantly tangible, not just because of how the villages are organized, but because of the massive international presence. In the 45 minuets it took us to get to Gnjilane from the border, we passed Italian Carabinari trucks, UN SUVs, and EULEX jeeps. In addition to this, D pointed out what the ethnic composition of each village was we passed. But in most cases, you could tell by the flags. The Serbian 'enclaves', generally set slightly back from the main road, had large Serbian flags hanging down over the entrance, while the Kosovo-Albanian villages were littered with Albanian and American flags. At times these two flags were attached, like conjoined twins. I wanted D to pull over so I could give a short speech about flag code (the conjoined American and Albanian flag being a major violation...), but after seeing some of the burned out Serbian homes, I thought better of it. But the reality was that there was total segregation, and nowhere did the two groups meet.

Our first top was the OSCE field office in Gnjilane, where D. used to work. I was amazed to find that the "field office" was almost the same size as the entire mission in Serbia, at least from the staff presence. Over coffee, pizza we had conversations with the transport director and a program assistant from Democratization. These two men sat at the same table, and conversed with one-another as if it was normal. One was Albanian, the other a Serb. They were right, it is totally normal for two people to have a conversation. It is only when you introduce nationality / identity as a factor meant to influence their interactions that you have problem.

We left the field office around 1430, passing UNMIK, Ukrainian KFOR, and US Military installations on the way out of town. Each warned that I would be instantly kidnapped if I took any photos, so I looked straight ahead and smiled. We made it half way to Pristina / Prishtine before needing to fill up on gas. Once the car was fueled, D got back in and turned the key and ... nothing. We were in the middle of nowhere, without functioning cell phones (because Serbian networks don't work in Kosovo) and now without a functioning car.

All around us the snow kept falling.