Advertisement
Published: April 11th 2013
TireBurner
This kid's got a spare tireThere is something about the trees here. Something about the neon green phosphorescence of the Kosovan springtime. It looks unreal, twinkling in the dancing light like a dream.
I sit drinking coffee with new friends, watching children play at a special fun village cut between the trees, complete with waterslides. In Kosovo, the whole country seems to come out on weekends to bask in the sunlight and play Frisbee.
Various tidbits According to my friend Burim, people drink coffee here all day long. Forty percent are unemployed, so they just sit there drinking coffee, talking and admiring the ladyfolk. All the bars seem to be full all day, mostly by unemployed Muslim men who religiously avoid alcohol.
There are casinos everywhere, all of which have photos of scantily clad women, lying on tables. Honestly, how often does that really happen? No, really, I want to know.
The national library looks magnificent. It is near the Serbian Orthodox church, which is almost the only building in the center that didn’t get shelled. Burim said some people wanted to blow it up after the war out of spite, but that was resisted.
At night,
from my balcony, a symphony of frogs was heard in a thunderous chorus. I recorded the sound, but I am unable to share it with you.
To mark May Day, Serbians have an odd tradition. They build stacks of used rubber tires and burn them. Several kids posed happily in front of a stack of burning rubber, happily braving what was a terrible smell, severe health hazard and environmental tragedy all rolled into one.
One honor Prishtine Kosovo has is the recognition of being the first place in the world with a statue of former American President Bill Clinton, to whom much credit is given for the foundation of their republic. His authorization of military actions against Serbia (see
Wag the Dog) helped create this republic. The people will never forget him for it. I had my picture taken in front of this statue, as a celebrated American guest. A random woman was walking by at that time and my friends roped her into posing in a picture with me.
Nazi Pizza In Prishtina, I was stunned by the name of a local dining establishment, “Nazi restaurant.”
I was assured by everyone that Nazi was
just a name, like Bob or Steve. I told them it still wasn’t acceptable. It’s like being named “racist idiot.” Or having “Hitler” as a last name - even if you’re unrelated – it still doesn’t work. Something else in life to be grateful for: my mother didn’t name me Nazi. I also saw a garage that repairs German cars named Nazi auto repair. I guess that’s where you take your “people’s car.”
It was the same logic that my British friend Darrell had used when I asked him about English people with the name “Harry.” I told him the name Harry always made me think of someone being excessively “hairy.” He said he couldn’t even imagine thinking that way. He said, “why would you think that? You know, it’s just a name… that’s all it is.”
I wondered how someone growing up in post-war England might feel about eating a Nazi Pizza.
Another interesting note is that tables in Kosovo are arranged differently than most Western restaurants. They are set up diagonally, with the chairs facing each other around a square communal table, arranged like a diamond, in the middle.
My arrival to Kosovo by night
The bus climbed from the plains of central Albania up the switchbacks and over the mountains. A few tiny villages dotted the path.
We stopped for about half an hour to refill our energy tanks. I drank a beer and ordered Biftek, which is, as it may sound, just a few strips of beef. They were good, and probably the only protein I’d eaten in several days. Life felt immeasurably better with that Olivia money in my pocket.
I sat at a table with the bus driver and two other guys. None of them spoke English. One of them spoke some Italian, and we made some polite conversation.
Back on the bus, about an hour later we crossed over into Kosovo. At the border, the guard came on board, taking everyone’s passport to check each photo against its card holder. The guard took a sharp look at me, judging my appearance against the long-haird beardo with the pink shirt on my passport. This was the first time I realized that my passport and drivers license photos exhibit the two furthest extremes of my appearance, for my Oregon DL has me well kept, short-haired and wearing
glasses. As I sat in the back of the coach, sprawled on the seats widely enough to evoke a grunt and an Islamic reprimand from the guard for presenting him with the soles of my feet … I was somewhere in between the two pictures. I wore, for the 2
nd day in a row, a rugged brown shirt and about 3 days growth of an unintended beard.
As soon as we crossed the border, we stopped again. At 1a.m., we stood outside of a mini tavern in the mountains of the absolute middle of nowhere. I listened to the deep forest birds all around, and they flittered and chirped like they were announcing a glorious Hawaiian morning.
Inside the tavern, I found a yogurt drink and an Albanian beer called Nelvo (from the town of Vlore). This was a lager, and by-far the best Albanian beer I’d had (and of course I had tried them all). This actually pissed me off. Here I’d spent two weeks in Albania, wasting time and drinking beer – and I could have been wasting it drinking this excellent lager instead of all those tasteless pilsners!
The bus continued through the city
of Prizren, which is really a very beautiful place. There are wide commercial streets lined with trees and parks. At 2a.m. it looked as comforting as any city in America.
Someone woke me up to tell me we had arrived in Prishtina. It was 3:15a.m. and we were at an outdoor bus stop in an anonymous district. I shuddered at the thought of disembarking here, and asked the old Albanian man in every language I could cobble together if “THIS was the last stop?” The man finally understood, and assured me that there was a central station we were going to next.
About 15 minutes later, we arrived at a grand station equipped with bathrooms and lots of great floorspace, which was all I was hoping for at 3:30 in the morning. I first parked myself next to a group of travelers who were excitedly playing some kind of game in an anonymous language, before locating a darker, more isolated corner. I rolled out the Oregon Bedroll, and cruised comfortable for about four hours in dreamland. I did wake up when the man setting up the Western Union booth just next to my head appeared. I offered to
Andin
My friend Andin makes a point about something move my shanty, but he said, “don’t worry about it man, go back to sleep.” So I did.
I met my new SERVAS friend Agron at about 8:45, a young business professional type with a great sense of humor. He met me at the bus station coffee shop after I borrowed the waiter’s Kosovo SIM card to let Agron know I had arrived. The waiter didn’t speak any English, but he kept checking on me and raising his eyebrows cartoonishly in lieu of actually coming to my table.
Andin While we ate with Agron’s friends, Andin, a music composer and producer, appeared next to us. I was instantly impressed with this guy, and he led us to his home around the corner. He does radio commercial voices, and he bought us each a Metro candy bar (Turkish), which was perhaps the best candy bar I’d ever had. He did this because he’d done a commercial for the company and he showed it to us on his computer later.
We spent three hours talking to Andin, and listening to him perform extemporaneous music on his keyboard, and play music he’d performed or written for other artists. Andin,
like almost everyone here, is muslim. He’s trying to take it seriously, and is now looking for his second wife.
“I’m working on my second wife now” he said, my (first) wife can’t keep up with me, I just want to have sex too much, and she knows it. If she’s smart, she’ll pick the woman herself, so that it will be someone she likes. But God allows me this.”
Andin told me about “Black Seed Oil,” which he said was the only thing in the world proven to kill cancer. Well-known in Arab countries, Andin says it’s a new concept in the west.
Andin’s father, a kind 70-year-old man who was a composer himself, made us Turkish coffee, and autographed an album for both me and Ardit. When we left, we listened to what I expected to be a novelty souvenir and was totally blown away.
The two brothers run a label called Randobrava records, which had yet to officially release any albums at the time of my visit. They have big plans though, and I thought my music project could fit nicely with them.
Hamburgers Went to get hamburgers. At first I
was disappointed because they had no cheese. It mattered not at all because the burgers were incredible. They had a type of yogurt, peppercorn spices, onions and dressings in a fresh bun that was heated and sliced open more like a pocket … so it doesn’t have to get all over the place if you don’t want it to. Who needs cheese?
Later, we grabbed some pizza at the nearby diner, and I mentioned my desire to pick up some Schlivowitz (Serbian Rakija) to bring home for my friend from Montenegro. Andin told me he knew a Serbian guy who lived in a Serbian village nearby, who would be able to direct us. We went straight there after the lunch, and found his friend right away. A simple set of directions had us knocking at an old man’s gate a few minutes later. The old man’s name is Aleut Ylewko, and he also raises honey bees. Ylewko also makes the most badass Schlivo in the world; I know this because he insisted on pounding five shots of his 100-proof concoction with me.
He talked with us for a while (through Andin’s flawless Serbian skills), and sent us off
with many blessings. He rightly described the quality of his Schlivo by its affect on the sternum, rather than in the mouth or throat.
Box of questions I started working right away this morning, and didn’t stop until about noon. Then I hopped a bus to the post office and mailed my friend Jeff a box of weighty things I don’t need to be carrying with me. It weighed about 4 kilos and cost about €50. I was amazed that the woman was able to fit it all in the small box I’d brought. Impressive. I’d love to see the look on Jeff’s face when he opens all this random junk he doesn’t want, and I’m weighing weather to tell him at all or not; I’ll probably forget anyway.
Appreciation for attorneys One unexpected result of visiting a country that has been ravaged by war, was an appreciation for personal injury lawyers. Hear me out. So I was walking down the steps to reach the central post office of Kosovo, and the steps are pretty much rubble. Most of them are broken, and crumble under your feet with dangerous regularity as you step. I nearly fell
several times, and I’m certain people fall every day. I got to thinking about why this isn’t a problem in America, and one word came to mind: lawyers. Yes, in America, the number of attorneys we have prevent property from going unrepaired for any length of time. Not so in Kosovo.
Agron and friends Agron is pure good-person, generous to a fault, bright and ambitious. I would spend the rest of my time in Kosovo in the company of Agron and his gang of great people. He is an executive at an oil refinery, and also a partner in an employment agency he runs with three friends. His friends, Burim and Andit took me around town during my first day.
They seemed to mix me like a DJ, introducing me to each new person like a beat, who would take me to the next person and hand me off. And it worked like good music too. Agron first took me by taxi to a bank, where we met his cousin. He and his cousin took me to my apartment. Then Agron went to work and his cousin took me to a café, where I met Burim, who
owns a concrete company. Burim and I walked around the town and then picked up Andit, a journalist. The three of us went up to a park outside the city where we sat among the florescent spring trees and had more coffee, chatting and watching high school girls take pictures of each other for at least 15 minutes.
Succeeding this, Burim took us to the municipal court, to pay a traffic fine for one of his concrete truck drivers.
Here I tried a local chocolate cream banana snack. Awful.
At the employment office owned by my friends, I took a picture which ended up in a KosPress article, featuring a shoe donation that was made to the local Red Cross.
There was just a little time before I was to head back home to Oregon. I was excited to see all I could accomplish, and all the interesting people I would meet before then.
At the end, as I flew out of Kosovo, I had to dump about 4kg of baggage to meet the weight requirements. It’s amazing what you can part with when you simply have to.
CUT FROM STORY: Andin amazed me by correctly predicted the comparable size of Kosovo as equal to that of San Diego. Indeed, it is precisely the size of San Diego county: 4,200 square miles. Kosovo is larger by exactly 12 square miles.
(listening to the Aerosmith Done With Mirrors album from 1985, just to be different and torture myself a bit… most drugged out, awful work they ever did. Kind of interesting to imagine Steven Tyler as a skinny speed freak while he was spazzing out and singing this. Whitford is on his game for most of the album at least.)
Andin and I briefly rejoined the crew at the office, before he received a distress call that we needed to race North to Peja and collect his fiance’s brother, who needed to catch a bus in Prishtina, bound for Belgrade that night. We raced straight away, and returned just over two hours later, as his bus prepared to depart.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.166s; Tpl: 0.039s; cc: 12; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0499s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
