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Published: February 8th 2015
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So, this was an interesting weekend. I decided to go out and see some sights. I bought a lonely planet guidebook which described some places I wanted to visit, but I worried that I would get lost on the way. However, I wound up being able to find my way around nicely. All I had to do was always know where the street "Agni Ramadani" was. As long as I knew that, I knew how to get back to my apartment.
I went down to the city center and visited the Kosovo Museum. Some of the museum seemed to be closed, or they had switched exhibits between what my guidebook described, because instead of general cultural artifacts they had two exhibits: an exhibit on a specific family's life in Kosovo pre-war and their sacrifices during the war, and then an exhibit on NATO. It's nice that NATO in general and the U.S. in particular are so well regarded - I'm used to feeling like I should be apologizing when I travel, so I like that I can be proud that my country did something good. The museum did have a display on wartime atrocities, including some very graphic images without
any warning, and those upset me. I don't think I could really survive going to see a concentration camp, though I think I probably should if I get the chance. It's totally normal to cry constantly throughout one, right?
After the museum, I saw a mosque nearby which I went to take a look at. The mosque seemed to be undergoing some repairs - I could see no visible entrance outside of the scaffolding, so I assumed it was closed. Even if it was open, I'd worry that I'd inadvertently do something offensive. I had the same problem when stumbling across Shinto and Buddhist buildings in Japan - I wanted to go in but I didn't know the proper way of behaving and I didn't want to distract religious adherents.
After the mosque, I found the Boulevard Nene Teresa (Mother Teresa), a nice wide pedestrian street with a lot of shops. I saw some free standing political displays which locals were standing around taking pictures of. Around that time I started to get a major caffine headache, so I stopped into a coffee shop to get a macchiato. In the coffee shop, I met a nice older guy
who works as a translator at the prosecutors office. I hung around the shop and talked to him for awhile. The guidebook says to avoid talking about politics to locals at coffee shops, but when you say "I'm a U.S. law student and I'm working for your government," politics inevitably comes up. It was an enjoyable conversation and I felt like I made a real human connection. I'll go back to that coffee shop next weekend to see if the guy is there again.
I've gone shopping and worked on getting my phone working for the rest of the weekend. I finally found a grocery store that sells the kind of fresh produce that I can cook (or at least, I think I can cook it, only time will tell). I'm not good at cooking, so the lack of U.S. style convenience food is hard for me. If I wasn't trying to eat healthy, I'd just subsist on chips and cookies, but I'm getting too old for that to be a viable way of living. I saw lots of neat other stores, and I've been keeping my eyes out for a video game shop, but I haven't seen one!
I need to buy a charging cable for my Nintendo 3DS because my plug adapter doesn't power convert and so I can't use my U.S. charging cable.
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Mary Barrett
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Loved the pictures. Glad you are getting out.