Kosovo

Žabljak, Montenegro

Today we check out of our mountain place in northern Montenegro and drive 5 1/2 hours to Kosovo. We’re staying in the capital city of Prizren. I’ve never heard of Prizren so definitely could not have named it as Kosovo’s capital city. Nada described Kosovo as the beating heart, the home, the center of Serbia. When I was younger, I remember seeing Kosovo on the news, seeing the first George Bush on TV, hearing about the fighting, about “ethnic Albanians.”

Kosovo is an interesting country of mostly ethnic Albanians, even after 10s of 1000s were either killed or driven out of Kosovo in the 1990s and 2000s. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo as an independent country and according to the BBC, current Serbian president vowed Serbia “never will.” Kosovo is solidly Serbian. This website, though 25 years old, described some of the conflict in readable way.

Serbians and Albanians, Serbian orthodox, Montenegrin orthodox, Croatian orthodox, Yugoslavia. It’s all just so close and mixed together. Nationalism and religious fundamentalism create separateness, an us, an inside, a rightness. If you’re on the outside, you’re them and you’re wrong. I may even hate you.

Driving through the mountains of Montenegro, through mountain villages, switchbacks back and over the Tara river, you can see how nations over time have fought for this place. It’s beautiful. One herd of cattle we saw actually had bells hanging around their necks, storybook-like. I saw a sheepdog sitting just next to her owner’s old, blue station wagon ready for duty.

Many homes in the area have tall, neat stacks of cut firewood. Are they preparing for winter already?

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Prizren, Kosovo

It was a long drive today. Oi. I sat in the backseat to keep the boys from bugging each other while working on school (they both got their 3 hours in, even with shoddy internet), and so Leo didn’t get carsick on the winding mountain roads. Though I nearly did.

It was one mountain village after another. Before we left Zabljak, Nada checked with a (the?) guy she knows about road closures. He happened (?) to be driving down our road in town so he pulled over and was telling us which roads to avoid. Good thing. Instead of traveling immediately south on the P5, we went north east to Pljevlja, then back down south on the P10. However, one of those roads were closed, too.

Luckily, a man driving a dark blue Volkswagen sedan reached the construction worker right before we did, so got some information. The worker shook his head and motioned him to turn around and go back up another way. The Volkswagen driver seemed to know what he meant, slowed down as he drove by our car and opened his window. He said something in Serbian that sounded moderately assuring, so we nodded and followed him for several kilometers until we returned to our original route.

Oh, and Prizren is NOT the capital of Kosovo; it’s the city of Pristina.