Jumbulance

This is just one of the many crazy looking things I have seen around here. I hate to think that this thing ever got maximum usage but who knows? Maybe back during the war it did. I wouldn't think it maneuvered through the streets of Pristina very well, however. It looks like it is out of commission now and it is just parked next to a clinic in KP (Kosovo Pulje or as it is now known, Fushe Kosova).
Show this to your friends who work on rescue units and the like. They'll love it.
I keep having this fantasy of Carl Childers calling for a "jumbulance" and a "hearst" after he whacked Doyle Hargrave's head in "Sling Blade". Heh heh.

The Kosovo Way of Death

This is the way they publish obituaries here, not in the newspaper. You see these notices posted all over the place, tree trunks, light poles, etc. The Serbs do it this way, too, but naturually you don't see those in Prishtina. If you go to any of the Serb enclaves that's where you find them.
The chair is a custom the Albanians observe when they are accepting visitors after a family member has died. I thought at first it just signified that a person in that house had passed away but the chair and flowers is to let people know they can come and pay their respects. From what I gather they don't have funeral homes here and I have never seen one. If they have a viewing at all, it's done in a fairly short period of time because they bury people here within 24 hours of death.

Burglar Proof your Home

We don't need no stinkin' security system!

Watch Your Step!

I'm pretty sure they don't keep statistics but if they did we would probably discover that Prishtina is the "Broken Leg Capital of Europe" if such a dubious distinction exists. Dad told me to be careful while I was here and not step on an old landmine. While that danger does still exist to a certain extent, just walking around Prishtina is far more dangerous. First you have to be careful of cars...whether you're on the sidewalk or not. Cars are usually parked all over the sidewalk so you frequently have to walk in the street. Then as cars zoom past you, sometimes in reverse, I might add, you have to hop back onto the sidewalk. If you're lucky/unlucky enough to get to walk on the sidewalk any distance you have to not only weave yourself around all the cars and people, but you have to watch out for all the pitfalls. Literally. Holes like these are all over the place here, but usually they are about half full of garbage. I don't know if they are filled to help cushion your fall or if people just see them as handy receptacles for their trash.
But I thought it was a nice touch that someone put up a piece of wood next to the one hole. Just so you would be alerted to the fact that the hole was there. Instead of covering the hole!!

Hubba Hubba

Here are a couple of those photos of Italian KFOR soldiers I promised.

Just in Case You Don't Speak Albanian.....

Not speaking Albanian isn't always a big problem here because on occasion they get really handy with the illustrations. This slaughterhouse just spoke to me, not in a good way, but I had to take a photo of it. At least from the outside it looks a little more sanitary than the mishtores where they hang the skinned carcasses in the front windows. But I doubt it.

The Budding Entrepeneur

We are supposed to go to the Serbia border again today to escort Ivan and Daniela's family back into Kosovo. This is a photo I took the last time we were there waiting for them to cross over. Is this just about the worst looking border crossing you ever saw? The guy in the foreground is there everytime we've been there so I assume he is actually making a living selling his stuff there.

Kosovo Kids

These are some boys who hang out on the fence at Kelly and Marcia's place in Prishtina. We were all having a good time at the barbecue on Independence Day and I think the noise of us all laughing and talking attracted them to come see what was going on. Kelly asked them if they knew what the 4th of July meant to America and one of them said, "Oh, yes! That is when America got status!" We all just thought that was so funny because Kosovo's "final status" is being decided this year. So they have a really good grasp on what all this means.

Color Guard and a Very Special Guest

The German Shepherd belongs to a Ukrainian police officer.

Two More

More Photos from the Medal Parade

I just love the hats the French officers wear, don't you? I don't understand the pants, though (witness the one guy's zipper). But I'm sure there is a reason. These two don't look particulary happy but I'm sure they were ecstatic yesterday after France won a place in the FIFA World Cup finals.
Tom knows the two Italian officers. I wish I had a full length photo of the woman. She is a motorcycle officer and she was wearing her motorcycle boots that day. I'm sure she didn't intend to make a fashion statement but she looked very chic. And as you can see, she's pretty darned cute, too! (I'll post some photos of Italian soldiers that I have one of these days.....oh, my word, they are SO good looking!)

US Contingent Medal Parade

Here are a few photos of police officers from around the world who attended the US Contingent's Medal Parade on July 4th. The top photo is of some of the US officers who received medals and ribbons that day. Tom is on the far right just a couple of people back from that flag that is sticking out. Not that you can really see him since the photo is kind of small.
The bottom photo is of some Germans who stood next to me during the ceremony. I didn't get a photo of a Norwegian officer that we met that day. He is from Trondheim and was just as nice as could be and spoke absolutely perfect English.
This is just one of the great things about getting to be here in Kosovo....we have met so many people from all over the world.

Just Waiting to be Discovered

I couldn't resist posting just a couple more photos of Trstenik and Dubrovnik as we left to come back home. I can't help but think that someday the "rest of the world" will find Trstenik, too. There was a British couple we met and almost their first words were to us were, "How did you find this place?". They had found it by accident, too. If you like a lively night life, fabulous shopping, lots or restaurants, this is NOT the place for you. If you prefer quiet, solitude, a small family beach, and wonderfully friendly people, you will love it. Oh, and did I mention that there is a winery there? The founder is a native Croatian who settled in the Napa Valley in 1958 and went on to win a bunch of awards for his wine making. Then in 1995 Miljenko Grgic returned to Croatia to found Grgic Vina right on the hillside by Trstenik. We went up there one day for a wine tasting and bought two bottles of his white wine. They very proudly display a reproduction of his photo on the cover of Wine Spectator magazine.
The second photo is of Dubrovnik as we were driving past. You can almost tell how hot it was that day, can't you? I don't care, though. I had wanted to go there for a long time and it was even better than my expectations.
I can't wait to go back to Croatia.

Marko

Here's "our" wonderful waiter Marko who was always so friendly and knew how to make us feel so welcome in beautiful Trstenik, Croatia. One morning during our stay in Trstenik we saw Marko on his scooter and he stopped. We asked him if the restaurant where he worked served breakfast because we weren't really sure. He not only said that they did, he insisted upon going back with us whereupon he asked us what he wanted to eat. We asked for menus but he said, "No menus. Whatever you want, I will bring to you." And he did! Now where else in the world can you get service like this?
We found out from Marko that he just completed his first year of studying in Dubrovnik where he will obtain a degree in tourism. I didn't know degrees in tourism even existed.
In addition to a photo of Marko is the view from our beachfront restaurant, Feral.

A Little Bit of Heaven

After we left Dubrovnik the plan was to just drive, poke around and see what we discovered. We gawked at the beautiful Dalmatian coastline northwest of Dubrovnik and eventually decided to turn off on a road that headed down a peninsula. The first village we came to was teeny tiny Mali Ston which had a great old wall that looks like the Great Wall of China going up over a huge steep hillside. There were a lot of little fruit stands there and vineyards all over the countryside so we thought we might be onto something. We continued to drive and considered driving further down to Orebic and then catching a ferry that would have eventually taken us back to the mainland but further down the road from where we left off. But we soon came upon a sign that pointed the way to Trstenik on an off-road. So we decided that just for fun we would go see what was there. We found heaven.
Trstenik has 60 people who live there year round and at the peak of the season has 200. We stopped at Restoran Feral right on the beach and Marko, our waiter, said he could not only fix us up with some freshly caught sea bass which he said he would fillet himself, a big platter of tomato salad that was so ripe they were almost stewed and he would hook us up with someone who had a room to rent. We were in love. So completely head over heels were we, we paid for three nights on the spot....no need to go any further looking for a better spot. It does not exist.

Gem of the Adriatic

Just a couple of photos of Dubrovnik, Croatia, where we spent two days. Again, it was broiling hot but nevertheless it was a wonderful city. We hadn't made hotel reservations prior to our arrival so we just drove around at first and we saw many people holding up signs advertising rooms to rent. We saw this one guy who looked just like our brother-in-law Garry and we stopped to talk to him. His name was Ivan and he assured us that the room he had was better than the Hilton. He was quite the salesman. All we cared about was that it had air conditioning and its own bathroom. He said it did and it turned out to be a room in a beautiful house only about a five minute walk to the old walled part of the city. And the air conditioning was excellent. So we took it for the whopping price of 100 euros for two nights. We found out later that the Hilton would have cost more than that for one night and I do believe that our room truly was better than the Hilton. Not only that, the Hilton charged 30 euros a day for parking. So it all worked out perfectly. We walked down into the old city and after awhile realized that we hadn't eaten anything all day so we went into a pub. Our waiter, who looked like he was all of 16, told us that Croatia was playing shortly in the World Cup so we were surprised that we almost had the place to ourselves with a big screen TV. Well, at exactly 5 minutes to 9:00 the place suddenly filled to standing room only and a rousing game against Australia commenced. People here in Europe are just rabid about football.
The next morning the heat was again doing us in but we tried to walk around the top of the wall around the old city. Half way around I just could not do it anymore. I was sweating more profusely than I ever had in my life. Honest! So we walked down into the city and found a wonderful little outdoor cafe called Aquarius where we had great fish and salad. There was a little breeze blowing through there so we recovered enough to go shopping and we took a boat trip out into the bay and around an island.

The Newest Country in the World

Montenegro just last month declared independence from Serbia so I think it is the newest country in the world. We didn't spend as much time in Montenegro as we had planned but we have plans to return before the summer is over. We spent the first night in Budva right on the coast but we got there late and just grabbed the first room we could get. We thought it would cool off as the night progressed and figured the room would be fine even though it had no air conditioning. Big mistake!
We got up the next morning and walked about a block to a cafe but it was blistering hot so we decided to walk another couple of blocks to the beach and get a swimming suit for me and other beach stuff. There were dozens of vendors all over and we had no trouble finding what we needed. We bought beach mats, a hat, etc. But by the time we got all that we were dying of heatstroke so decided that the air conditioning in our in Peh-zhoe would be preferable to broiling on the beach. Mind you, it was only about 10:00 in the morning at this point and I think it was already close to 100 degrees F. We slogged our way back to our rooming house, threw our stuff in the car and took off driving up the coast toward Croatia.
Checking our map we found that we could take a short ferry ride across an inlet or drive all the way around. We decided to explore and drive the route around the inlet and boy, were we glad we did. It was so beautiful I was begging Tom to consider buying a house there. But it didn't have anything resembling decent beaches. People just threw their bodies on any old slab on concrete or pile of rocks they could make room on and called it good.
We stopped in Kotor and walked around but again, the heat got to us. We saw a sign for a restaurant that claimed it was air conditioned. That sounded good to us so we went inside and thought at first it seemed a little cooler. We were seated and within one minute we were dying. We asked about the air conditioning and the waiter said, "the front door is open", as if that was the only explanation needed. We left. Kotor really was beautiful and I would love to go back someday but I think I'll wait until maybe October!
Here are a couple of photos. The first one is just a shot of the countryside up in the mountains we had to drive through before arriving at the coast. The second one is in Kotor. There are lots of websites you could go to if you want to see better photos than mine of the area.

Just Your Average Drive in the Country

After we picked up our luggage at our flat in Prishtina we traveled on to Peja, another fairly large town in Kosovo and the last town of any size before we crossed into Montenegro. Much of the area we traveled through was where some of the worst fighting occurred during the war in 1999. Since there are still a fair number of Serbians in this area, KFOR has a heavy presence and I felt perfectly safe traveling in the Klina area where incidents still occur once in awhile. The first photograph is just one vehicle that was in a large convoy of KFOR troops patrolling the area. The other photograph is of a Serbian Orthodox church that was blown up. I'm not sure when this occurred but I think Tom told me that it was in the immediate aftermath of the NATO bombing. And no, NATO did not blow this church up.

The Journey Begins

Our holiday in Montenegro and Croatia started in Macedonia because we had to go to Skopje to pick up our rental car. Our friends Marcia and Erika drove us to the Kosovo/Macedonia border. That's always an interesting border crossing. It's kind of dilapidated and trashy and I get to take it all in while we walk through "no man's land". I can't help but think about the story that Tom's language assistant told us about when NATO was bombing Kosovo.
She said that Serb soldiers were going house to house in Pristina and forcing people out of their homes. She said that since it was in the Spring, it was still rather cold, but they weren't allowed time to get coats and most people didn't have on shoes, because it is the custom here to leave your shoes outside the door. She said that she just remembers being numb, not even able to think. She was afraid they were going to be taken somewhere and be shot. They were loaded into trucks and transported to this same "no man's land" and for several days were held there with no food, water, protective clothing or anything. Macedonian Albanians heard about this and gathered at the border to try to give them bread but they were threatened. In a few days the International Red Cross intervened and took care of them. I digress here, but I always think about this incident whenever we cross the border there.
Anyway, here is a photo of the house across the street from our hotel. I thought it was some kind of embassy or something but a staff member at our hotel said that no, it was just someone's private residence. That's Skopje in the background. The other photo is of our Peugot that we rented. After we picked it up we drove back to our flat in Prishtina to get the rest of our luggage and travel on through Kosovo to the Montenegran border. By the way, you know how we pronounce Peugot in America....."pooh-zhoe". Our European friends here find it hilarious when they hear us pronounce it that way. We have been informed that it is "peh-zhoe". Whatever.