It was 10am, almost exactly, when we arrived at the bus station in Pristina. Pristina, along its main access north-south road, is a small sprawl of Balkan buildings. The people I had met had disappeared while I was sleeping. The sun that I was used to yesterday in Albania had turned to dreary clouds, and the air was cold and damp. As I stepped off the bus I saw a military helicopter flying low over the city; my first assumption was that it was doing patrols.
Pristina's bus station is still a Balkan place, filled with wide open dingy spaces and far too much cigarette smoke. I contacted Enver's father, who said he was expecting me. He said he would pick me up at the bus station in half an hour. And, a half hour later, a kindly older gentleman greeted me, and asked me to get into his car.






There is not too much to see in Pristina. A few churches and mosques can be found here and there, but otherwise it's a small European town with some nice cafes. Enver's dad was quite well versed in English, and ready to chat. He said that Kosovo citizens are citizens of UNMIK - UN citizens, with UN ID cards. They don't need visas to visit Albania or Macedonia, but they do need visas for Greece, and of course, most other countries. Like the girl I met on the bus, and Enver, he does not see Kosovo joining Albania.
Their house is in a pleasant part of town, quite large and clean; they make some money by renting the basement out to an American woman, and the upper floor to a French fellow. They seem to be reasonably comfortable, and there is little sign that their own lives were turned upside down by the Serbs.

We chatted some more and then I wandered around Pristina for the afternoon - the city was quiet under the dreary clouds, and I did find a few more things of interest; most specifically the library I think it was, as well as an orthodox church that looks like it is being rebuilt. There is still plenty of war damage here and there, muddy sidewalks, vicious traffic, and swarms of UN vehicles.











Later in the evening, back at the house, Enver's sister, Donylla, and her husband, Miro, arrived. They were both very well spoken in english, as Donylla had attended an American school in Libya; her accent was a flawless American one, and it was strange speaking to her and yet knowing that she had never set foot in North America; the only clue that her first language was not english was her uninentional poeticism of language, or rather the way she constructed sentences, which were not formed in as terse a manner as a native english speaker. Miro also spoke French.
Donylla dived right into the subject of Kosovo and politics; she said that whenever she heard a NATO bomb strike in Pristina she felt joy. She recounted the events of being driven from the family home, when masked men arrived at their door and gave them two minutes to leave. They were sent to the no man's land between Albania and Kosovo with thousands of other refugees.

At dinner Enver's parents spoke very well of Tito, Yugoslavia's former leader, and how he managed to keep the former Yugoslavian countries together. Milosevic is a Serbian nationalist, and according to them the new head of state is merely a 'mini-Milosevic'. They showed me a video from the war, which included pictures of Enver and Miro. All of the men their age fought in the ground war against Serbia. Where Enver was a commander, Miro was assigned to mortar repair.
I asked them about independence; Miro sees it as an uphill battle, and is not the optimist that other Kosovars are of outright sovereignty. Right now they pay no taxes to anyone, and also have the utmost help of the international community. With independence, those advantages will disappear, and Kosovo will merely be a tiny country of two million without any real industry and very cold relations with their much larger northern neighbour. Donylla also confirmed what I had thought - that most of the AK-47s looted in Albania in their mid-nineties meltdown had reached Kosovo.
I also asked Miro about why he decided to fight, and not flee. He said that Albanians had always been treated as second class citizens in Kosovo. In a region that is 90% Albanian, of course, the demand for equality would be very high. And with Milosevic at the helm, with little tolerance for non-Serbian dissident, the Serbs launched an offensive, and I am quite certain you would know the rest by now.






Pristina - Day 2



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