Hotel Baci Pristina

... door. I had just received 25 of those coins as change and wanted to get rid of them.

The first one hadn't even hit his hand when he started motioning with the other and saying, "one, one, one, one" over and over. I don't know where he had to be in such a hurry but I didn't want to drop the wrong amount into his hand and it was one coin at a time. He counted the five coins three times for reasons only known to him. When Mr. Three Teeth was ...

... bezweifele ich, dass diese in einem Bus in den Kosovo reisen. Die UN Beschaeftigten fliegen alle und fahren in ihren UN Toyota Landcruisers durch die Gegend... Und die KFOR, das ist die Multinationale Armee, die den Kosovo beschuetzt und die ziemlich allgegenwaertig ist (es gibt aber keine Strassenkontrollen, in der Hinsicht ist es im Moment sehr friedlich), hat natuerlich ebenfalls ihren eigenen Transport (und ihre eigenen Flugplaetze).

Kosovo ist Teil ...

... hold what remained in place.

After about 30min the coach slowed down to a crawl and we stopped at the nearest service station where the bus driver got out to make a new window.

Another 30min later, with more cardboard and 2 rolls of packing tape we had a new and improved window that held together for the rest of the trip.

When we got to Pristina, we realised there are no backpackers or hostels, just a couple of cheap
guesthouses. Over the next 3 days ...

... pazh like Albania. I guess it's part of the ethnic character of these ethnic Albanians. Is city planning hard-wired into the DNA? So I get into town after dark and get a taxi up into the hills overlooking town where 'the professor' runs his guesthouse/hostel. He's a nice old man who studied engineering in the UK, doing graduate work some time back in the 70's. Hey, wait a minute... I graduated college in the 70's. Do I look that old ...

... bag I'd been carrying for three days and pulled out the bottle of Belgradsko pivo I'd brought on my first day in Belgrade (which the "train police" wouldn't let me drink). This particular brand was 5% and added to my theory that people in the former Yugoslavia enjoy their beer stronger than in many western countries (with the obvious exception of Belgium). I cracked it open eagerly and took a massive swig. Now, I appreciate that a ...

... was thus quite surprised when the bus station commander told me that there were no buses to any part of Kosovo until the next day. It took about a minute of emphatic gesturing before I was able to deduce that the buses were canceled because of a Ramadan holiday (Bajram, I later learned). Instead of waiting another day in Rozaje I decided to take a bus into Serbia and try to get into Kosovo another way. In hindsight, this decision was stupid. I spent the next 13 hours on three ...

... waste of the insurance we'd bought there 2 hours before. So, we retraced our steps back to the Kosovo/ Macedonia border, went to go into Macedonia again, and were told we'd have to buy extra insurance to enter (surely it could not get worse?). When we'd come into Macedonia from Greece two days earlier, the customs guy had obviously forgotten to demand we got it......but this guy didn't. So we were up for $70 for 1 more hour in Macedonia. Our only ...

... Serbia attempting to create an Apartheid state at the ethnic Albanian's expense. I don't agree with the UN trying to make up for the major chaos it allowed in Bosnia by being in Kosovo. i don't agree with trying to push Serbs out of Kosovo (just because you think it would be easier). Why are there still rolling blackouts when other less basic infrastructure is in place? ----Why can I still call home to the US from Pristina at 10c/Minute? ----Why is radiantly fresh fruit available?

... out it was a bus station. A dusty little place and most of the people had gotten off the bus (what should have been my first clue). It was very far from the center which meant I had to walk 20 minutes to the center and another 30 minutes to my hotel. I walked down Bill Clinton Blvd and turned a left on Nena Tereze Blvd (Mother Teresa). I thought the names were cool. At least these names were in Roman characters and not in Cyrillic. I didn't have to take ...

... we were treated almost like celebrities by the locals whenever we went anywhere, with people calling out to say hello and smiling when we passed them in the street. On our first day in Pristina, we stumbled on a local market filled with people selling huge sacks of red and green peppers, piles of chili powder, Albanian pop CDs, wooden crates of grapes, pirated DVDs, soccer shirts, mountains of cigarettes, teapots, cutlery, and just about everything else ...