Winners' spoils?
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Prizren,
Serbia and Montenegro
Saturday, July 7, 2007
I'm sitting in an internet cafe dealing with an aggravatingly slow connection and - worse yet - listening to the girl running it play the exact same song over and over and over again. I probably shouldn't complain too much since it's really cheap, but man . . . . . why?? Surely you'd have had enough by the 15th listen?
Anyways. . .
Today I got out to the small city of Prizren, in the southwest of Kosovo. Widely considered the province's most attractive town, it's a definite switch from Prishtina and even Peja. The Turkish influence is heavier here than elsewhere and - despite the compounded damage from Serb militia in '99 and Albanian rioters in 2004 - it's retained a good deal of its architectural stock. The mix of churches and mosques attests to its multicultural history and even today the population remains more mixed than many other places in Kosovo. Unfortunately, that multiculturalism is under severe threat from ascendent Albanian nationalism, so whether it will stay mixed is a good question.
I got off to somewhat of a late start today, complicated by me having to backtrack to the guest house after realizing I'd forgotten to bring along my money belt. When I arrived to the bus station, I then had to wait an additional half-hour for the next onward bus, so I didn't actually get into Prizren until almost 1pm. In light of the cut-off line for the buses, that meant I was limited to an afternoon of taking the place in. I sure as hell wasn't going to taxi it back to Prishtina again, as I got stuck with yesterday!
In fact though, Prizren's old core is a fairly compact place, so an afternoon isn't too short an amount of time to get a good idea of the place. Most of its historical structures are situated along a bend in the Bistrica River, just beneath a considerable hill that hosts the town's castle and (former) Serbian quarter. I found a little travel agency along the main road in and decided to stop in and ask if they had a town map. They didn't, but the girl working there was very friendly and said that she could accompany me into town as she was about to go on lunch break. So just minutes into arriving in the city, I'd already met a local that was eager to help me out and show me around some.
First priority was lunch, so this girl, Besarta, showed me to a restaurant by the river. She stayed for a few minutes to chat and have a drink, then had to get back to work. I finished up my lunch of pleskavica and shopska salata, then started strolling the old town. The main Sinan Pasha Mosque, dominating the old town, was my first stop, and I got to have a good look at the ornate interior for free. Afterwards I went back across the river to pay a visit to the 16th-century Gazi Mehmed Pasha Baths and a nearby mosque. Both were unfortunately closed (with a lot of litter decorating the grounds of the former, sadly), but they were interesting enough from the outside. Once finished, I thought an ice cream and a drink would be good to have in the mid-afternoon heat.
The guy running the ice cream shop I stopped in happened to speak English and was immediately friendly and welcoming. We sat down together and had a chat about different things, the subject eventually (and naturally) coming to the current state of affairs in Kosovo. It turned out that he was of a local minority group - a Slavic people speaking a language akin to Macedonian, but Muslim in belief. Despite their common religion, his people had come into considerable conflict with the Albanians, who tend to link them in with the Serbs simply because of the linguistic affiliation. He was not particularly happy with the overabundance of ethnic rivalry and nationalism in the region and couldn't understand why the Albanians were treating other minorities the same as the Serbs treated them, especially in light of their near absolute majority across the province. He related a story of how some local man was shot and killed right in front of his shop while he was working only a couple years ago - the result of local mafia conflicts and clan rivalries. In his view, the best solution was for Kosovo to get full independence and then integrate with European institutions so that Western administration could start regulating the region and strangling out the pervasive corruption and ethnic conflict. It was a very intriguing and enlightening discussion to have, and it helped to put into perspective the difficulties that plague Kosovo currently.
After finishing my drink, thanking the man and saying farewell, it was fast approaching 4:00. I decided to follow the conversation up with a look at the nearby Orthodox Cathedral. Like the monasteries around Peja and Prishtina, this one was thoroughly fortified and encircled with barbed wire, though in considerable excess of what I'd seen before. Unlike the others though, the cathedral was firmly shut to visitors and seemed to await some distant future when people wouldn't be in such a rush to burn it to the ground. I then walked up into the former Serbian district on the hillside. There was a bit of barbed wire around, some of which looked as if it had been moved out of the way, so I expected it to be somewhat off-limits. Curiosity got the better of me though, and I climbed up further to investigate. All around were burned out, shattered ruins of houses, thoroughly picked through and empty of any previous belongings. The dome of a church poked out of a patch of trees higher up, but seemed mostly inaccessible due to all the rubble and the overgrown weeds.
I rounded the bend after another ascent and saw the one remaining, intact Orthodox Church just across the way, now accompanied by a sandbag-lined KFOR bunker. Figuring that I'd be spotted and get a talking to soon enough, I thought I'd just stand around, take a few pictures of the panorama and act dumb. Sure enough, a German soldier saw me and then shuffled out of the bunker and in another minute or so, two others walked down the way to me. As expected, they told me that the area was off-limits to visitors, along with the church they were guarding. I played the stupid tourist and said I was just looking for a path up to the castle and obviously took the wrong way; in any case, I was at least telling the truth partially (I did want to go up to the castle next). They didn't seem overly bothered by the incident and just had me follow them back to the main path up to the castle. Behaving politely and acting ignorant can work wonders!
It was almost 4:30 by the time I got up to the castle proper, so I just had a brief gander around and then descended once again. So that I wouldn't make the same stupid mistake twice, I went ahead and then made for the bus station. Stopping off to thank Besarta for her help and kindness on the way, I made it just in time to take the 5:10 bus back to Prishtina. Probably there was one more bus afterwards, but it's better safe than sorry. This one ended up being fairly uncrowded anyhow, so all the better.
Well, that's it for my time in Kosovo then. Tomorrow I return to Macedonia and pick up my ticket for Belgrade. Just a few more days left here in the former Yugoslavia, and then I'll head further east towards Romania, Ukraine and the like. It's been a sometimes busy, sometimes relaxing time here, but always interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how the old power center from the "good ol' days" - Serbia - is doing now.
