Not A Tourist Destination…Yet

I left Skopje in the late afternoon and took the bus to Prishtina, Kosovo. Those who know me know that I do not have a phone. I have never had a smart phone and since I left on my trip I haven’t had any phone at all. There are certainly some things that would be easier with a phone, but not having one is a great way to save money and while some things are more difficult, that often makes them more fun as well. Like making maps. When I go to a new city, in order to find my way from the bus station, or train station, or airport to where I am staying, I go on to Google maps before I leave and write down the directions as well as drawing myself a little map. When I arrived in Prishtina my map wasn’t super useful at first however, because I was not dropped off at the bus station but instead was dropped in a spot that was closer to where I was staying, but for which I didn’t have directions. Fortunately it was pretty straightforward and the bus driver pointed me down a road and told me to just stay on that road and I would get to the city center. It worked out easy enough and after a brief visit to a hostel with an almost identical name that was just around the corner from the one I had a reservation for, I arrived at my destination.

My first hour at the hostel was rather interesting. I was the only foreigner there when I arrived and they were all in the middle of watching a movie. The movie was Oldboy, which is a Korean film and they were watching it with Albanian subtitles. So, I joined them on the couch and followed along with the movie as best as I could, coming in halfway through and having no idea what was being said. It was weird. After the movie another guest arrived back at the hostel. I was chatting with a couple of the locals when she came in the room and was surprised but not shocked to see that it was a girl who had been in the same hostel as me my first night in Skopje. I expected that I would probably run into some of the same people while travelling but I didn’t think that it would happen that quickly. She wasn’t the only one either. The next night a couple showed up who had also been at my first hostel. I began to think that I would only meet the same people over and over again. I did eventually meet other people though including an Australian who has had a travel blog for twelve years, and has thousands of followers. My week plus of blogging and my eight followers felt pretty tiny by comparison.

So, Prishtina is not really a tourist destination. There are a couple of reasons for this, one of which is that while the city is very nice, it doesn’t offer much in the way of tourist attractions. There are very limited museums and monuments, and they are all close enough that you can see them all in one day if you are so inclined, but one thing they do have that I just had to see was a Bill Clinton statue.

I know he is supposed to be waving, but since it’s Bill and Bill is kind of a baller I like to imagine that he is putting it up for a high five. I wish I could jump about twenty feet higher. I felt bad leaving him hanging. It makes sense for there to be a Bill Clinton statue in Kosovo, but it was still a little weird to see. There is also a store near the statue called Hillary which sells Hillary Clinton inspired clothes (pantsuits galore).

The other and more prominent reason for Prishtina (and Kosovo in general) not being a big tourist destination is the same reason that the rest of the Balkans and Eastern Europe weren’t big tourist destinations fifteen years ago. Peception. The only thing you ever hear about Kosovo in the news is about their fight for independence and any small case of turmoil that arises. The media is all about sensationalism and unfortunately often finds the negative more exciting than the positive. People will always tell you how scary and dangerous different destinations are. It’s typically not because they have been there. It’s because that is what they have heard. Who’d they hear it from? They heard it from watching the news or from other people who haven’t been there and heard it from watching the news or reading about it online. Guess what? The world is not as dangerous as you have been led to believe. Typically the only time you hear about many countries in the news is when something bad has happened there. Which makes you think that only bad things happen there. Think about your own life. What if someone was telling the story of your life but they only mentioned the bad parts. Your life would sound pretty terrible, and it would be a pretty inaccurate picture of the reality. Bad things can happen anywhere, but unless you are talking about an active war zone, more often than not they don’t. In my travels so far I have not felt any less safe in any of the places I have visited than I do back home. More confused? Sure. More disoriented? You betcha. More unsafe? Never. I’m not saying there aren’t some places in the world that are more dangerous than others. There certainly are. But the majority of the places that you have been told are dangerous are in fact just as safe as your own home town (especially if you use good judgement and common sense). I’m also not trying to say that Kosovo doesn’t have its problems. It definitely does, but danger to tourists is not really one of them. Unemployment is a big one and tourism can certainly have a positive impact on that issue. So please, don’t be afraid to visit. That’s enough for this rant. If I keep going I’ll start talking about how we should stop building walls and open all the borders and stop discriminating against people from other countries based on their skin color or religion and how impeachment proceeding for the orange goblin in the white house should begin immediately and how we should have a world union with a world economy and how we should really just all get along and realize that people are people. If I did that though this post would end up being about 100,000 words long at minimum though and would get a bit away from the focus of this blog.

Back to Prishtina. Kosovo might not be a big tourist spot now but it will be before too much longer. Unfortunately, I didn’t visit any other destinations in Kosovo during my stay, but while riding on the bus on my way to Albania I got to see a small portion of the country and if it was any indication of what the rest of this new nation has to offer it is beautiful. It will take some time for people to realize the appeal of Kosovo just as it did with the rest of the Balkans, but the further removed from open military conflict it becomes the more people will start to flow in. It just takes time. It hasn’t happened yet though and the combination of that and the fact that it was winter led to a much different hostel experience than I had at the lively hostel in Skopje. A couple of the nights that I was there I was one of two guests. As a result a vast majority of my socialization at this hostel was not with fellow travelers but rather with the guy who worked the night shift at the hostel.

One of the things that I am really starting to miss from home as I journey through the Balkans is ‘no smoking’ laws. One of my nights in Prishtina I went out in search of somewhere to eat. One place looked pretty good but when I opened the door to enter, before I even got fully inside the building the thickness of the smoke drove me back out again. After a bit more searching I ended up returning to the bar I had gotten dinner at the night before which thankfully was a non-smoking establishment. With super delicious food. On my first trip there I had a Greek salad along with a kebap (there are many variants of a kebap or kebab in this case it was meat patties stuffed with garlic and cheese) and fries. Obviously I was quite satisfied with my meal since I returned the next night. This time I ordered a small appetizer plate, which had two kinds of cheese, prosciutto, olives, tomatoes and lettuce. I also got a burger filled with cheese, some fries and a side salad. To be clear when I say I got a burger filled with cheese I mean a thick hamburger patty, filled with cheese, on a plate. No bun, no toppings, no condiments. This is something you have to be aware of throughout the Balkans. Many places you go a burger is not what you might be expecting. If you get a burger from a street food vendor you’re probably getting a bun, but if you are in a sit down restaurant there is a good chance that this is what you will receive. I was prepared, as I had seen this already in Skopje. I also had a couple of shots of rakia with my meal that night because every country in the Balkans does there rakia a little differently so I need to compare and contrast. The shots cost less than one euro each. Kosovo is ridiculously cheap. I probably would have returned to this bar for dinner a third night, but unfortunately my dinner plans were interrupted, after I had a tasty lunch of a spicy doner that unfortunately did not seem to sit well with me and left me in the bathroom for much of the afternoon and early evening. I thought I might actually have to go without dinner that night as I didn’t want to stray too far from the safety of the bathroom, but fortunately the two guys working at the hostel were ordering burgers and asked if I wanted to get in on that. I very much did, so I got a burger (the kind with a bun and very similar to the burger I had in Skopje, with the fries inside) and ate that with them and then headed back into the bathroom. I would have been very upset with the spicy doner if I had missed a meal because of it, but since I didn’t and it was delicious, all is forgiven.

One item that I read no mention of but which rivaled the Bill Clinton statue as the most fun landmark in Kosovo was this:

I don’t know what it’s all about but it is awesome.