Denied At The Border

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To start off with we spent one night on a bus which took care of the night that we missed here on the dates.  This bus was obviously stopped at a few borders along the way - one of them being Macedonia.  Unfortunately Macedonia requires a visa for entry and does not sell them at the border.  So we had to get off the bus we had paid for and take a pricey taxi into Prishtina, the capital of Kosovo. This is how we ended up spending time in Kosovo, an obviously unplanned destination, but one of our favorite so far!

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I also should explain that the countries have once again changed over hear since most maps have been printed, along with this website.  Serbia and Montenagro are now two separate countries which happened around one month ago.  Also, Kosovo is not part of Serbia, in NO way.  It is a UN run country, the UNMIK (United Nations Mission In Kosovo).  It became separate after serbia invaded it and there was a horrible horrible war in the nineties as Serbia tried to spread it's communism to Croatia and Albania.  Luckily the US (ahem) helped out to fight the communist government and Serbia lost.  This means that Kosovo now sits as a destroyed country, in ruins for a lot of the countryside and the UN is basically rebuilding the infastructure.  The Kosovoians are trying to gain full independence from their association with Albania right now as they are somewhat non existent as a country or place of residence.  The passports are only travel cards which aren't recognized by a large number of countries, Canada being one of them.  So the UN is doing a job but most Kosovoians are looking for a independent government not run by the supposed corrupt UN rule.  So that is the background that we learnt about the "country" during our stay.

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When we found out that the man in the Macedonian Embassy wasn't coming in on Saturday and of course not on Sunday, a lady who spoke english in a store right next to the building told us that her husband worked at a hotel in town and she could get us a deal.  So after around an hour of talking to her and meeting her sons, her husband found us a hotel in the centre of town. Our stay started with us very tired from the massive delay in our travels and so we took a solid sleep before heading out into the streets.  Our first impression of downtown Prishtina was not great as one might assume.  It was very poor and didn't look like the safest place there was.  After asking around and talking to the guy at the front desk, we found out that it was actually quite safe and also that there was a soccer game on that night.  We decided to check it out and maybe have a well needed beer while at the game.  But Kosovo doesn't quite work like that.  We arrived at the game and looking around at the different 7 year old boys who were selling the drinks and shot glasses of pumpkin seeds, we could find no alcohol of any sort.  Very surprised we got some soda pop and some pumpkin seeds and watched a pretty entertaining game between to big rivals.  Everytime a goal was scored, loads of fireworks were set off by the scoring side as if they had won the game.  It surprised us everytime.  That night, right before we headed off to the game, the guy at the front desk, Cafa, had asked if we wanted to go bowling later on after he got off.  So unsure and everyone thinking of the movie 'Hostel' we said yes and once we got back from the soccer game we were off.  He had two friends that came along and one drove us to the alley while the others guys waited, two being Cafa and one of his friends.  As we were driving down this completely dead town, Shawn and I are in the back of the car ready for anything - turning down into a dark factory complex didn't help our imaginations.  But we finally arrived at the alley which turned out to be more like a club with bowling.  The two level club had cheap cheap drinks and cheap bowling.  So we had a very fun night of bowling and figuring out what was going on with Kosovo.  It turns out that Kosovoians have a very hard time finding jobs since the Serbians took so many working factories away from them during the war, so they tend not to spend their money on alcohol.  This combined with the Muslim beliefs that most of the people follow.  Anyways, after bowling they took us to a place for 1 euro pizzas and then called it a night.

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The next day was Sunday so very few things were open, but we made due with a good sleep-in and walking around the town a bit.  While me and Dan were in one of the many fake brand name cloth shops (which every one of these shop owners will tell you flat out that their stuff isn't real) we started talking to the owners who were two younger guys that had just opened it up.  Well we bought a couple of cheap shirts and ended up coming back with Shawn and the other guys since they wanted to check it out.  Well we again ended up getting into a conversation with the younger of the two brothers and in the end after going out to a store next to his and buying us some drinks, asked if we wanted to hang out later on.  So we thought it would be fun since there was nothing else to do, we set out a bit later and went to a billiards joint with the guy from the shop and his friend.  We ended up not staying out too late since we were all pretty tired, but had loads of fun talking to them and learning some odd Kosovo rules in billiards.  It turns out that his friend Mohamed was in the US army and had been to Afghanistan and fought in the Serbia - Kosovo war so he had lots to say about the entire situation.  Overall we had tons of fun both nights.  \

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Monday came along and it turned out that the Macedonian Embassador had decided to extend his weekend by one day.  We just took a day again walking around and buying some more cheap clothes to refuel our bruised and hard worn clothes.  That night we went to a restaurant for a cheap meal and then got to bed early for our trip FINALLY to Greece!