Arrival and first impressions

A disclaimer before I begin this blog: 
I am fully aware that the spellings of place names (and even chosen nomenclature) often constitutes a political statement in support of (or in opposition to) one political, ethnic, or linguistic group.  PLEASE be aware that whenever such a spelling exists, I will be using the name most familiar to my readers (Americans with no experience and little knowledge of these issues).  Few English speakers are familiar with the Albanian name Kosova, thus I will use Kosovo.  Prishtina or Pristina are the most common English terms for the capital.  The same holds true for statistics and demographics-- I will be using the information I find most readily available from a relatively credible source.  Usually this will mean en.wikipedia.org.

As anyone receiving a link to this blog already knows, I am in Prishtina (Pristina), Kosovo as of September 10th, preparing to begin my 10 month stay here on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Grant.

Thanks to a mercifully brief bout with some kind of virus, I have been a little bit less active over my first few days here than I might have wished.  However, I have managed to get around most of Prishtina's hub, and have stumbled upon quite a few interesting things I'd like to share.

My knowledge of Kosovo is unfortunately quite limited, although of course I am working very hard to change that, both through my experiences here and through research.  With this in mind, many of my descriptions of both objects and events in this part of the Balkans will be context deficient for a time.  As with my prior travel experiences, I find that research before hitting the ground is always helpful but also limited in actual application.  Statues and monuments are particularly good examples of this: in my experiences abroad I have run into dozens of statues whose subjects were entirely unknown to me until a chance encounter with a knowledgeable person, or extensive research based on what clues I can gather, enlightens me. 

One great example of my deficient knowledge became apparent on my first day around town at a statue of George Skanderbeg (See the equestrian statue below).  While I am somewhat familiar with the first Battle of Kosovo in 1389, I had no idea that there was actually a second such battle during the middle ages, led by an Ottoman Albanian named George Skanderbeg.  As it turns out, Skanderbeg had been one of the Sultan's Janissary soldiers-- Christian subjects of the empire conscripted into military service personally accountable to the Sultan, usually converted to Islam during the course of their conscription.  Skanderbeg had defected from the Ottoman army, converted back to Christianity, and led Albanian armies in defiance of the Ottoman empire for over twenty years.

As I examined the statue on the 11th, I gained new reasons to doubt my sanity as I watched two men in kilts approach the statue, one stopping to play "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes while facing the statue, almost as though he were playing to Skanderbeg.  After he finished playing we struck up a conversation-- the bagpiper being an American, the other kilted man being a Canadian.  I cannot imagine stumbling upon a stranger combination of elements at that moment.  Although I have since learned that the expatriate and resident foreigner population in Prishtina is very high (particularly American teachers and workers), I still marvel at the strangeness of the scene. 

Around Prishtina relatively little of history's footprint seems to have survived.  I was expecting to find mosque after mosque,  a la Istanbul or Kahramanmaraş, considering that 90% or more of Prishtina's population is at least nominally Muslim.  Yet thus far I have seen only three minarets in all of Prishtina, and perhaps one new mosque under construction.  This is somewhat disappointing to me, as I thoroughly enjoy the daily calls to prayer.  There are few grand old buildings to speak of.  Much of the architecture is obviously mid-20th century Yugoslav type buildings of very basic and utilitarian construction.  

While the past may have left only the scantest of footprints on downtown Prishtina, the modern world is sparing no expense to leave its mark.  NGOs, including EULEX, have constructed massive and attractive (albeit somewhat blandly modern) office complexes, and the Kosovar government seems to be taking a combined strategy of refitting old buildings and constructing new ones to house its administration.  Just a few blocks from Skanderbeg's statue is a work-in-progress Catholic cathedral dedicated to Mother Theresa (herself from modern day Macedonia, but Albanian by ethnicity), a structure of incredible size-- certainly one of the tallest in its immediate area, if not all of Prishtina.  I haven't added any photos of the church just yet (those will come soon enough!). 


You may notice a suspicious amount of Americana in my photos-- and it's true that around this city, there are plenty of (positive!) reminders of America's role in Kosovo's independence.  One of the main streets in downtown Prishtina is Bill Clinton Bulvari, complete with a three story vinyl photo and a bronze statue.  I found a poster celebrating Clinton's birthday, complete with the touching addition "We don't forget."  The Route 66 sign is less an honorific and more a lure to the aforementioned expatriate community-- hamburger and fast foot stands are extremely common downtown, as well as a huge variety of other international foods (Italian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Mexican, etc).  


Most touching of all, however, was the 9/11 memorial service I managed to stumble my way upon during the evening of the 11th.  In front of the National Theatre a local group of artists organized a candle light service, visited by such figures as the President of Kosovo and the US Ambassador to Kosovo.  Several dozen candles were lit by both bystanders and a troupe of local middle school students, and the students recited a series of short speeches and quotations to commemorate the event.  The 11th marks the culminating day of a five day long short film festival, held annually to honor the victims of 9/11.  The founding principle of the festival, which has been going on at the same time for 8 years now, is that "It is harder to create than to destroy."  Each film, in essence, is a creative form of defiance.  I love the idea, and the sincerity behind the gesture is apparent.  The children with flags were all quite eager to show them off to me when they figured out that I was an American.  


My overall impressions thus far are almost entirely positive.  There are some nagging issues that are to be expected of a country this new and this poor-- electricity goes off frequently (requiring backup generators for essential services, and for hotels expecting foreigners), the quality of the air is fair to poor (lots of dust from roads, some pollution from an awful power station just outside of town, plenty of ancient diesel trucks and cars), and traffic is quite bad (even sidewalks seem to be fair territory for some drivers).  But despite these issues, the people here manage to be both cheerful and friendly, and though they clearly need to be addressed for the long term, I wouldn't say that any of them detract from the experience or provide any insurmountable quality of life issues for those living here.