Na ja, where do I begin with a summation of all that is Kosovo (well, how very arrogant.... Perhaps a short, uninformed ranting instead?)? I think the best place possible to begin would be a muddy, foggy, cold, damp, forgotten, coyote-infested, and otherwise unremarkable field about 5 kilometres north of Prishtina, the capital of the UN-administered province of Kosovo. Despite the allure of castles, churches, old ruins, interesting people, somewhat exotic passport stamps (regrettably, Albania's passport stamp is not particularly cool ---- it's basic and they charged me 10 Euro for doing it --- but I do have a pink receipt), scrumptious local sausage, new local currency to collect, a new beer to try, etc., my 10-day excursion was commissioned (by whom exactly is a matter of question -- perhaps the surplus voices in my head exhorting me to find somewhere somewhat more interesting than a Greek island to go to for a glorified visa run) for the express purpose of visiting a very particular muddy, foggy, cold, damp, forgotten, coyote-infested, geographically unremarkable field 5 km north of Prishtina... Why, other than obstinate strangeness?
The right muddy, foggy, cold, damp,
forgotten, coyote-infested, and
otherwise unremarkable field?
Because, to the best of historical knowledge, it was at this field, in June of 1389 (I took history, but I've never been that interested in dates -- so I hope that's the correct one) that affected the course of Balkan history for the past 600+ years: In brief (sparing the unnecessary details (Inshallah --- suppressing unnecessary details has never been a particular forte nor passion of mine) here's why: The battle of 1389 (alternately called the Battle of Kosovo/Kosovo Polje/Fushe Kosovo/the Field of Blackbirds depending from what side you're coming) was fought between the invading Turkish Ottoman Army of Sultan Murad I. He faced a rather large and briefly united (because they spent most of the rest of the time squabbling) collection of Serbs, Ilyrians, and various other Southern Balkan Christian countries. In the end, the Turks won: Their Sultan was assassinited (now a Serb national hero --- just as one can find roads named after Gavrilo Princip, the killer of Franz Ferdinand, all over Serbia today), but the final scorecard read Turkish victory. The Serbs were devastated: In time, they mythologized the loss, engrained it into the national character of celebrating their victimhood and righteousness in the face of apparent oppression (cf. Armenian mythologies or Shiite ones), and turned it into a potent political grudge to be carried against the 'Turks' (just who is a 'Turk' to the Serbs is a changing definition) for all time.
....Meanwhile, the majority of you, unfortunate recipients of email spam and blog updates, ask why any of this is remotely significant... Well, maybe it is not, although this play of victimhood, mythology, and sense of grievance came to a head exactly 600 years later (to the day, just to make it more special), when a grey, colourless functionary of the Yugoslavian Communist Party walked to the site, addressed the assembled Serbs at the muddy, foggy, cold (hopefully not too much so in June, lest someone get pneumonia), damp, etc. and announced that their day of reckoning for past injustice had come. His name was Slobodan Milosevic.
Milosevic, as the contemporary world remembers, unleashed a bizarre, hairbrained, surrealistic (for his grip of reality always was fairly questionable) campaign to create a greater Serbia: It meant three different wars in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia ---- and for us here, the 1999 Kosovo catastrophe. In a last bid to 'right' the wrong of history, Milosevic consulted he, himself, and him (well, perhaps some minstrels on crack or various other court jesters) and declared that the smartest possible course of action (in the wake of the loss of the first three wars --- fourth time lucky? Fairly good odds, say the neutral observer) was to attempt to ethnically cleanse the local Kosovar Albanian population in his 'Operation Horseshoe'. In short, hundreds of thousands were raped, killed, disappeared, or forced to flee in the worst atrocities committed in Europe since the last time Milosevic had gotten out of bed in the morning. He succeeded in depopulating large swathes of the non-Serb inhabitants, but punishing NATO airstrikes and a populace that had finally tired of his daft machinations forced his retreat. Succint synopsis? No, but I'm too lazy to edit it...
But anyway, you got a history lesson because of a muddy, foggy, etc. field.
Milosevic gone, Serb inhabitants scared away (yesterday's oppressed generally do become tomorrow's oppressors), ruins everywhere, a bloated UN and NGO presence driving up the price of rooms (when CNN is paying the bill, there is no reason to bargain --- it kind of sucks for the rest of us, as, when I contacted Atlanta, CNN informed that they were uninterested in footing my bill to walking around muddy fields in Kosovo, cheapskates that they are), Kosovo is an interesting few days of visiting.
Post-war, the province is still marked by rusting Communist era factories and apartment blocks, landmines, NATO troops everywhere (throw a rock and you'll hit a German, Turkish or Hungarian soldier), good sausage, a resilient sense of humour (the old, cackling women on the bus into Kosovo insisted at every opportunity that we weren't entering Kosovo, but were instead on our way to Luxembourg --- upon disembarking I was shocked to learn that Luxembourg generally doesn't feel it necessary to name its streets or light them at night), and international hand-me-down infrastructure:
(Case in point --- most of the city buses in Prishtina have quite obviously not been produced for the local market. I make this rather clever deduction by observing the recurring habit of Prishtina bus drivers of not bothering to erase the bus' original destination routes (laziness to the point of brazenness) even though it was clear the buses weren't going 'home' anytime soon: Thus, if one were to take the bus down either Bil Klinton or Mother Theresa Blvd (yes, those were the only real street names in evidence), one could choose between the Basel (Switzerland) bus, the Klagenfurt Zentrum bus, the Berlin schoolbus, the out-of-order Hamburg service bus or any number of other buses... Examining the local public transport in Prhishtina gave the general impression that Kosovars spend most of their time overseas breaking into German and Swiss bus depots at night, breaking down that gates, and somehow driving undetected across much of Europe back to Kosovo, where they employ the Hamburg school district's finest children transporter in its new capacity of chugging up and down the wide boulevard on which grey, Communist apartment blocks brood...... and probably the only boulevard where an 80sq. metre portrait of Bill Clinton is likely to greet you. Surreal indeed.)
But in general, an interesting getaway, if the possibility of trodding on landmines in muddy fields and barbed wire is so much more captivating than well, whatever other people do with their time off....
But, abruptly, I think that is about the extent to which I shall cause your eyes to glaze over with the minutiae of Kosovo....
Yes, yes, enough.... Perhaps I shall mention at some other point some remarks about Albania, should the stars aline correctly and convince me to scribe once more....
My love to all,
Stefan
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