I was *very* excited about going to Kosovo. I was excited to visit given its history, its location, its politics and its place on the international scene in recent years. I was also excited to be able to say i’ve been to the world’s newest country (newest generally recognised country) – until I remembered that South Sudan exists and was thoroughly disappointed. But regardless, given the few tourists (especially few from the UK) who visit, it would be an exciting new experience.
The drive to Pristina (or Prishtina) from Podgorica was about 340km. This required driving back into Albania, down 100km of single track highway before picking up the 150km long new Tirana – Pristina motorway toward Kosovo. The road back down into Albania was the same route we had taken a week before to get from Tirana to Dubrovnik – and it was equally terrible in the opposite direction. Albanian roads and Albanian driving is not so much hair-brained terror, but more just generally inconveniencing and wholly unpleasant. Too many cars, too many different driving styles and too many lorries on a single track road just leads to delays and queues, and rarely the opportunity to exceed 60kph. Albania also has (and we were warned of this by the Lonely Planet guidebook) some of the weirdest speed limits i’ve ever seen. It isn’t surprising to be happily traveling along at 80kph on a straight, open piece of road – to then pass through a 50kph speed limit sign for no apparent reason. The first couple of times this happened we slowed down – putting us and our car in considerable danger as absolutely none of the traffic around us would slow at all. After eventually giving up slowing down in the nonsensical slow bits and causing Albanians to experience road rage, it was perhaps inevitable that our foreign-plated car would be pulled over for speeding. By ‘speeding’ I mean doing slightly more than 50kph on a road which in England would be national limit – and after being told by the Albanian policeman to ‘be more careful next time’ we were on our way – and they looked for the next foreign car to pull over.
After 100km of rubbish roads we reached the new motorway – an absolute blessing considering it had taken us 2 hours to cover pretty much no distance, and we still had a long way to go. The new motorway is part of an EU funded project to connect the countries of Albania and Kosovo, and cuts the drive from Tirana to Pristina down from 7 hours to just 2 and a half. Albania is Kosovo’s closest regional ally – 97% of Kosovars are ethnic Albanians and during the Kosovo war over 500,000 sought refuge in Albania. In fact, until Kosovo declared independence in 2008, the unofficial flag of the Kosovo region was the Albanian flag. We eventually passed through the border crossing and into Kosovo and it was like entering another world. Albania looks like how you’d expect it – predominantly rural, generally unkept and startlingly underdeveloped. Kosovo appeared to be the exact opposite of this – new, clean, well lit motorways and posh cars on the road. As we headed into Pristina there was more – industry, car garages, shops and retail complexes – making the outskirts of Pristina look more like Birmingham than a country that is still on the verge of war with its closest neighbour.
Another stamp for the passport – this one means visiting Serbia will be more difficult
The first afternoon in Pristina we walked down from our apartment into the city centre. The city centre will never win any awards for its beauty or architecture, but is a bustling hub of a country made up of young people. We visited the ‘Newborn’ monument – erected following Kosovo’s independence and newly painted every year to represent a new part of Kosovo’s developing history. Pristina contains an enormous American school and American university – so we didn’t have to look far to find the ‘Route 66 Diner’ and enjoy cheap burgers and chips.
The Newborn monument in Pristina city centre
Pristina is a great place to have coffee, get ice cream or go out for dinner – but as a tourism hotspot it still has a long way to go. The national museum is closed (and apparently has been for some time) and other tourist sites and monuments are often advertised in media but are yet to materialise. We visited the Ethnographic museum and were shown round by a Kosovar anthropology graduate who told us all about the history of the land, as well as his experience of becoming a refugee in Turkey during the Yugoslav wars. He also told us that he couldn’t believe that the UK was considering leaving the EU – but that is a story for another day.
The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a comprehensive travel guide to all countries and territories, and gives information to UK nationals of dangerous areas and areas to avoid. All other countries and areas we had visited were ‘green’ – i.e. most visits go without problem. Kosovo is predominantly green, other than two ‘orange’ (avoid all but essential travel) provinces on the northern border with Serbia – so naturally I wanted to visit them. I remember reading and hearing about the town of Mitrovica during the Yugoslav wars and during the Kosovo crisis in the late 1990s. The land known of Kosovo is mostly Kosovar Albanians – however there is a small Serbian population in the north. Upon the declaration of Kosovan independence, the Serbs in the northern provinces (backed by Serbia) began a rebellion and the town of Mitrovica became the centre of this (and still today is a key battleground in Kosovo’s political problems). The north of the city is Serb dominated, and the South is Kosovan – with, until very recently, no access across bridges between the areas. As only 40km from Pristina, I was very keen to visit – and we arrived in the sweltering heat of South Mitrovica, by the main bridge crossing.
The bridge is blocked off to all vehicular traffic, and until 2013 was completely closed. Thanks to improvements in relations between Kosovo and its Serb citizens, pedestrians are now able to cross the bridge into North Mitrovica. The northern side is considerably different to the southern side – Serbian flags everywhere, Serbian plated cars everywhere (or no plates at all, which is de rigour in this part of the Balkans to avoid getting your car attacked) and Cyrillic script on all posters and adverts. We didn’t find out, but i’m pretty sure you’d be able to spend Serbian currency here and would be looked at with hate if you tried to use Euros. After a quick walk round the ‘advise against all but essential travel’ area of Northern Mitrovica, we walked back over the bridge and into the south for lunch.
The blockade to stop traffic crossing the bridge between South and North Mitrovica – and the shelled and bombed road on the Serbian side.
We ate lunch in a pizzeria by the bridge – surrounded by military men of many different nationalities. Following the Kosovo peace process, a NATO security force called KFOR was deployed in Kosovo. Made up of Italians, Swiss, Brits etc etc its aim is to ensure peace and stability in Kosovo – a country with no standing army and a fairly new, inexperienced and understaffed police force. The whole experience was slightly surreal, but amazing that just 5 or 6 years after the shelling and bombing of the town that we were able to enjoy lunch looking over one of the bridges that has come to symbolise the political conflict between the different ethnic groups in the region.
This was now the end of our tour round the Balkans, and all that was left was to pack up our things and drive the 75km through Kosovo to the airport where we started in Skopje, Macedonia. Driving through Southern Kosovo at 4am wasn’t difficult, and once we were back on the Macedonian motorway everything felt so normal again. We eventually parked at the airport and boarded a plane back to the delights of Luton.
Saying goodbye to the Skoda after 1,650km round the Balkans
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