Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
It’s an observation I made on the Balkans and also in the Baltic states, but nowhere else – maybe it is a tradition coming from the Eastern bloc or it’s only seen there because the regulations aren’t as strict as in western European countries: miniature electric cars for kids. On major public spaces you can find them for rental and kids cruise around having a lot of fun.
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Mitrovicë isn’t the most beautiful city of Kosovo. It has mountains behind like Prizren, but these are the mountains used to mine for ore. Yet it is sensible to get here because it is a place where the ethnic conflicts of the country get very visible. Kosovo (or ‘KosMet’, Kosovo i Metohija) wanted to become independent from Serbia because of its Albanian majority – but that doesn’t account for the whole area. There are cities with Turkish or Serbian majority and a lots of minorities like Roma, Ashkali, Gorani or Egyptians. Especially the north of Kosovo with the green border to Serbia has a Serbian majority.
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I came into contact with the Albanian language three times – in Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo (it is also official language in North Macedonia). Every time I had the same feeling like with Dutch: I can read it and understand quite a lot, but listening to somebody speaking it I can’t even separate the words in my head. It is an Indo-European language with 7.6 million speakers around the world.
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The name Prizren still triggers memories of the Kosovo war in my head. If you get close to it you immediatly see its beauty: with the high mountains in the background carrying the Kalaja fortress that protected the city located at an important trade route from Albania to the Kosovo Polje. In the center there is the fantastic mosque Xhamia e Sinan Pashës located at the river Lumbardhi. An ancient bridge made of rock – the Ura e Gurit – spans the river and minded my much of Sarajevo.
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If you get to Kosovo you will definitely get to know something about the Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës, the Kosovan liberation army. Throughout the country you can find big memorials for their fallen soldiers. The UÇK was formed in 1994 to achieve independence of Kosovo from Serbia and to fight what was seen as Serbian occupation. What started with acts of terror ended with the UÇK being an accepted ally of NATO during Kosovo war.
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The Kosovo is in a special geographic situation – a large valley with different mountains at its borders and no access to the sea. There are some rivers like the Drin and the Ibër and only few lakes, most of them glacial lakes. That is why there are also some artificial lakes created especially for ensuring drinking water supply. If you’re at Prishtinë two lakes are not too far away: the Liqeni e Battlavës and the Liqeni e Badovcit.
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Prishtinë is the capital city of Kosovo, the biggest city in the country and located in the heart of the Kosovo Polje. Its origins date back to the first century CE as you can see at the archaeological site Ulpiana. Prishtinë is a nice place to visit with surprisingly shaped buildings, small museums and many nice restaurants and bars. For someone used to old cities with clearly visible structures the city feels a bit unplanned and scattered.
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Driving a car in Kosovo is for sure possible – but I wouldn’t take my own car there. The road conditions are very good concerning motorways and major roads, but other roads are very bad. Outside of cities you might find yourself very soon on unpaved roads with a lot of water-filled holes and even in the outer areas of cities this can happen faster then you might think. But you will find a lot of car rental companies at the airport (including the big international companies).
Continue reading “Navigation”
Kassel, Germany isn’t known to be a city with big fairs – but yes it has a fair ground. It is used for concerts, handball matches of the team MT Melsungen, flea markets, antique markets and some rather unknown fairs. The fair grounds (‘Messegelände‘) are located in the south of the city next to river Fulda, the Bugasee and motorway A49 – Kassel-Waldau is the motorway exit you need to take.
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If you tell someone in the west of Germany that you intend to spend a weekend at Chemnitz you will create a lot of astonishment. The city is located in the very east of the country, close to the Erzgebirge (ore mountains) and not too far away from the border to the Czech Republic. Its name sounds a bit strange, it is not known to be a beautiful city and in the media you can only find strange stories. The majority of people in Saxonia is rather conservative and there are is also a far too big fraction of people accepting or supporting fascists.
Continue reading “Karl-Marx-Stadt”