Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
If you want a bar with good views at Prishtinë, Kosovo you need to walk a little bit. Coming from the city center you’ll need to cross the railway tracks and walk up the hill towards the shiny new buildings and the KFOR camp ‘Film city‘ where once movies were produced. Inside the new Minimax shopping centre you can find the Priview bar. From their seats next to the large glass windows you can watch the lights of the capital city.
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High fences, barbed wire, numerous CCTV cameras, dogs and guards. No sign is leading to this place, there are no other visitors, you are not allowed to take anything inside and you’ll have to hand over your passport to the guards. The Gazimestan monument near Prishtinë, Kosovo is a place you don’t want to be at. But if you want to understand the conflicts between Serbs and Albanians about the Kosovo Polje it is a key element. The medieval-shaped tower built in 1953 contains different nationalistic texts and is dedicated to an important fight in 1389.
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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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Every capital city in the world needs a national gallery – that’s also true for Prishtinë, Kosovo: the Galeria Kombëtare e Kosovës is located in a rather small building (which is very modern inside) which was built in 1935 as a barrack of the Yugoslavian army. The museum exists since 1976 and the building is now mostly used for changing exhibitions of contemporary local and international artists. Even if the state Kosovo is still young there is already a long history of regional artists.
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The Muzeu i Kosovës at Prishtinë, Kosovo is a must-see if your interested in the ancient or younger history of this region. It is located in a nice former military building from 1889 in Austro-Hungarian style in the old city center. The museum dates back to the year 1949 and has two floors: on the lower one you can see an archeological exhibition with the queen on the throne (Mbretëresha në fron) as a highlight – which dates back to the New Stone Age. The upper floor contains items of the Kosovo war.
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The ethnologic museum of Pristhinë, Kosovo is a rather small collection that should be seen as a department of the Museum of Kosovo. It is located in two wonderful ancient buildings in the old city center. The buildings and the items displayed within give a good insight how people at the Kosovo were living at the beginning of the 19th century. You can see furniture, tools, clothing, musical instruments and personal weaponry of this time.
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Prishtinë, the capital city of Kosovo doesn’t have big mosque – even though 95 % of Kosovans are muslims. Therefore the believers use many small mosques throughout the city and in the old city center two beautiful Osman mosques can be found next to each other: the Xhamia e Madhe, the Xhamia e Jashar Pashës and the Xhamia e Çarshisë. When you’re visiting the Kosovo museum or the ethnologic museum take your time to stop there.
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The Biblioteka Kombëtare e Kosovës ‘Pjetër Bogdani’ (BKK) at Pristhinë, Kosovo is maybe the most impressive building of the city. It is the largest library of the Kosovo and was founded at Prizren in 1944. It moved to the new building located at the university area near the city center of Pristhinë in 1982. The building was designed by Andrija Mutnjaković, is decorated with numerous steel elements and has 99 cupolas.
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Islam is the most important religion in Kosovo, 95 % of the Kosovans are muslims. Nevertheless the biggest and most visible house of prayer in Prishtinë is Roman-Catholic: the Mother Teresa Cathedral (Katedralja e së Lumes Nënë Tereza) at the Bulevardi Bill Klinton. While there is still no central big mosque and the muslims need to visit smaller distributed – often ancient – ones the Catholic church wanted to set a sign and the local government accepted and supported this.
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The Nartel Hotel at Prishtinë, Kosovo is an excellent choice if you want to book a room in the quality known from good hotels at home. It is a four star hotel located south of the city center, but it is only a ten minutes walk to reach the interesting places of the city. In fact it was one of only a hand full of hotels that you can book online and the combination of price and location was best. The hotel seems to be often used by diplomats and KFOR/NATO representatives.
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