Wednesday, September 12

By the time I landed in Frankfurt, I was pretty out of it since I had been traveling since early Monday morning.  The signage was confusing to me, but after walking about 10 minutes, I found a guy who spoke English.  It turned out that the gate number printed on my ticket for my flight to Kosovo was different than the actual gate, and I had to backtrack.  At least I didn’t have to go through customs.  I was hungry since I really didn’t want the roll or most of the breakfast served on the airplane – I just drank some hot tea and had a few pieces of sliced fruit.  I found a “bar” near my gate which had table service and breakfast, but after sitting over 10 minutes and being ignored by two waitresses, I got up and left.  I ventured further down the corridor and found a nice place for breakfast….nice, but expensive.  I think the entire breakfast, including tip cost me around $30, but it was worth it because I had several hours to kill and the food was good.  They had different breakfasts – “French Breakfast”, “German Breakfast”, “American Breakfast”, etc.  I opted for the “Italian Breakfast” which was an omelet with a fresh salad, and I had two cups of hot tea.  That was enough to revive me, and I went to the gate to wait for my plane.  I flew on Adria Air, a Slovenian airline to Pristina.  The flight took a couple of hours from Frankfurt.  They served a small brie sandwich and drinks.  Flying over Montenegro, the mountains were amazingly rugged with no roads in sight.  I arrived in Pristina around 11:30 a.m. local time and was met by a driver from the U.S. Embassy who took me to my hotel.   Everything seemed very different.  The driver talked about how Pristina had changed a lot in the past 50 years – first with the Communist architecture that displaced many of the historic buildings and structures from the past, and then with the recent construction booms that took place without any regulations or codes.  He asked me about the U.S. and whether everyone had election fever.   I said that in Colorado, everyone was sick of the election ads since both sides ran negative ads.  I arrived at my hotel and informed them that I now needed a double since Frank was scheduled to arrive just before midnight.  I arranged for a driver to take me to the airport to meet Frank and took a cab to visit my friend and fellow ELF (English Language Fellow), Stephanie, who is from Ohio.  It was fun visiting Stephanie and seeing her spacious up-to-date 2 bedroom apartment that she rented for just 450 Euros.  She is a single mother and has a cute, four-year-old son named Mauricio.  We had beer and snacks.  Len, a Fullbright fellow from Seattle who is a little younger than I, came and joined us after his evening class.  He is from Seattle and teaches business and accounting at the University of Pristina.  I left Stephanie’s apartment about 10 p.m. and headed back to the hotel just in time to go to the airport with the driver.  Unfortunately, Frank’s plane was almost an hour late, but we were reunited and headed for the hotel and some much needed rest.