As Frank posted last week, we rented a car for 10 days in Skopje, Macedonia. It is problematic to rent cars in Kosovo - many rental agencies don't allow you to take cars into Kosovo or charge extra fees for doing so. Some Fullbright friends in Pristina had rented a car over the Christmas holidays in Skopje, so we got the information from them and rented a nice little Fiat that we could take into any surrounding countries for just 35 Euros extra.
We wanted to visit another English Language Fellow who is living in Nis, Serbia since we had the car, so we planned a trip for the long weekend. (I don't have any classes or regular work on Fridays and Mondays, so I always have 4-day weekends; this week, Tuesday was Europe Day, and Kosovo also celebrated that, so my classes were cancelled.) I had a luncheon at the American Embassy in Pristina on Friday afternoon, so we spent the night in Pristina and headed off for Serbia the next morning.
The drive should have only been 4 or 5 hours, but took much longer. This post and most of the photos involve all of the road hazards we had to deal with within the span of about 3 hours in Southern Kosovo. Looking back, it is kind of funny, and we did laugh at times during the trip; we also got very frustrated at times. Above, you can see a common vehicle in Kosovo. It is a cart with a motor like a lawnmower motor. In Prizren, we see these all of the time - usually operated by farmers or cut wood providers who are bringing their produce or wood from villages to Prizren to sell. When you get behind one of these things, the traffic moves at a snail's pace.
We see signs like the one above often on highways or main streets in Kosovo. We're not sure what the sign means. With KFOR troops still stationed throughout Kosovo, I guess the sign referring to tanks isn't that surprising. If anyone can interpret this sign, we would appreciate a translation!
After leaving Pristina, we eventually had to drive through one of the other major towns in Kosovo - Gjilane. Driving in cities is problematic because in a major town, there might be only one or two stoplights. Some major intersections might have a roundabout for controlling traffic(where you basically have to play chicken with the other drivers), but usually, as seen above, it is every man (or woman) for himself. It took us about an hour just to drive through Gjilane, and many of the streets were narrow with cars, pedestrians, and other obstacles everywhere.
This is an example of "other obstacles" that I was talking about even though this was outside of Gjilane on the way to the Serbian border.
Yet another lawnmower-motorized cart - this one coming towards us!
You have to watch out for the sheep, too!
And don't forget the poor chickens! In one place on this afternoon, there were actually a few chickens who passed in front of our car.
We were glad that the horse and cart were approaching us and not right in front of us, slowing down traffic!
After driving through Gjilane and trying to cross the Serbian border within about 30 minutes of Gjilane, we were turned away by the border officials. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo as a separate country, and if you try to enter Serbia from Kosovo without having a stamp in your passport indicating that you already had legally entered Serbia, the officials accuse you of being in Serbia illegally and turn you away. We had heard that this problem had been solved at the end of last year, and that we could enter Serbia even though we didn't have an entry stamp in our passports. We we wrong. The Serbian border guards were very unfriendly and sternly told us that we had to turn around and go back. Unfortunately, this added an additional 4 or 5 hours to our trip because we had to go into Macedonia and then enter Serbia from there. Here is a link to a map of the area if you want to see how we were traveling from Pristina, Kosovo to Nis, Serbia:
http://www.collinsmaps.com/maps/Kosovo/216318C.aspx
On our way to Macedonia, we had to backtrack. Due to non-existent road signage, we didn't realize that we missed the entrance to the main road going south to Macedonia when we got near another big Kosovo town, Ferizaj. Unfortunately, we wasted another 30 minutes or so navigating through the town. Once you're in a Kosovo town, it takes a while to get out since there are few roads that go through the entire town, so you just have to persevere and keep on driving. Most roads navigate in an indirect way through the town. As you can see, a driver not only has to worry about cars coming from all directions, but also there are pedestrians and bicyclists added to the mix. Here, a guy with a cart full of potatoes walked in front of us. In one tight spot with cars all around and only a small space between us and the car in front of us, a bicyclist came out of nowhere and sneaked between us and the car in front - luckily, Frank was totally stopped and not getting ready to accelerate. Pedestrians are a big concern for drivers because often the streets are narrow, and since there is no parking, cars go up on the curb and park on the sidewalk. Pedestrians are often forced to walk in the street because cars are all over the sidewalk, or sometimes the sidewalk just disappears because it is on an old narrow alleyway where there is no room for the sidewalk in places.
More pedestrians in Gjilane.
I'll end this post with a few photos that capture the religious diversity in Kosovo. Here is a mosque in Gjilane.
This is a Serbian Orthodox church outside of Gjilane.
A few of these remind me of India.. but here there are camel-driven carts, elephants, monkeys, auto-rickshaws and wayyyy more people. Looks like I will kind of be at home in Kosovo though :)
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