Odds and Ends from Annette

If you come to visit us in Prizren, you can take a horse cart ride.  Kadri Palla owns the cart and horse (Rubin).  The cart is an antique that has been on Prizren streets for over 70 years and started out as a taxi service.  You can purchase a ride for 5 Euros, and Rubin can be found most days in Shadervan Square.  

Yet another food item...but I have received many comments from friends and relatives that they like to see the foods that we are offered in restaurants. Also, it helps me remember things we did and places we visited. This is from the only Mexican restaurant in Kosovo, I think.  The restaurant is right off the main plaza in Pristina.  It was a pretty good attempt at a burrito. Of course, I wish the burrito had been smothered in  the hot green chili found in Southern Colorado and New Mexico.  

Living in Kosovo, you get used to hazards when walking down the street.  I'll have to take some photos of walking to the university in Prizren.  Sometimes the sidewalks have big cracks or craters, or sometimes they just disappear and the walker is forced to get into the street.  Another common situation is people parking their cars on the sidewalks (streets are often very narrow with no parking) which forces pedestrians to get in the street.  It's amazing with all of the hazards there don't seem to be many mishaps.  There is a kind of flow to the traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, and somehow, the cars know how to avoid pedestrians and pedestrians have a sense of when they need to get off of the street.  This photo was taken on Nene Teresa (Mother Teresa) Plaza in Pristina.  They are still constructing portions of it.  As you can see, people are walking along and all of a sudden there is a drop with missing blocks of cement and no waning.  You really have to pay attention where you are walking.  In the U.S. this would be a lawsuit just waiting to happen!

In anticipation of trying some international food during our trip this weekend to Macedonia, this photo is of the bento boxes that Frank and I enjoyed on our last trip to Macedonia's capital, Skopje in December. The Japanese restaurant we visited had excellent, fresh food, but it put a dent in our wallet.  We're spoiled by the healthy, fresh offerings in Prizren where we can both eat a nice meal for around 5 Euros (about $6.50).

What...Camels in Kosovo?????

No....this isn't Kosovo.  Since I know that many of the blog readers aren't friends on Facebook, I stole some photos from Chrissy and Elise's photo albums to give you an update about them. Chrissy is spending this semester studying in Jaipur, India through SIT (School for International Training).  Here she is on a camel...she actually went on a  camel safari and slept under the stars a couple of weeks ago.  I think she looks like a natural!

Chrissy is on the the far right in this photo with some of the other students in her program.  She is having a great time and benefiting from many wonderful experiences.  We don't hear from her as often as we're used to, but we're happy that she is busy and making the most of this opportunity.

Chrissy at the Taj Mahal.  She has seen so many sites and will finish up the last 6 weeks doing a capstone project in Mumbai.

Our firstborn daughter, Elise.  She is completing her 3rd year as a researcher in a children's brain cancer lab at the University of California San Francisco.  She and her boyfriend, Matt, are moving to Nashville, Tennessee in August since Matt will begin a doctoral program there.  Elise will probably work for a year  and then enroll in a graduate nurse practitioner program. 

Elise with our grandbunny, Stewie.  He is only about 6 months old, but growing daily.

Chrissy turned 21 in November, and Elise flew to Colorado a couple of weeks later to help her celebrate.  Here they are at the Boulder Brewing Co. having fun sampling some of the local Colorado brews. We are looking forward to visits from both of them in Kosovo in May.  Elise and Matt will be spending a month in Europe and at the end of the trip will come to Kosovo.  We hope to show them the beautiful areas of Kosovo and take some jaunts into Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, and maybe the Greek island of Corfu.  

Chrissy will come to Kosovo in late May and be with us for a couple of months.  She will either attend a summer university program in Pristina for a few weeks or do an internship with an NGO in Kosovo for a month to add to her resume.

Frank and I should have some interesting posts after next weekend.  We're planning to spend Easter weekend in Macedonia.  Frank has been under the weather with a bad cold, and I have been dealing with dentists for the past few weeks.  I found a great oral surgeon last Friday and had a root canal.  He did some of his training at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and his office was very high tech with computers images, etc.  The total cost of the visit was 35 Euros (around $45).  Dentists here are very well trained (usually in Germany or the U.S.) and the charges are very low compared to dental work in the U.S.  Of course, I wish I hadn't needed to have the work done, but I'm glad that my problem is being treated.  Anyway, Frank and I are renting a car and looking forward to exploring more of Macedonia outside of the capital, Skopje, which we visited in December.

Updates and Past Due Comments by Annette

     Hello.  It's been a while since I posted something, and there are a few photos that I have wanted to share,  but I never got around to actually finishing the task.  Over the next few days, I hope to finally put some of these photos on the blog with comments.  

     Today was a typical unpredictable day in Kosovo. Last night, I had several tasks to do on the Internet, but the power went off twice, and I finally gave up and made my way to bed with Frank's headband light beam (I guess from his mining days??) on my forehead.  I went to sleep and woke up to take a quick shower.  Whenever I take a shower here, I am always aware that at any time the power could go off - it happens at least 4 or 5 times a month.  If the power goes off, we also lose water since water is sent to the apartments via a pump.  Thankfully, so far I have never been caught in the shower all soaped up when the electricity was gone.  If it does happen, we have liter bottles of water filled and ready for rinsing off, but that would be a cold, uncomfortable experience!  We also use these bottles to wash our hands and brush our teeth when needed.  Anyway, the power went off two more times this morning, so I finally was happy to get out of the apartment and set off for the university where there was power.  As my students constantly remind me with a smile, "This is Kosovo."

     My cab driver didn't speak English, but I was pleasantly surprised when he said, "Parlez-vous francais?"  As most of you know, I was a French high school teacher in my younger days, so I always love any opportunity to brush up on my skills.  The cab driver spoke good French, but he was as much out of practice as I was.  He had lived in the French-speaking part of Switzerland during the war here, and he went to French-speaking schools and then returned to Kosovo after the war.  Leaving the cab, I walked into the university and made my way down to the library storage area where I have a few shelves to stow away materials.  In the library, I speak German to the woman custodian named Susanna whose phone number I keep on speed dial just in case the library is locked and I can't access my materials.  As you can see, one has to be flexible to live here, but the people are delightful and always happy to help, especially if you're American.

   Well, here are the photos.....

Frank and I in the Prizren City Center with the Sinan Pasha Mosque (from 1615) and the fortress on the hill (a place of defense and refuge since prehistoric times) in the background.

This is after a climb up the steep hill from Shadervan Square to the fortress.  The photo was taken inside of the fortress in December 2012.

Part of the interior of the fortress

The site was used exclusively as a fortress until 1912.  

Another view of us at the fortress with our walking poles.  The fortress hill is accessible via a very steep road and pathway from the city center and about a 15 minute walk.  As many of you know, I injured my knee in a fall walking around our neighborhood in Pueblo in August, and the knee has bothered me off and on since.  I am very proud that I can finally walk to the fortress and have been there 4 times.  Now that the weather is getting warmer, I hope to make it at least a weekly excursion via the back way up the fortress.  The back way is several miles long, but a beautiful walk along the river and a small creek.  It is a nicely graded path all the way to the fortress, and many locals (especially retirees) can be seen making the trek, especially on weekends.

A view of Prizren from the fortress taken through the fortress entrance

This wouldn't be a Charron blog without some photos of food...actually, Frank thinks it's ridiculous that I always want to take photos of our meals in restaurants, but I think a picture is better than a thousand words! This is a photo taken in December 2012 of our bento boxes at a Japanese restaurant in Skopje, Macedonia (about a 3 hour bus ride from Prizren). Whenever we leave Prizren, we always are on the lookout for international restaurants. Prizren has delicious, healthy, fresh food in restaurants, but not much variety and not any choices outside of Qebap (grilled, spiced, minced sausages), grilled meats, pizza, and a few pasta dishes. This Japanese meal in Skopje was very good, but it cost us probably at least 6 times a dinner out in a nice restaurant in Prizren would cost.

Finally, the end of our trip!

Please bear with me a bit more!  I promise it will end soon.  We dropped off our little red VW at the Dubrovnik airport and took a taxi across the border to the town of Hercig Novi in Montenegro.  Our taxi driver was a professional race car driver so he got us to the bus station in plenty of time for our bus to Ulcinj.  It also helped that the border crossing guard was a buddy of his, so we quickly made it through the passport check station.  Our bus trip along the entire coast of Montenegro cost 17 euros for both of us, a bargain for a scenic 3 1/2 hour tour.

It was nice to do some sightseeing without worrying about driving off a cliff or something, like I had been doing for the past 10 days.  Annette was snapping pictures the entire way, so you may see some reflections off the bus window, but we just want to give everyone an idea of what we saw along the route.

Most of the trip was going around the entire perimeter of Kotor Bay, a huge natural bay.  The mountains go right from the water's edge up to elevations of 2000' to 3000', so the road hugs the coast the entire way.

We passed the St. George Monastery, located on a tiny island in the bay, and other pretty views like the one below.

We passed through the old city of Kotor, which is one of the best preserved medieval towns in the region.  The photo below shows some of the protective wall around the old city as well as part of the 5 kilometer long defensive wall built on the hillside surrounding the town.  We hope to get back to Kotor to explore, since it looked like a very interesting place to spend a day or two.

Our bus held maybe 20 passengers, it was about the size of an airport shuttle, and somewhere along the line a scruffy looking older fellow got on who just might have been drinking a little too much that morning.  He was sitting a little behind us and must have thought the bus needed some additional entertainment, so he started singing along with some of the songs that are played on all buses in this part of the world.  Nothing better than being serenaded by a drunk Montenegrin in a small bus for about a half hour.  Sadly he asked the driver to let him off somewhere in the middle of nowhere, but Annette got a picture before he walked away.

A bit later we passed a little island town, which thanks to Google Earth I just figured out is called Sveti Stefan.

It was apparently a real town at one time but during the Yugoslavia days it was turned into a luxury resort that was very popular with Hollywood stars and royalty from the 60s to the 80s.  It is named after St. Stephen, and like St. Stephen became a bit of a martyr after the breakup of Yugoslavia, falling into disrepair and neglect.  In the mid-2000s the Montenegro government put out bids to refurbish the resort, and it reopened in 2010 and is now a 5-star resort.

One final pretty view, then we turned off to the bus station at Ulcinj, on the coast near the Albanian border.  Ulcinj is a pretty beach town with a fort on a cliff, but all we saw for 4 hours was the run-down bus station since we were baby-sitting our luggage.  We were hoping the bus from Ulcinj to Prizren would be bigger, so we could have plenty of room for our bags and be able to stretch out a bit, but it turned out to be an even smaller bus.  But at 6:00 PM the full bus departed and went off through the narrow, winding mountain roads in the rain toward Prizren, arriving around 10:00 PM to bring an end to our fun 3 week journey.  It felt good to get back to sleepy little Prizren.

One last day in Croatia

After several days of cool and cloudy weather we awoke to bright sunshine, so I have to show another view from our hotel room with blue skies and bright lighting.

We had left the car in the parking garage for awhile, but decided to do a little car touring on our last day in Dubrovnik.  We dropped down the hill and worked our way around the harbor to the peninsula shown above, then back to the south toward the walled city, where Annette wanted to buy some things she had seen the day before.  So, while she did that I roamed around to the north of the walled city with the intention of going to see the exhibits at the Revelin Fortress.  However, I could never find the proper path to the Fortress so just wandered around and snapped some photos from different vantage points.

With a bag of souvenirs and a lot fewer kunas in our pockets we headed toward the small town of Cavtat, which our guidebook said was worth a visit.  The road hugged the steep cliffs and provided a nice view back to Dubrovnik.

The second shot is zoomed in on the old walled city, on the water's edge in the left foreground.  We soon came to Cavtat, a pretty little coastal town about 18 kilometers south of Dubrovnik.  There are several small churches in Cavtat that we visited, but the main draw is a cemetery on a hilltop overlooking the Adriatic.  In the early 1920s a prominent family in Cavtat commissioned the famous Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic to design and build a mausoleum in the cemetery.  The mausoleum can be seen at the top of the hill in the photo below.  You may be able to see it if you click on the photo to enlarge the image.  We could sorta see some statues by Mestrovic through the keyhole of the mausoleum, but unfortunately it was locked when we visited.

We roamed around Cavtat for a few hours, had dinner and returned to Dubrovnik after dark.  On the way back I pulled into an INA gas station to fill up the car, since we would be dropping it off at the Dubrovnik airport the next morning.  After gassing up I pulled back on the road and was quickly stopped by a Croatian policeman.  Since we were near the border with Montenegro I thought it must be some sort of an immigration check, but it turns out I crossed a solid white line on the road when I left the INA station.  It was a situation where you could only access the gas station legally if you were heading south on the road, but I was heading north, so I actually illegally crossed the solid line twice.  I apparently played the "dumb American" role well and with his limited English he seemed to get pretty frustrated with me and just motioned for me to go on my way. It wasn't until the next morning when we passed the gas station again that we actually figured out what the problem was the night before.  So, luckily I didn't spend my last night in Croatia in a jail cell.

Dubrovnik

We left Medjugorje in the early afternoon and had a fairly short but scenic drive to Dubrovnik.

 

Many of the narrow bays and channels as we approached Dubrovnik had extensive aquaculture developments, like this part of Ston Bay.  The lines of floats seen in the foreground support ropes on which mussels are grown and harvested.  We saw many similar aquaculture sites in the protected waters around Dubrovnik and in Montenegro a few days later.  We had made a reservation for a sea-view room at a traditional hotel on the outskirts of Dubrovnik, and were very happy we had done so, since the view was well worth the extra cost.  We arrived as the sun was setting, so spent about an hour on the patio of our room just watching Mother Nature's spectacular show.

 The next morning was cloudy and cold but the view from the room was still worth a few more photos.

This is Gruz harbor, a couple kilometers from the old walled city.  It is Dubrovnik's main commercial harbor with ferries to outlying islands coming and going as well as smaller cruise ships that would dock at night.  Most of the cruise ships that we saw were probably in the 150 to 300 passenger range; we did not see any of the huge cruise ships that carry thousands of passengers.  After a hearty breakfast at Hotel Adria we took their shuttle to the walled city for a day of exploring.  It is basically impossible to take a bad photo in Dubrovnik, so I'm just going to pick a bunch from the hundreds we took and try to offer a little explanation as we go.

Approaching the city and crossing the bridge over the old moat (now a playground and garden) to one of the gates to the walled city.

Some street scenes within the walled city.  The last photo shows the Church of St. Blaise, who is the patron saint of Dubrovnik.  One of the city's biggest celebrations of the year is on St. Blaise's holy day, which we missed by a few days.  But much of the city was still decorated with big garlands of what looked like bay leaves and large flags and banners depicting St. Blaise. We wandered around the streets of the city for a few hours, checking out the local Croatian arts & crafts stores and coffee shops, then decided to do the walking tour around the city walls.

 Annette ascending the stairs to the top of the wall.  The trip around was nearly 2 kilometers and someone told me it had 744 steps.

The Revelin Fortress across the cove was built in the 15th century to help protect Dubrovnik from potential threats from the Venetians.  It is now used as a museum and for archeological exhibits.  The history of Dubrovnik to too extensive to summarize here, except to say that it is long and complex and almost every power on this side of the globe controlled Dubrovnik at one time or another.  From the 14th to the early 19th century Dubrovnik was an independent republic, reaching the pinnacle of its prominence in the first two centuries of that period. 

I suspect there were many more cannons on the top of the wall in the past.

I tried to lock her up but she got away!

  Lokrum Island is in the distance.  It is a popular destination for visitors, being a nature preserve with trails and swimming beaches, and can be reached by boat in about 15 minutes.  Due to the cool weather we passed on a visit.

This is the other harbor in Dubrovnik, located adjacent to the walled city.  This one seems to have only small boats, no docks for larger ships.

Even living in a UNESCO World Heritage site you still have to deal with dirty laundry.

In 1991 Dubrovnik was shelled by Montenegrin forces loyal to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.  The siege lasted 7 months and more than 100 civilians were killed, even though the walled city had no military importance.  Over half of the structures in Dubrovnik were destroyed or damaged.  The photo above shows a comparison of the old undamaged roofs and the brighter-colored repaired tile roofs.

After our tour of the wall we felt like this little resident of Dubrovnik, so returned to our hotel for a nap.  A few hours later we returned to the walled city for a nice (but quite expensive) dinner and we attended a performance of the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra in a small theater.  It was a fun show of various opera arias and the orchestra members were all dressed in costumes to celebrate the pre-Lent "Karneval".

It was a long but fun day in a very beautiful city!  We highly recommend a visit to Dubrovnik - it should be on everyone's bucket list.