Here's Bill...

As promised, this is what you see on your way into downtown Pristina from the airport - Bill Clinton Boulevard, complete with pic of Bill. My Albanian language teacher lives in that building so I get to visit Bill every Tuesday and Thursday evening. If you notice, someone painted graffiti below Bill and an advertisement for various Kosovo businesses - it says "Jo Negociata" and "Vetevendosje" - this is the slogan of the opposition party that held protests last weekend -- "No Negotiation -- Self Determination". They have plastered Pristina in their slogan - any building that had any wall space at all now has it covered with their slogan.

The Birds

About an hour after I arrived to Kosovo, I was standing in my new boss' office when this noise interrupted us. A screeching - very high pitched - sounded like it was moving closer and closer to our building, and then it was over us - directly above. I looked up over my boss' shoulder, out his office window, and saw this sea of blackness in the sky - shifting and flowing back and forth - changing directions as one. "Oh, those are Pristina's black birds," said my office director, noticing I had stopped speaking and was now staring out the window. Everyday, he explained, they fly together, hundreds and hundreds of them - all over downtown Pristina. "Where do they end up?", I asked. He said he had no idea, and said that he hardly notices them at all anymore. I asked him to repeat himself, since the screeching sounded him out, but I chose to believe that I too would become immune to the cries.

My first few nights in Pristina, I learned that the birds fly around at dusk - so between 5:30 and 7:30 or so in the evening, and then on some days are up and flying around as early as 4:30, but usually at around 6:30 a.m. They would hang out on the eaves and overhangs of buildings surrounding the hotel where I was staying, then after five, ten minutes, move on elsewhere.

Now I know it is the end of my work day when I hear/see them outside my office window. And now I also know where they sleep.

Indeed, I think there are five trees in all of downtown Pristina (okay, maybe a few more are located around) - and they are in the courtyard of my building, three are right outside my windows. And from my first night here, I learned that the birds may hang out on my hotel's street for a while in the evenings, but they call my courtyard home. At around 8 or so in the evening, outside my building it sounds like a crazy chicken farm sounds (or so I imagine it, or as it was in Napoleon Dynamite, which must be real, right?) - if your windows are open, all other noise is drowned out as hundreds of birds descend onto the scraggly branches of the skinny trees outside my window.

I now have this strange compulsion to read Poe every time I look outside at night at the dozens and dozens of birds perched on the branches mostly with their backs to me. The largest birds are on the top branches, then medium sized, then little ones. It's odd but livable. The problem comes when the teenagers, on the middle branches, or so I imagine them being prepubescent upstarts, start chatting/arguing at 4 in the morning. I do not understand how the good residents of my neighborhood do not cut down these trees. Sometimes, I poke my head through the shades to scare the sh**t out of them, and they fly away but then come back with a vengeance so really no good comes of it. However, I am convinced that a human being can learn to sleep through anything, so will persevere because I love my apartment.

I wonder if Daphne du Maurier ever visited Pristina before penning her novel, The Birds, or perhaps Mr. Hitchcock spent some time here for inspiration. Both these individuals are responsible for my real, and I think, legitimate fear of having my eyes gouged out by maniacal attack birds, should I actually try to photograph them while in residence outside my windows.

However, I shall continue to try and think of a clever way to capture their image and not be pecked to death -- suggestions welcomed.

I have posted some pics from my windows - you can see the trees about which I speak as well as the general view - lots of garbage in the city center - tucked into these courtyards. It's sort of sad - the garbage bins are never overflowing so I don't really get it. I think they are in need of a "Make Pristina Beautiful Day."

My arrival and apartment search

I made it here on February 2nd - exhausted but without problem. All five pieces of checked luggage made it along with me. I piled them precariously onto a luggage cart under the watchful, amused glances of about 8 customs officials who I think were taking bets to see how far I could push the cart before a bag hit the ground. I made it approximately fifty feet - to just outside the terminal door before I hit a barricade by accident and then boom. I hope someone made some money off me. The office manager was waiting for me outside the terminal and off we went to the hotel which was immediately adjacent to my new office.

The road into Pristina is called "Bill Clinton Boulevard" and features a huge portrait of Bill painted on the side of a building as you drive in. He is beloved here, as the head of state who spearheaded the bombing of Serbia in 1999. Indeed, I have been told this is one of the few places in the world where Americans are still liked.

We arrived to the hotel and had the bellman at the hotel utter what I assumed to be an Albanian expletive when the trunk of the SUV was opened and he saw all my luggage - but he got it upstairs to my room. The hotel where my office put me was very nice, smokey, but alas, that is unavoidable here where nearly everyone smokes. On Friday after briefly meeting everyone in the office, I went back to my room at around 6:30, turned on my computer, turned to go get something off my bed and literally woke up 5 hours later. I guess I just passed out after no sleep for 36 or so hours. Anyway, woke up, looked for the plug for the computer because the battery had run down,and discovered that in my brilliance, I failed to bring the correct adapter with me, so no computer all weekend as I scoured every computer and electronics shop I could find in Pristina and no one had an adapter. Luckily, my realtor guy upon looking at what I needed said he would find it. I did not question his ways but he showed up the following Monday in my office with an ancient adapter that fits so I was back in the world of computers once again. Although I subsequently discovered from our office IT guy that you don't need an adapter for a laptop - the power box is an adapter - you just have to change the cord from an American one to one that has a European plug - this is probably general knowledge, but what do I know. So now I have one of the correct cords, and no longer have to worry about setting fire to the outlet because of an overheated converter/adapter.

Our office director arranged for the realtor who showed him around Pristina to meet me and take me around my second day here. He showed me five apartments over my first weekend here. One is beautiful - a small one bedroom with living room with a kitchen straight out of higher end IKEA- and in shades of orange -- as if they knew me! It is five minutes from work - a fifth floor walk up with an inverter - which is a device which keeps certain things running for a few hours in the event of a blackout, which I am told can happen rather frequently - so for example heat and a few lights. The landlady seemed very nice and said she would buy me anything else I needed for the kitchen. Another apartment I saw was rather unattractive but I still considered it for various reasons - a South African woman lives there now and is leaving on February 15th. It is about a thirty minute walk from work but there is a bus that can take me down the hill - so really about a fifteen minute walk - and it is so big - bizarrely big room with a carpet and furniture from the sixties, an older kitchen - with a wood burning stove, and a generator. Oh, and a dryer - the only place I saw with one. It is a house with a bakery downstairs and European Union guys in the apartment upstairs. What was nice about it is it is slightly out of town within walking distance of a big park - it would have a treadmill - the woman is leaving hers - and a dryer, and wood burning heat if I need it - and I could just inherit her life - she said she'd show me around - where to eat, shop, catch a cab, etc.

After thinking it over, I went with the first one -- the more modern one, closer to work. I figure I can venture out of the center on weekends. And so far (three days in), it's been fine. After finding only one towel in the whole place and a broken clothes drying rack, I told my landlady, and her daughter showed up two days later with more towels and a new drying rack (she would have come the next day, but the center was closed because of the protests). I should say that I did try to buy towels on Saturday morning but could not find any store that sold them - downtown Pristina is full of coffee cafes and clothing and shoe boutiques, so if I needed boots in every size and shape, I would have no problem (and it seems that every woman here under the age of 30 has skinny jeans and incredible boots - I saw blue suede stiletto boots with rhinestones yesterday) but a towel -- no chance unless someone points out to you the underpass or side street where there will be a towel shop. I now know, after asking at work, that there is a towel shop in the youth plaza but alas I lacked that knowledge last weekend.

That's all for now...

Finally, I am online from Kosovo. . .

Jetlag and internet issues have kept me from trying out this blogging thing. I have been here 10 days, and they have for the most part been entertaining, amusing, interesting days, and I will try and post some of my first experiences and impressions in Prishtina over the next few days to catch up.

Unfortunately though, I will start with some tragic weekend events in Prishtina. There were opposition party protests that ended in two protesters confirmed dead from injuries sustained from police who were trying to control the crowd (a third protester is reported dead this morning - although it hasn't been confirmed). The protests were held on Saturday a block from my apartment, and the tear gas was still evident in the air as late as Sunday afternoon. I am hearing a lot of criticism of how the police, both local and UN international, handled things, and new protests have been scheduled for this Saturday. It is altering the mood of the city, I think, from what it was when I first arrived on Feb. 2nd, coincidently, on the same day that the UN announced its plan for resolution of the final status of Kosovo.

(If you don't know much about Kosovo - I recommend Wikipedia, or the International Crisis Group reports.) The UN recommendation on the future status of Kosovo was for de facto independence (without ever using the word "independence") for Kosovo from Serbia with a decentralized system that would allow Serb majority enclaves to maintain some ties with Serbia.

My colleague, a Kosovar, who picked me up at the airport on Feb. 2nd, said that in his opinion, most folks were very pleased with the recommendation -- as he put it -- "we can have a party now". Nevertheless, an opposition party, the Kosovar Self-Determination Party, announced that it would hold demonstrations on February 10th, under the slogan "No Negotiation -- Self Determination" - basically, their leader believes only outright independence is acceptable and that anything less should be rejected.

When I heard there would be protests last weekend, I was told that this opposition party is considered radical and not mainstream, but as they have a dynamic leader, he can draw a crowd. He had led another demonstration in December of a couple thousand people that resulted in damage to government buildings. This time around, it looked to be about the same number of people who marched through the center and then faced a police barricade at the square in front of the government building. After a couple hours, the crowd pushed forward and the police reacted with tear gas, rubber bullets and batons. I could hear the tear gas canons being fired, and what I am guessing were the rubber bullets being fired from my apartment, but I didn't venture out. The footage on the nightly news depicted a chaotic scene - with 80 sent to the hospital and forty arrested.

The next morning, we learned two were dead, and two in critical condition. I've heard a lot of criticism as to how the UN and Kosovar authorities handled the protest. Now, with more protests scheduled for Saturday, people anticipate a much greater turnout -- not necessarily because they support what the opposition party stands for, but because they oppose what the Kosovar and international police did. In addition, police presence has been greatly increased throughout the town, and the police have moved in and closed the opposition party's headquarters (down the street from my office) and arrested some of their members. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
. . .