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...
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