Day 15: The Kosovo Border Situation and its National Complexity

5/21/22

A lot happened today, so buckle up for adventures, both beautiful and important!

We had another very early morning, hopped on the bus, and set off south for Kosovo.

We arrived to the border crossing between Serbia and Kosovo a little before 9:30am.

Both Serbia and Kosovo have their own gates and buildings, and it was interesting how low-key and unofficial the Serbian agents simple jumpsuits were compared to Kosovo's agents, which utilized national emblems and official language like "border control" on their uniforms. This is almost certainly because Serbia wants to recognize Kosovo as little as possible, and Kosovo wants to be taken as legitimately as possible.

However, the agents told us that they don't recognize Serbian passports as valid documents, and asked for the ID card. When our advisor presented, a paper copy of the ID card they wanted wasn't even enough for them!

The members of our group with Serbian passports were told before arrival that either the passport or an ID card would work and they should not run into trouble. This must have been a very new development...

To me, this seems counter intuitive! Since Kosovo wants to be recognized by Serbia, it should ask for their passports instead of their ID card, since this is what is normal at international borders.

We waited for a while as my advisors tried to reason with them saying, we came all the way here to study the area and we needed our driver (duh), but they were exceptionally deaf, and we had to turn around into no man's land, and then back into Serbia. We contacted a few offices in Kosovo, including the U.S. embassy, but we had a hard time getting in contact with anyone due to it being Saturday.

So, we waited for a while in no man's land to assess the situation and figure out possible solutions and to see if anyone would get back to us. We still however managed to have a little fun in this situation!

Our teammate Joey had a guitar he bought. We sang Dixieland delight in No Man's Land... Outlaw Country!

Then we heard that the driver’s friend would bring him his ID- what a good friend, that's a five hours drive!

As tense as the situation seems, it offered us a chance to see the recognition conflict play out in front of us!

We then decided to go back through Serbian customs, and have some activities just north of the border. We got lunch first and foremost- we were hungry and definitely needed to use the bathroom.

We had delicious rabbit soup and presumably also rabbit meat.

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Then, we heard we would go to a place called Devil's Town. Had no idea going into it what it actually was, and we really were just killing time until the driver got his ID, but it ended up being very cool!!!

It is an area of unique natural features- very naturally acidic spring water and a series of rock spires, together these form Devil's Town. Legend is that the devil was angry at the good way the people there lived, so he made the water acidic.

On the trail up, we passed the Red Well, a natural spring of extremely acidic water. It has a pH of 3.5.

The guide said this was still safe to drink (though I wasn't about to try), and my daring friend said it tried it, determining it tasted as if she gargled penny water. LOL!

There's another spring called the Devil's Spring, which is toxic to drink- a pH of a whopping 1.5. That's almost as acidic as stomach acid!

We climbed the stairs and reached the view of the towers. The legend behind the towers is that the people drank the acidic water, and went a little crazy and arranged a wedding between a brother and sister- a fairy stopped them by turning the wedding party into stone. The two largest ones are the bride and groom, and the one off to the side is the flag bearer. Minus that wild story, the rock towers are so strange and cool looking.

They're a lot taller than they look here. They're from 2 to 15 meters (6 to 45 ft) high!

The one stone at the top protects the rest of the pillar from erosion! If it falls off, the tower erodes until the next stone is exposed.

Also at the top of the mountain was a chapel dedicated to Saint Petka, healer and protector of women. The myth goes that you take a piece of tissue and touch the part of your body that hurts with it, and tie it to a branch in the church and leave it there. I did this of course- fingers crossed.

There has been a chapel here since at least the 1200's, and possibly even 400 years earlier than that based on studies of the foundation- SUPER ancient.

I took 60 seconds in silence to listen to the sounds of the forest, and I imagined myself in here hundreds of years ago: in this timeless forest, hearing the same sounds and seeing the same trees.

Then, we got the call that the driver's friend had arrived! We got the ID, cheered, and went on our way.

Just to give you an idea of how awesome a dude our driver is, he stopped the van and at first we weren't sure why, but then we saw a turtle in the road. He got out, and brought it to the other side of the road. :)

Back at the border, there was plenty of peacocking, just like earlier. The officers were upset that we were back with proper documents, but we were let through.

The group was finally able to cross the border into Kosovo a little before 5pm and resume our program, 8hrs later. which meant a short time in Mitrovica, our first stop.

We covered the Serbian flags on our license plates with tape provided by the border.

Every car that came from Serbia also did this. My guess is that this is for safety. Here's how it looks on another car.

Mitrovica is a northern Kosovo city, and it is a divided city. There is an Albanian majority throughout the country and this city is no different, but the north part of the city is a the almost *strictly* Serb neighborhood. There, they have an Orthodox church and speak Serbian, but once you cross the bridge, people speak Albanian, and you find instead an abundance of mosques. Serbs are by definition Orthodox, and Albanians Muslim. The two languages are very different. In Yugoslavia, the stellar education system actually taught the languages of their neighbors, but today very few people know the other's language, which poses another challenge.

The streets were full of Serbian flags in the enclave, and Kosovo and Albanian flags everywhere else. Flags are even more important here than in the US because of the region's focus on national and ethnic identity.

The two parts are divided by a river and a bridge, when you cross it you enter the Albanian or Serbian part of town. What a great irony- bridges are made to connect people, but this one divides them! Apparently, the Kosovo Albanians go to the Serb part of town more than the Serbs leave their enclave. This is obviously not conducive to building community, and separates the city into two distinct parts.

There are Italian police stationed on it, but apparently all they do is stand there and watch porn on their laptops (heard this from a primary source). They're there to be a stabilizing force by NATO from what I can gather.

Then, we drove more and headed to Priština, the capital of Kosovo. We will spend the next few days here. I can't wait to tell you more about this interesting city.

Hope you enjoyed today's very eventful happenings. It all worked out, and we had fun.

Ćao for now <3