It was another late night last night.   Something about having a whole room to myself just gets me to stay up aimlessly watching YouTube videos.

I finally went to bed at 1:30am and was up bright and early at 9am.

Today I headed to my final city on this trip before my whirlwind 3 days going through Vienna, Zurich, and Lichtenstein to get home.

Buses from Peja to Prishtina run every 20 minutes throughout the day so it didn’t really matter when I got to the bus station.

First thing though was a visit back to the place I had dinner at last night.

I wanted that grilled chicken with salad and coleslaw again!

My entire meal including a side of potatoes and a drink only cost 4.50€ ($7).   What a deal!

Off to the capital

I ended up catching the 11:20 bus and I slept through most of the 90 minute trip.   In fact, a fellow passenger had to tap me to wake me up when we arrived.

I had read that taxis to the center of the city were only 3€ so when I approached the first taxi driver and he quoted 10€, I laughed and just kept walking.   He immediately brought the price down to 5€ but it didn’t even matter if he requoted me 3€, I wasn’t going with him simply for the price gouge at the start.

I walked a little further down and found more taxis.   This guy quoted me 7€, I came back with 5€, and we were off.

The hostel I was reserved for was right next to the Mother Theresa Statue so I was told to just tell the taxi driver to drop me off there.

Problem was, the taxi drivers still had no clue what I was trying to say and just asking for a hotel name.

Finally my guy understood Mother Theresa and drove me there.

Of course he dropped me off at the beginning of Mother Theresa Street and not the statue.   The statue is actually a good 10 minute walk down the pedestrian street.

Oh well, whatever, I’d be at the hostel soon enough.

The most exhausted I ever feel when traveling is when I’m walking to a new hostel with my heavy backpack on.   I end up arriving with my shirt soaked because there’s no ventilation between my backpack and the back of my shirt.

It didn’t help that I had to walk up four flights of stairs to get to the hostel.

But, I made it!

I was ready to checkin!

A little hiccup

As I was checking in, the guy at the desk casually informed me that the hostel was closed tomorrow for a couple of weeks for renovations.

Um, what?

I had booked the place 2 months ago for 2 nights and now as I’m checking in they’re only telling me now that I can only stay tonight and I have to find somewhere else to go tomorrow?

What the hell?

An email would have been nice!

I would have cancelled the booking and just found a different hostel.

Now, I’m literally searching for hostels on the fly.

This was probably the angriest I’ve been when dealing with a hostel but I kept it inside and just sat on the couch scrolling through Hostel World.

Luckily I found another high rated hostel that had availability for both nights so I told the guy at the desk I was cancelling my reservation and going somewhere else.

I walked to the other hostel for about 10 minutes and, at 2pm, I finally checked in for my two day stay in Prishtina.

After taking a nice shower and dropping off my laundry, I headed straight back out 45 minutes later.

Another bus adventure

There was a restaurant I had mapped on my map for a good two months now called Panino Gluten Free.

Yes, the restaurant is actually completely gluten free and it’s highly rated on the Find Me GF app.

Unfortunately, as with most specialty restaurants, it was way on the outskirts of town and a 40 minute walk from the hostel.

No worries though because I actually took the time to map out the bus route to take me there in about 20 minutes.

The bus to catch was the 3C and only ran every half an hour.

I got to my bus stop and then my internet died and I couldn’t look up the bus info anymore on Google Maps.

No big deal normally as I had all the bus stops marked out on my offline map.   The problem was I couldn’t remember if the bus to catch was the 3A, 3B, or 3C.

Bus 3A came and I was about 70% sure that was the bus I needed (it wasn’t) so I hopped on it and watched intently on my offline map as the bus moved from stop to stop.

Then instead of going straight to the next marked stop, it turned right, and I knew at that moment I had caught the wrong bus.

I got off, walked about 15 minutes and finally caught the 3C to get to the restaurant.

Just a quick little aside – my data plan on my esim for Kosovo sucks!   It will have internet and then, just randomly, all of a sudden, the internet just drops out.

Every other country I had no problem, but man, Kosovo internet has not been friendly to me when I’m trying to look up something on the go.

Gluten heaven!

I arrived at Panino Gluten Free at 3:30 and I was overjoyed to see the big word gluten free plastered on the storefront, the wall, the menu, and even the napkins.

On the menu there’s classic dishes like Burek but also pastas, burgers, pizzas, sandwiches and desserts.

I was literally like a little kid at Christmas.   I wanted to try everything!

Eventually I settled on the Four Seasons Pizza which was a combination of different toppings from all their pizzas – mushroom, peppers, ham, and tuna.

As I was waiting for my pizza to be prepared, Bajram the owner of the place stopped by and chatted with me.

He himself is celiac and, in fact, it went undiagnosed for so long that he ended up getting cancer from it which, thankfully, he is now in remission from thanks to stem cells.

Bajram proudly talked about his restaurant and how he created everything from scratch including the pizza dough for the pizza I was about to have.

The pizza itself was great.   The crust was perfect and, ya know, tuna on a pizza ain’t that bad.

I also ordered some Llokuma for dessert which are traditional deep fried dough puffs served with cheese, pepper spread, and jam.

Again, really, really good.

Even his housemade lemonade was amazing.

So, yeah, I really, really enjoyed the meal.

Since my plans for the rest of the night have me staying in the hostel all night, I also ordered some carbonara pasta for takeaway to have later on in the evening.

Man, I loved that place so much that I’m actually working out how many times I’m going to visit there tomorrow.

A night in with Lex

By 5:30 I was back at the hostel.

The plan for tonight was simple.

A couple of days ago, my favorite poker streamer Lex Veldhuis ran very deep in a 10k poker tournament and that tournament concluded tonight at 6:30.

A couple of days ago, my favorite poker streamer Lex Veldhuis ran very deep in a 10k poker tournament and that tournament concluded tonight at 6:30.

There was no way I was missing that even if I was traveling in Kosovo.

So, yeah, that’s what I did for night.   Watched Lex play high stakes poker and ate some amazing gluten free carbonara pasta.

Tomorrow, after almost a week in Kosovo, I finally get to go on a walking tour where I’m excited to learn about the country’s recent history with war, separation from Serbia, and its’ independence.

It’s also my last day in the Balkans before my whirlwind journey over 3 days to get back to Vancouver.

Should be some epic blogs coming up…