Okay!   My last day in the Balkans!

After going to bed at midnight last night, I was woken up by the bright light coming through the windows at 7am this morning.

There’s blinds on the windows but they don’t cover the edges so the minute the sun comes up, the room is lit up.

No worries though cause I had a plan today.

Closed?

I had a walking tour at 10am but, more importantly, I wanted to hit that gluten free place Panino for all my meals today.

So, that meant an early morning bus ride out to Panino before the walking tour.

The place is 3.5km away but only a 10 minute bus ride.   Of course that bus only runs every half hour so you have to time it just right.

I was double checking the route on Google Maps and noticed on their business hour listings that they had the place marked as closed on Sundays.

Nooooooooooooo!

My day in shambles!

I wanted the burek, the sandwich, the dessert!

Oh my God.

There was so much I wanted to still try!

Well, guess I’ll be winging it today then…

Free Walking Tour?

Finding a free walking tour in Kosovo has proven to be very difficult.   The one in Prizren wasn’t running any more and there wasn’t one in the small town of Peja.

Prishtina was my last bet and even that wasn’t a sure thing as the internet was kind of wishy washy as to whether this tour ran as well.

Thankfully, the guy at the hostel confirmed over the phone last night that the tour was indeed running at 10am today so all was good.

Finally a free walking tour in Kosovo.

I’ve probably been on over 100 walking tours but I was pretty excited for this one.   There’s alot of recent history what with the war in 1998-99 and their independence only 15 short years ago.

The meeting point for the tour had been taken over by the Prishtina Marathon running today.   In fact, the meeting point was pretty much where the start/finish line was.

And for a good 15 minutes there while I was waiting for 10:00 to roll around, I still wasn’t sure if the walking tour would be happening.

Eventually I saw other people waiting to the side of the building but still no tour guide.

Finally, our tour guide came around the corner right at 10am.

Phew.

Free Walking Tour!

I found it really interesting that our tour guide almost avoided talking about Kosovo’s recent history.   He eluded to the “recent war” a few times but really didn’t get too deep into it.

I felt like he wanted to show Kosovo in a different light and wanted to change our perceptions of Kosovo as “the country that had that war”.

I mean, this is good and bad.

A big part of me wanted to know everything about the war and how he, as a 10 year old boy, grew up with it but I also understood why he wanted to portray Kosovo in a different light as a tour guide representing his country.

Some things I found along the way…

There is still animosity brewing below the surface between the Serbs and Kosavars.

As a tourist, crossing from Serbia into Kosovo is no problem but if I want to cross the border in the opposite way I may have problems coming in from Kosovo as Serbia still doesn’t recognize Kosovo as an independent country.

To that end, if locals drive over the border, the border control will actually cover up the Kosovo or Serbian flag on the license plates with white tape as they don’t want to show each others’ flags in their country.

I asked our guide why there weren’t really any Kosovian flags flying anywhere and, in fact, I saw more Albanian flags flying around than Kosovian.

His answer was that while the people were very proud of gaining their independence in 2008, they still were also 90% Albanian and were even more proud of that fact.

NATO has been here peace keeping since the end of the war in 1999.

I noticed a group of soldiers the other day in Peja wearing combat fatigues with Italy patches on their shoulders and today I saw a couple of guards with Slovenian patches.

There’s also a fear of war or unrest that’s always brewing in Kosovo.   NATO can protect them from a Serbian invasion but they are unable to act on domestic civil insurgencies and that’s the worry.

There are rumors that the Russians are helping insurgents in the north of Kosovo and that the war in Ukraine is actually leaving Kosovo wearing as some of the NATO troops have been redeployed in Ukraine instead of here.

It’s actually quite fascinating to learn these little things and to be in a place that seems stable but still has a change, albeit slim at the moment, of being in another war in the coming years.

A couple other things…

There are alot of stray dogs around.   In fact, we had one dog literally follow us from stop to stop for the first hour of the tour and then he found some bread on the side of the road and we became more interested with that.

No worries though because we soon picked up not one, but four more dogs that just followed us til the end of the tour.

Oh yeah, and door frames in houses were built shorter so people were literally forced to bow as they entered someone’s building to show respect.

Just thought I’d throw that last one in cause I found it kind of interesting.

A walk over to Bill

After the tour ended at noon, I decided to just walk the 15 minutes over to Bill Clinton Street and see if I could find the infamous Bill Clinton statue.

There is alot of love for different US politicians here for their help in the war in 1999.

Bill Clinton was, of course, president at the time but there’s also a statue of Bob Dole, homage to Madeline Albright and even a street named after Bo Biden who served in Kosovo before he died of brain cancer.

The statue itself was, well, a typical statue but it was in front of big banners hanging from the building behind it commemorating him.

Honestly, it was just something cool to see.

Lunch and an Instagram message

I headed back into town and found a little donair place where I went for my fast food go-to on this trip…

Donair on a plate.

It’s all the donair meat shaved onto the plate with a salad and no bread.

Perfect for celiacs like me!

As I was eating my lunch, I got a message on Instagram.

Earlier in the morning I had sent a DM to Panino Gluten Free to ask if Google was right and that they were closed today.

The response was that they were wrong and they were, indeed, open today.

Sonofabitch!

Thanks Google!

My glorious plan of 3 meals at Panino were in ruins because Google was stupid.

Shame they hadn’t DM’d me a half hour later as I got the message as I had just finished my lunch.

Oh well, at least I can go there for dinner tonight, so, there’s that.

I got back to the hostel around 2pm and was feeling pretty tired.   I really hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep last night and, of course, I was up bright and early this morning.

After figuring out some stuff for Vienna, Zurich and Lichtenstein for the next couple of days, I just crashed in bed and had a nap for a couple of hours.

Dinner and thunderstorms

As early as a few days ago, the weather forecast for today had been rain.

When I checked the weather for today, it showed that rain was expected at 3pm.

Well, 3pm came and went and while it was a cloudy 21C, there still wasn’t any rain.

Now it was predicting rain at 8pm.

As I headed out for dinner at 6:30, that prediction was now 10pm.

Awesome!   I’d be home well before the rain came if it even came at all.

As I left the hostel, it was a little chillier and I did contemplate walking back inside to change to pants but I had a bus to catch and said bus only ran every half an hour.

I got to Panino Gluten Free at about 7pm and today I tried the Philly Cheesesteak.

Holy crap!   That was damn good!

The bread was so fresh.   Like the softest, freshest gluten free bread I’ve ever had.

And the sandwich was so filling that I didn’t think I’d have room for dessert.

Ah, who are we kidding?

Of course I had dessert!

You really think I’d miss out on a piece of gluten free cake?

I also got an order of meat burek to have for breakfast tomorrow before I head to the airport.

As I was eating my dinner, the skies opened up.

Like thunder and lightening was full on and it was pouring rain.

Oh crap!

This was gonna be an adventure getting home.

I had a 7 minute walk to the bus stop and another 7 minute walk when I got off the bus.

In the pouring rain…

In shorts and a t-shirt…

I mentally prepared myself to get drenched and moved my wallet and passport from the outer pocket of my daypack to the inside cause I knew that bag was gonna get soaked.

And then a funny thing happened…

It stopped raining as I was eating dessert!

Yes.   Yes.   Yes!

I got so lucky!

I paid the bill and quickly rushed out of there as I didn’t know if the rain was coming back.

It didn’t and I got home dry as I had been when I left.

Truly got lucky on that one!

Tomorrow morning I head to the airport nice and early for a flight into Vienna where I’ll be spending the night before heading to Zurich and Lichtenstein the following day and then back home the day after that.

The next 3 days are gonna be tiring and insane and I’m ready for it.

Balkan Trip 2023 is coming to a close but I still got some adventures planned for the next couple of days…