Kosovo in the News

Another reason I'm lucky to be in Prizren and not in Pristina is that there are sizable Turkish and Bosnian populations here as well (this brings more diversity than is typical in other areas and great food). The numbers thrown around are that, ethnically speaking, Kosovo is about 90% Albanian, although there are larger numbers of Serbians up north. The issue of Kosovar independence is often in the news (before I left the US Kosovo frequently made NPR appearances). This morning when I opened up my email, a friend of mine had forwarded me a BBC article about Kosovo's path to independence:

Countdown Begins for Kosovo

In a completely unrelated piece of information, I went to the grocery store yesterday and for a bit less than 3 Euro (about $4.20), I purchased the following items:

1L of milk
1 loaf of bread
2 carrots
1 potato
1 really large beet
1 onion
1 lemon
2 individual cups of yogurt
1 kilo of salt

Not bad, I don't think. I found a shop that sells sliced sandwich bread imported from Germany, but, to tell the truth, I really like the locally-made bread (it's sold in loaves, like french bread, and is unsliced). If I really get a hankering for sunflower-seed bread, though, I know where to get it.

I've also realized that I didn't need to bring a year's worth of toothpaste and toothbrushes. In Japan, it was nearly impossible to find a decent toothbrush or toothpaste (ever tried sakura-flavored toothpaste? Wouldn't recommend it). But here...man...there's more kinds of Colgate available than in the US! I've also seen several places that carry the toothbrushes I like (the Colgate 360, if you're interested). The one thing I haven't found is floss, but I brought that along with me so it's no problem.

There's also plenty variety of shampoos (Pantene, Garnier, Nivea, Palmolive, plus other brands I'm not familiar with), soaps and body washes, hair colorants, facial products...I haven't been into a pharmacy to see what types of medicines are available, but I also packed along cold medicine, ibuprofen, and pepto bismol, so hopefully I won't need to make a trip.

The other thing I'm enjoying about shopping in Kosovo is that it's really nice to be able to read the labels of things I'm buying. Even if they're not in English, it's less time consuming to figure stuff out than it was in Japan. (Obviously I'm still in the honeymoon stage with being here...we'll see how I feel about labels in another two months or so which will be about the time my feelings about being here will probably be in a slump.)