Around Prizren

After spending another four hours doing the round-trip travel to Pristina today, I needed to take a walk when I got back home (had to go for a meeting of the Kosovo English Teachers Assoc.). I grabbed my camera and wandered the streets. I internally debated over how I should lay the pics out: whether I should group them into signs, cars, and others or something along those lines. I decided that posting them chronologically was the way to go.





As I left my place, I thought that I'd give myself a theme and that theme would be cars. The automobile scene in Prizren contains a lot of Yugos and Golfs, although the UN vehicles are 4Runners and the OSCE vehicles are 4Runner wannabes. I didn't look to check what kind of car the above one is.



The main mosque is always photogenic. One of these days I am going to get up early and try to take pictures of it in the morning light.

All over town there JO NEGOCIATA and VETEVENDOSJE are spraypainted. The majority of Kosovars are determined to obtain independence and are not interested in negotiating with Serbia.

These little purple flowers are planted in flower boxes alongside the trash-filled river. They're pretty and bright.

This guy...heh...this guy lives in a house on the way up to the castle. I've seen him a couple of times as I've been either walking up or down. He speaks English, kind of, and I usually don't quite understand what he's saying. Tonight he was tomato-face drunk and very talkative. I really have no idea what he talked about but he did give me his phone number.

No negotiating on the side of a building. There's graffiti everywhere, but nothing very artistic.

As I continued my walk, I thought I would change themes since the whole car thing wasn't working out for me. My new theme: signage.

This is a notice board alongside the river. Posted to it are notices I don't know how to describe other than death notices. I'm not sure how soon after death the notices are posted or for how long the notices stay up (these are also posted on the doors of the deceased's residence). Below is a close-up shot of one.

These are OSCE vehicles parked across the street from their building. Both the OSCE and UNMIK print their own plates. I'm not sure why they don't use the Kosovo plates other than it can be difficult to take a car out of Kosovo if it has Kosovo plates.

There are plenty of handmade signs around town advertising parking.

This four-wheeled advertisement looks like the bread box vehicles that are all over Japan.

There are four streetlights I have seen in Prizren so far, all of which are at this intersection. The streetlights don't work, and from what I can gather, these have never worked. I'm not sure why the lights were installed. The way that the Kosovars drive, I'd have to wonder if anyone would even know how to heed the red light/green light system. (I know, that's not fair, but I've seen a lot of crazy driving techniques in my short time here.)

Back along the river a fancy-schmancy car is parked between the trees. Although this silver car isn't one, I've seen more Jaguars here than I have anywhere else (except in front of the dealership in San Francisco).

I have no idea what this says, but it's in German. Prizren is host to both German and Turkish KFOR soldiers. It must be pretty easy for the Turkish soldiers to get around because a lot of the population here seems to speak Turkish. There are a lot of German speakers as well but not nearly as many as there are Turkish.

On my way back home I passed by the remnants of the Turkish baths with the minaret of a nearby mosque peeking up from behind.