Being Cautious

The threat of rain lifted and I took the camera out for a walk. I wasn't sure where to go at first, so I was a bit aimless. Elections are coming up soon, sometime in mid-November, and a lot of posters are being put up everywhere. The only problem with that is no one takes these posters down and quite often they are just left as trash, as in the second pic.




I ambled a bit more and saw some flowers...




And then I came across this bronze head...(I'm not sure who it is)

And I saw some signs...

And some trash...

Then I realized where my legs were taking me. They were taking me to this destroyed building that I often pass when I'm out running.








I explored it a bit. When the weather is nicer, the structure is crawling with children. I then continued the path I was walking on, stopping briefly to notice all the rubbish on the ground here:




And then I just kept walking. I chose a path following the river I hadn't been on before. I passed this home, but didn't see any people. There were a few other things on my way I snapped photos of...






It was at this point in my walk I came to two cars that were waiting to pass through some kind of check point. In the middle of this dirt road I was on there was a man in fatigues with a rather large gun. Behind him was a line of KFOR military vehicles. I took a few more steps and eyed the vehicles up ahead. I couldn't see much because the road curved into the hillside. I looked back down towards where I had walked up and just stood still for a moment. Another car was coming up the road and I decided to head back down. I hadn't gone 100 yards when two military vehicles passed me. One of the jeeps turned around and stopped just in front of me. Two German soldiers got out.

"Hi."
"Hi," I replied.
"Come here, please."

I approached the men and tried to look relaxed and friendly.

The two soldiers looked at each other and the one on the right said, "He can speak English. He will talk to you."

I glanced at the man on the left. He took a deep breath and started with, "Why are you here?"

"I'm walking. And I'm taking pictures." I twisted around so they could see my camera bag.

Silence.

"Do you want to see my camera?" I asked.

"Yes."

So I showed them all 61 photographs I had taken during my walk.

"Did you walk from Prizren?" the man on the left inquired.

"I did. It's very close," I replied as I put my camera back in its case.

"Okay. Ciao."

And that was that. I'm glad I didn't have photographs of any of the military vehicles. Perhaps they would only have made me delete them, but I'm glad nonetheless.