Monastery of Arch Angels

On the road out of Prizren

It's cold. My windows and doors are leaky. I find random pockets of cold air as I wander around my apartment. My heaters work fairly well (when the power is on), but I have to stay pretty well all fleeced up to keep happy. Going out requires a thick, puffy jacket and longjohns for maximum comfort. I should also have gloves and a hat, but it's too hard to operate the camera with gloves on. Today, bored and without plans, I decided to walk to the ruins of the Monastery of Arch Angels. The only way to get there is to walk along the windy road out of Prizren, so I had not been out there yet (fast cars + no shoulder = not my kind of place to walk).

The road out of town with the river on the left.

The book I have describes the monastery as being "in a small island created by the river on its olden rocks, there is a small church since the ancient times of Christianity...The church was one of the oldest and most respected churches in the area." If you squint, you can see this small island to the left of the river in the photo above (also taken from my little book, Prizreni: in the ancient Ilirian Dardan Roman Byzantine and Ottoman period).

The monastery is now occupied by KFOR and looks like it's been bubble-wrapped in razor wire. There are signs everywhere declaring that no photographs are to be taken, and since there were soldiers with firm grips on their weapons watching me, I opted not to try to sneak one.

I did, however, take pictures of other things along the road, like sheep down by the river:

And a whole lotta plastic bottles caught in some kind of water diversion that's been built across the river (I actually crawled around a bit of razor wire to walk down here because I thought it would be easier than walking a blind curve on the road. However, this failed because I couldn't get back up on the other side because there was too much razor wire):

I'm not sure what this is. My initial thought was a restaurant, but I didn't want to go an poke around because there were dogs trying to get across the river down by the bridge. The monastery ruins are just to the left:

It looks like someone has been sleeping in this barely protected shelter that is complete with chair, coffee table, and water pitcher: