Wednesday

Some days are unexpected.

Take today, for example. I woke up at 5am, stumbled to the bathroom, flicked on the water heater, and stumbled back to bed. At 7, I was up for good, took a shower, ate breakfast, grumbled at how full of papers my backpack was, and walked to the university. I taught my classes, ran home, gobbled a pesto and cheese sandwich, and met a coworker for coffee at 2:15.

Whenever we meet for coffee, we go some place I've not been yet. The week before last, it was a smoke-clogged cafe with good-looking desserts; today it was a cafe off the main square with high ceilings and a great view of the river. We had our usual discussions about the high school class that I teach. He's in charge of any logistical needs I might have and I needed to talk to him about a ski/snowboard trip I have planned for the class. After we had our drinks (a double macchiato for me and a single macchiato for him), we were off to find a guy who owns several restaurants, a ski rental shop, and a few ski lifts.

We walked over to another cafe to find this guy, but he wasn't around. However, my colleage was able to ascertain that the rental shop does rent snowboards. We then went to a bookshop next door so he could look at titles. This happened to be the same shop I went in on Saturday to get photocopies made after no one could find the key to my closet/office at the library. I asked the man if he could order books he didn't carry, and he said maybe. I'd have to tell him what the titles are exactly. He and my colleague then started talking and suddenly it was decided that we were going to return in 40 minutes so that the shop owner could take us up the road to a restaurant for a coffee.

That sounded good to me. We were going to head up the road towards Bezovice, the local ski area. To while away 40 minutes, my colleague and I walked around a bit. We looked at the catholic church; he pointed out a place with good burgers; and we wasted a little time in a cafe (I felt weird doing this, though, because we sat but didn't order anything). The the phone rang and we exited the cafe and got into a waiting car.

And just like that we were on our way out of Prizren. Just outside of town we passed the Monastery of the Arch Angels. The same monastery I was going to walk to on Saturday but was thwarted by my unwillingness to walk on the road. It was dark, and the monastery ruins are currently being occupied by KFOR and there were blinding floodlights all over the place, so I couldn't actually see much. We continued up the road and about 15 minutes later pulled into a place called Park Vila.

The restaurant was nice, big, and empty except for a tableful of KFOR troops on the other side of the room tucked behind a large pillar. I wasn't sure exactly what we were doing there. I thought it was just for coffee so I didn't really look at the menu, but after much dithering I realized that I was supposed to order something to eat. I asked the waiter for a few more minutes so I could actually peruse the menu for food. I settled on trout, the other two ordered meat, we asked for a few starters, fizzy water was brought to the table, and suddenly we were having dinner.

The trout was fabulous. It was grilled whole, plopped on a plate, garnished with potatoes, two sliced of carrots, and a very, very, very sad looking sliver of broccoli. I have mastered the eating of a whole trout from slicing the skin to removing all the bones to devouring every last piece of flesh (but leaving the head and fin intact).

Up to that point, the book shop owner didn't speak a word of English. I had spoken to him in English on Saturday and he had understood me, and he seemed to be following the conversation and giving on-target responses to my questions when I addressed him directly (although he did it in Albanian). Something must have clicked on in his brain because after dinner, he was full of intermediate English. We were soon back in his car continuing up the road. I'm not sure exactly where we were going, but about 20 minutes into the drive, and a supposed 5 minutes before we reached our destination, the road, which had been steadily going up into the mountains, suddenly got really icy.

Both the guys started twittering, I closed my eyes, opened them briefly, closed them again, and suggested we turn around (mind you, this is after I was told that the shop owner didn't like driving on ice and his car had rear-wheel drive). So we turned around and started heading back to Prizren. The views would have been stunning, I'm sure. However, because it was pitch-black dark, the only view I had was of the car's lowbeam lights on the pavement and highbeam lights hitting the overhanging trees (and if you ever have to drive in Kosovo at night, please know that oncoming cars don't always turn their highbeams off nor will they turn off the highbeams when driving a scant two feet from your back bumper).

Maybe I'll have another opportunity to go up during daylight.