Kirsten's Week in Kosovo

Generally, my weeks have a certain routine to them. My schedule is pretty static. However, this last week was a little crazy.

Sunday

I haven't written about it much, but my stay last weekend in Budapest was fantastic (and I highly recommend room 618 at the Sofitel Budapest for its spectacular view of the Danube and castle region). Take Sunday, for example. In the morning, as I was cruising around on foot looking for a place to have coffee, I spied a Tesco sign (Tescos are a chain of supermarkets) that indicated Tesco was only 3km away. I thought for a second and decided it might be nice to bring back some muesli bars, so I started making my way there.

As it turned out, the Tesco is in Arena Park, a large shopping mall complex. I cruised the Tesco, bought a box of bars, found myself some coffee, and stumbled upon the movie theater. I looked to see if there was anything worth seeing and settled on Gran Torino (with Clint Eastwood). I wasn't sure how to tell, and the ticket seller didn't speak English, but thankfully the movie was subtitled in Hungarian and not dubbed. After watching the movie (and feeling rather depressed), I started to walk back towards my hotel. Instead of following my original path, I decided to walk along the tram tracks figuring that they'd lead me towards where I needed to go. About 20 minutes into my walk, I found the cemetary.

The Kerepesi Cemetary is the largest in Budapest (according to my guidebook) and I spent a good 2 1/2 hours wandering around. It was everything a cemetary should be. There was great statuary, tidy graves, areas that were thick with overgrowth and underbrush, old areas, new areas, clean, leafy, empty in parts and teeming in others. I must have wandered around the whole thing, mainly as a result of the fact that I couldn't figure out how to get out and I ended up walking a good portion of the inner perimeter looking for an exit.

After leaving the cemetary, I think I took the longest way possible back to the hotel. I was off the little freebie map the hotel gave me, and I wasn't carrying around my guidebook (I tend to save those for reading in the hotel). I walked, and walked, and walked. And walked some more. After my feet started to really hurt, I ran into the river which immediately oriented me. I went over to a Japanese ramen shop I had seen previously and had a big fat bowl of ramen. (I ate out exactly four times: twice in coffee houses and twice in Japanese restaurants. The rest of the time I self-catered at the hotel.) As I was walking back to the hotel, I was suddenly surrounded by people on bikes. Critical Mass.

I went back to the hotel to dump the box of muesli bars and immediately headed back out to check out the bikes. I've never seen so many bicycles in one place. The place was swarming with them. After truly tiring out my feet, I bought myself some cinnamon ice cream (very good!), went back to the hotel, and crashed.

Monday

After a breakfast of unappetizing deep fried French toast at Gerloczy Kavehaz, I made my way back to the airport and back on to Kosovo. Ferihegy airport is too small for the traffic it receives. Every single space in the departure area was crammed with people. It wasn't a very pleasant way to bid farewell to what had been a fantastic stay.

I was slightly worried about the logistics of returning to Prizren, mostly about getting from the airport to Sllatine. However, it was very easy. I took a cab to the bus stop in Sllatine for three Euros. He offered to take me to Prizren for 25, which was incredibly cheap, but I opted to stick with the bus (total cost to get from airport to Prizren, eight Euros). I got home around 6pm, ate a light dinner, unpacked my stuff, and went to bed.

Tuesday

Tuesday was normal. I had class at the university in the morning and my high school class in the afternoon. I was still pretty tuckered from a weekend of walking, so I took the evening easy by doing nothing.

Wednesday

Another mostly laid back day. My hour-long conversation hour turned into a three hour chit-chat. Then I participated in a viewing of an Obama biopic put out by the Biography Channel that the embassy has had subtitled (we have Albanian and Bosnian versions). For dinner, I went to my favorite Prizren restaurant, Sharri. I ordered the grilled trout as usual. It tasted a little bit off, but it wasn't until I'd finished half of it that I figured out why: bleach. The waiter swore that they don't use bleach to kill the fish, and he couldn't detect the ammonia smell. I refused to eat any more of it and he charged me full price for my dinner. I'm not going back. (Fortunately, I didn't suffer any ill effects from it.)

Thursday

I had the first of four observations I'm doing of my second year students participating in their teaching practicum. I went to a small Bosnian village not too far from Prizren (about 20 minutes by car). It's the only school in the Zhupa Valley in which the language of instruction is Albanian (all of the other schools in the valley teach their kids in Bosnian). The kids were super cute (see previous post). However, I was up there longer than expected and I had to cancel my afternoon classes. My student had come to Prizren to get me by car, and there weren't any busses running that time of day, so I was at his mercy. I didn't mind, though. I talked with him and his mentor teacher a bit about the US school system and teaching methodologies. It was a beautiful day to be out of Prizren.

Friday

The day of the books delivery. :) After I read "One Fish, Two Fish..." to the students, I played volleyball with the older kids and then I was mobbed by a group of younger kids saying things like,

Where are you from?
What's your name?
Nice to meet you!
Eyes! Beautiful!
What's your favorite food?

Not so different from Japanese kids, to tell the truth. It's intimidating to be surrounded by 20 kids. They kept telling me to sit down (I was near a ledge that I could sit on). They were saying this to be polite, but it was a little scary to be looking up at a tight circle of thronging kids. They're pretty excited that I'll be back next week (to observe another one of my students doing his teaching practicum).

I got back to Prizren in the afternoon and ended up going with German KFOR to Gornje Lubinje, a Bosnian village high up in the Zhupa Valley. It was a little surreal. Civilians aren't allowed in the military jeeps due to insurance reasons. However, I knew one of the Albanian translators who was going, so I was invited to tag along. The village was beautiful. It's perched up on the side of a mountain. Even though there's tons of space around the village, the village itself has very small and windy streets.

After being dropped off back home, I decided I had a hankering for the grilled chicken at Te Syla. As I was eating, who else should stop in to eat but the president of the Turkish parliament? He eats grilled meat just like the rest of us.

Saturday

Yesterday, I walked up to Pasha Cherchme (a fountain above Prizren) and slowly wound my way back down into town (about a 4-hour walk). I had a decent pizza at Theranda Cini and then went home and spent the afternoon vegged out in front of the National Georgraphic Channel.

This coming week I have three student observations, so I'll be travelling out to Budakova (60 minutes by bus), Opoje (another 60 minutes), and back to the site of the book delivery, Polluzha. I love to see my students in action. Although I'll be travelling a lot this week, it'll be doing something I enjoy.