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Last week

 Final week in Kosovo I spent my final week in Kosovo at the office in Pristina, it was nice to get all the work I had been doing finished and ready to be uploaded to the Oral History archive. I went to all my usual spots for coffee, food and drinks which was really nice as it made me feel as if I had settled into this place and felt comfortable here. On one hand it is a bit of a shame that I am now leaving, as I have just started to really feel at home, but on the other hand I have done what I came here to do and now I have created a sort of base here that I could come back to. I will definitely be coming back as I now feel invested in the country and the people, they have all been completely open with me and it has really drawn me in as an outsider. My interest in the place will continue and I am excited to see where the country is going, I am grateful and honoured to have been able to work here at this time and be a small part of this new country moving forward and becoming a ...
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Penultimate week

 Week starting 3/2/2025 This week I have continued to work on transcribing the Janet Reineck interview. It is very interesting to hear about her work there, as it was at the most difficult time in Kosovo's history, so she was the only foreigner around. She returned in 1994 because Oxfam reached out to her and asked if she would work there helping with humanitarian aid. The people were oppressed, the economy was failing as Yugoslavia was falling apart, and this was felt strongly in the villages where Janet had lived previously. Schools were broken and not functioning, sanitation was poor and the people were demotivated and felt helpless. At this time independence did not look likely so tensions between the Albanian and Serbian communities was high. Janet discusses helping with motivating the people to help her start fixing schools, sanitation and other social issues, where funding and work had to be done by the people living in the poverty. What is very interesting and was difficult...
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Skopje, Macedonia

 1/2/2025 I decided to kick off February with a bit of a solo adventure. Today I travelled to Skopje, the capital city of North Macedonia. I took the coach at 8:30 am and the journey took about 2 hours. Obviously we had to cross the border, which took a little while as I was on a coach with about 20 other people. To speed up the process we filled in a sheet beforehand with our name and passport number, it was just a piece of paper on a clipboard getting passed back person to person, which felt like something from a school trip. At the border we all had to get out and show our passports anyway. It was a relatively nice drive, got to see some of the mountains, Skopje is right in the north so it was only about 30 minutes after we crossed the border that we arrived.  I had to walk about another 30 minutes to get to my hotel. I was staying in the old bazaar, the 12th century section of the city. This was really nice and it did have an old vibe to it, just with quite a lot of touris...
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Second full week

 27/01/25 Monday the 27th I went into work as usual. I had finished transcribing the interview with Michael McClellen, the American diplomat and moved onto another interview with an American. This was one with an anthropologist named Janet Reineck. The interview is reasonably long so I have been at it all week.  Janet is a dancer from California and when she was in her early 20s was drawn to the Balkans by the traditional music and dance. She fell in love with the Albanian culture through meeting groups of them whilst travelling through Yugoslavia. She spent 2 years living among the people in Kosovo as part of her master's work fro university, she has many interesting stories about the people she met and things she did whilst there. It was particularly interesting her talking about learning Albanian, as I know how hard it is first hand. The people write and talk in two different forms, so it is extremely hard to learn it from paper. Albanian also has its completely own strand ...
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Travelling for the weekend

 Saturday 25th January Today I was travelling to the city of Peja, also known as Pec, located in the west of Kosovo, reasonably near to the Montenegro border. The city is only about an hour and a half from Pristina by coach, which is what I had booked. I had only booked one night in an AirBnb because I thought this would be enough time to do some exploring and get back for Sunday, ready for work on Monday.  I walked to the Pristina bus station, which is only about 15 minutes away from my flat, to set off for 9am. I arrived in Peja at about 10:30am and walked from the bus station through the city to find my AirBnb. One of my favourite things to do is to walk around a city that I have never been to by myself, it always feels like an exciting fresh start. The flat that I had booked was about a 25 minute walk from the bus station and found the block quite quickly, however I couldn't work out which building it was. This was when a little girl and boy came out of one of the gates an...
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My first full week

 Monday 20th January 2025 Today I went to work and continued transcribing the Michael McClellen interview. I have just got to the part of the interview where goes into the time just after the war, in the year 2000, when he returned and the UN had its base there. A this time he was trying to help set up an American English speaking university in Kosovo, he had spoken with Ibrahim Rugova about it in previous years but the idea got put on hold. The idea was to get both ethnically Albanian and Serbian students to come and be educated together, the English speaking meant both groups were forced to struggle to learn the new language and bring them together. The logic was that Albanian kids would never go to a Serbian speaking university in Serbia and vice versa for the Serbian kids, so having the American English speaking university gave them an equal handicap and would not be able to avoid learning together.  I grabbed lunch at Papirun after work, a sandwich place that does quick a...
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First weekend

 18/01/2025 Today was my first Saturday back in Prishtina, I took a stroll down to the local bakery and had a delicious breakfast. In the afternoon I walked to the sports centre, which is next to the football stadium. When I arrived, there were two handball teams warming up for a game, it was Georgia vs Great Britain! So, I wasn't going to miss that. I went for some food nearby in a local cafe to kill the time before the game, I got back just in time for the game. There weren't many people watching but I could go in for free, which was great. It was a good game but Georgia kept slowly pulling ahead and the game finished 34-27 to Georgia. I only found out after that it was a 4 day international tournament that finished today, so I managed to catch the last game which was lucky. My first full handball game was a good experience despite GB losing.  It is a Saturday and the Premier League continues, despite me leaving the country. I am an Arsenal fan and they were playing at 6:30p...
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