Return to Kosovo

 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 ...

 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...

 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...