Balkan leg 1: Skopje — Pristina — Prizren

Jack Morrie Evans
Aug 31, 2018 · 8 min read
View from Prizren Fortress

Skopje

The price to pay for my cheap Wizz Air flight is a 6am bus from London Victoria to Luton.

Walking out of Skopje airport felt like putting your face close to an open oven door. I share a taxi into the centre, saving £20 euros, and check into my hostel. Skopje’s on a plain, encircled by distant mountains. Hills, topped by crucifixes and cathedrals, stand closer. Straight boulevards lead through the business-like outskirts. Cyclists cruise past betting shops, bars and bakeries.

I’m advised to try the Bohemian quarter for dinner. Bars and restaurants with wooden canopies cover every inch of the tree-lined, cobbled streets. It’s bustling. I do well to find a table. The waiter’s recommendation — a steak burger with Macedonian yellow cheese — is a touch greasy, but the spiced, chargrilled potatoes and fresh cabbage salad more than compensate. Skopsko, the local lager, is crisp and refreshing.

In the glass cabinets of a gelateria, trays of oozing baklava sit next to tiramisu and wedges of cake. Scoops of pistachio and stracciatella ice cream get my vote.

The next morning Skopje is lethargic. Running into the centre, the most industrious people I observe are fruit and veg traders laying out their wares.

Recently the main square has been packed, some would say spoiled, with statues evoking Macedonia’s glorious past. Clashing against truly ancient architecture, they verge on kitsch.

I pass a stone warrior, horse rearing, sword aloft. It’s obvious which historical figure is represented — a monumental trolling of the Greeks. But so not to pour too much fuel on the diplomatic flames, the Macedonians don’t label it as Alexander the Great.

Then I cross a marble bridge and climb up to the Museum of Contemporary Art. From the front of the building, I look down on the fortress, bazaar, national football stadium and river.

After breakfast, I wander through the bazaar, a legacy of the Ottoman Empire and stronghold of the Turkish community today. Store fronts squeeze into its tight, twisting cobbled streets. There’s all sorts here : antiques and jewellery dealers, cafes, bars, travel agents and sweet shops. Even lawyers and notaries. Up steep alleys buildings look precarious, on the verge of tumbling over one another, like the dominoes on a cafe table up a quiet side street. Beige-shirted men with walnut skin and sparse hair play sipping glasses of tea and puffing cigarettes. The verdant garden of a mosque provides respite from the searing sun.

At lunch I feast on juicy but not greasy cigar-shaped kebabs, a vibrant salad and warm crunchy flatbread. Portions are certainly generous. Locals sitting beside me wolf down all ten pieces of meat; I save half for later. Meandering onwards I sample a piece of gooey baklava from an Erdogan admirer.

Pristina

On the three kilometre walk from the bus station to the Kosovar capital’s centre, traffic-clogged highways give way to green boulevards and open squares. Han Hostel is superbly positioned, just off the lively pedestrian thoroughfare nicknamed Rakia street on account of the number of bars.

The hostel staff display hipster credentials by likening me to King Krule. I remark that this is a recherché reference because the artist isn’t well known. A bespectacled Kosovar replies: ‘Well I don’t listen to popular music.”

As usual in hostels, there are curious characters: an Englishman from Chester, fully into a mid to three-quarter life crisis and partway into a six-month gap year; an Aussie boozer, hair too long and shirt undone too low; an intense, narcissistic asian girl, recounting to anyone within earshot her internal turmoil.

I have dinner at Tiffany, which lives up to the Lonely Planet’s description. It’s hard to find; the waiters are curt, almost surly; the food is spot on. An extraordinarily colourful salad tastes as good as it looks. Bread is puffy and with a slight crunch. Chicken breast is grilled to perfection. A Kosovar pilsner, from Peja, is light and clean-tasting. The atmosphere, thanks to the blanket of vegetation obscuring the restaurant from the road, is tranquil.

Dit’ e Nat’, a bar cum cafe recommended by the trendy types in the hostel, ticks several the hipster boxes: OK Computer on the stereo, bare lightbulbs, a bronze wall mirror splattered with green paint, book shelves along the cafe wall and craft beer on tap.

As I sip a tasty, well-balanced IPA from a local brewery, I reflect that Kosovo must be doing alright. At least a far sight better than Serbia, from which it declared independence in 2008. EU and Nato financial support have healed physical scars from the wars of the nineties. Bomb-damaged buildings are nowhere to be seen.

Moreover, appropriation of British hipster culture, in my experience, indicates the younger generation is pro-European, liberal, creative and entrepreneurial.This is certainly the case in Ukraine. For young Kyiv residents, the future is Europe and I think the same goes for millenial Kosovars.


The next morning I escape the stuffiness of the hostel (why does someone in the dorm always close the window?) and set out for a canter. I head north up the main street, deserted relative to the the night before, passing a market with gigantic pumpkins and melons. Early on a Saturday morning, the city is surprisingly active. Along dusty side streets, kebab shop grills are sizzling and cafes have served plenty of machiattos and espressos. I happen across a park/exercise area. Families stroll, tennis balls bounce and a few cyclists are spinning out of town. Nine miles fly by in a visually fascinating hour.

I enjoy an espresso in a plush central cafe and take a selfie with the Bill Clinton statue on my way to the bus station.

Prizren

On the bus to Kosovo’s second city the driver has the Albanian pop songs on low and the air con high. Off the bus, I drop by a cafe for another potent, rich espresso and a morsel of baklava. Walking down to the river I pass dozens of filigree shops, for which the town is renowned. They abut the usual bakeries, grills and gelaterias. These seem more popular with the locals.

The incline soon levels out and I realise why Prizren is the jewel in Kosovo’s crown. A clear stream separates the old town from the new. Embankments and bridges are fashioned of same grey limestone as the bedrock. Minarets from the town’s dozens of mosques and the odd church spire protrude from a terracotta canopy. A fortress looks down from the hill, itself surrounded by even higher mountains.

The route up to the fortress starts in the main, cobbled square, skirts the 17th century mosque, then zigzags through the old town. The ascent is invigorating and views spectacular.

On the descent I sit in the garden of the Sinan Pasha Mosque and enjoy a slice of trilece or three milk cake. Quietude reigns, too much so for the cafe waiters. I rouse them from their reverie when I enter and order.

To Ego for dinner, an Italian/Albanian restaurant in a quieter part of the main square dominated by thronging pizzerias and grill houses. The grilled seabass is quite something.

The evening call to prayer goes unanswered by revellers in bars and cafes — many of whom aren’t drinking alcohol. The strain of Islam practised here is tolerant. So much so that I drink a glass of English-style porter in a bar metres from a mosque.

My evening coincides with the end of the annual documentary festival. On the river bank I watch the best Balkan release projected onto a screen suspended over the water. It’s side-splittingly funny. A millenial Croat interrogates his mother about her views on gay couples and her own sex life. At times it’s touching. The woman admits that just one of her partners made her orgasm. The number of men in and out of the house during his upbringing is still a sore spot for her son.

It shows progressive views are not the reserve of the younger generation. When discussing ‘whores’ who become religious ‘cranks’, the interviewer suggests they want to repent of their ‘sins’, associating sex with immortality. His mother’s replies: “If sex is a sin, it’s worth being a devil.”

Returning to the hostel afterwards around 10pm there’s no drunkenness on the streets, and no differentiating people drinking alcohol from those drinking softs. Guffaws burst out from a group crammed around a table littered with coke cans, caffeine and sugar fuelling their high spirits.


The next morning I jog upstream. No-one’s about. The sun’s in no rush to emerge from behind the fortress. A slightly rotund tracksuit-clad Kosovar points me towards a dirt track flanking the left bank. It leads through a down-at-heel entertainment centre, its arcades, basketball courts and cafe a sorry sight. Unconvinced, I pause and look back. He grunts and gesticulates, as if to reinforce his message. His directions were worth following.

For a couple of kilometres I hug the stream, which gets rougher and rockier. The valley steepens and narrows; vegetation on its sides thickens. I pass a couple of campsites and cafes. The path, by now gravel, veers right up into a coniferous forest. I zigzag through innumerable switchbacks until I emerge into a clearing and crest the hill, chest heaving and legs heavy.

Even taller hills stand to my left, themselves dwarfed by mountain peaks beyond. Prizren lies below, to the centre and right. My bearings taken, I retrace my steps, descend to the left and skirt the fortress’ rear wall. With 70 minutes elapsed on my watch, I pause in the main square for a gulp of the fountain’s cool spring water.

As I stretch on a bridge, a couple of revellers pass by. “You’ll never budge it, it’s been there hundreds of years,” quips the bloke, sounding chipper for someone so bleary-eyed.

“We’ve got a chance if all three of us push,” I reply.

He tipsily laughs, slaps my hand and says cheers, pleasantly surprised to share a joke with a stranger the morning after the night before, let alone a runner.

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