kosovo travelogue

the last post

2011-05-08T19:22:00.003+01:00

The park bench, half submerged in the Ibar, turned out to be part of a larger construction project: a jetty jutting out into the water; a tiny man-made peninsula of shattered chunks of concrete, broken tiles and stones retrieved from some rotting part of the city, grafted onto this tiny harbor in the south and pointing towards the opposite bank. It was being built by a mentally disabled man that I recognized.

In a town the size of Mitrovica all of the mentally disabled citizens would be recognized, whether you think of them as “those poor souls,” or the most aggressive panhandlers, or as the village idiots, and they really are all of those things; beloved nuisances and mascots by birth or trauma, and landmarks in their own way. In Mitrovica there are four (or five, depending on who you count.) There is the woman they call a junkie and whore who hangs out on the bridge. There is the somewhat older woman with thick masculine hands, long curling hairs on her chin, and peroxide white wig on her head. There is the short woman who was clearly born retarded, and who spends her day demanding money and being taunted by the school children. And there is the big guy, who is always pushing a wheelbarrow, his pants halfway down his naked ass. I think of the big guy as “my” mentally disabled guy, since he lives a couple blocks away from me. So I felt a touch of provincial pride to see that the jetty was his project.

There is something profoundly poetic about a mentally disabled man building a jetty out of stone across the river of a divided town. So poetic, in fact, that I decided that it was best not to say anything about it.

I walked home through Roma Mahalla. It was Friday, and it was the Feast of Saint George, a big holiday for the local Roma: Đurđevdan. I leaned up against the wall around the clinic and watched the dancers: old men clapping their hands and pouring beers from plastic liter bottles into plastic cups, husbands with their arms around their barrel-hipped wives, and kids climbing naked and wet from the tin wash basins in their front yards. Newborn puppies seemed to be clambering through every hole in every fence. Young girls fled the festivities with their booty—enormous sandwiches bigger than their heads—past equally young boys in impeccable suits a size too big for them, proud and confident, looking for all the world like a miniature mafia. The power in my camera ran down just as the kid on the bicycle asked me a question I couldn't understand. It was probably for the best.

cobblestones at the bottom of the ibar, beneath the bridge

2011-05-07T16:45:00.002+01:00

old man reading a newspaper by the river

2011-05-06T13:36:00.000+01:00

ibar parkbench

2011-05-06T07:32:00.000+01:00

tit nba visar diki farush bardh buki gobi viki adidas goni dat

2011-05-05T13:15:00.000+01:00

but no rock 'n' roll...

2011-05-04T16:35:00.001+01:00

funeral procession, north mitrovica

2011-04-19T21:16:00.001+01:00

carwash, first set

2011-04-04T20:53:00.001+01:00

garage door bubble gum tattoo collage

2011-04-03T06:25:00.001+01:00

the abandoned city museum/turkish bath

2011-04-01T22:54:00.003+01:00

Abandoned in 2011.

Sign in the window reads "Renovated in 2009."

english practice outside the school yard, south mitrovica

2011-04-01T22:47:00.001+01:00

tavnik city, united nations

2011-04-01T10:51:00.001+01:00

spring nesting

2011-03-24T12:26:00.000+01:00

9-20

2011-03-24T00:00:00.002+01:00

hotel adriatic, mitrovica

2011-03-18T09:27:00.000+01:00

north mitrovica

2011-03-15T11:38:00.000+01:00

poissonerie, mitrovica

2011-03-12T18:48:00.001+01:00

mitrovica fence, signed

2011-03-07T11:13:00.000+01:00

catholic village, west kosovo

2011-03-07T11:11:00.002+01:00

mitrovica collage

2011-03-06T19:04:00.000+01:00

three towers

2011-03-05T14:03:00.002+01:00

missing head in pristina city park

2011-02-11T09:09:00.000+01:00

pristina collage

2011-02-01T22:47:00.000+01:00

as opposed to "brit-ish", meaning "sort of brit"

2011-01-27T17:06:00.002+01:00

above bajgore

2011-01-16T19:34:00.000+01:00

drenica

2010-09-15T10:25:00.001+01:00

demining

2010-09-13T09:16:00.001+01:00

wellcome tu komorane

2010-09-12T14:47:00.002+01:00

brod, in south kosovo

2010-09-12T14:04:00.005+01:00

art and architecture, 2 (inexplicably, lucille ball & mamafucka)

2010-09-06T16:38:00.008+01:00

inexplicably, lucille ball

art and architecture, 1

2010-09-06T15:33:00.014+01:00

"greater albania", minerals mounted on felt

saturday drive

2010-09-06T15:18:00.003+01:00

ten miles south of kosovo

2010-08-24T08:21:00.003+01:00

and west of Skopje, above Lake Matka and its St. Andrew Monastery hemmed by cafes and wooden tables shaded by red and white umbrellas, across that water as surprisingly green as an anole's backside on a small boat steered by a captain who only grunts when I pay him and up the eastern face of that gorge, the trail a mess of unsettled rocks outlining steep Zs from one side of the incline to the other and back again till we get to the monastery wall at the top and through the gate where the monks have been replaced by working Joes taking slugs out of cans of Skopsko while on break from tending the modest garden there, or perhaps dirty blue pants and a wifebeater is just the uniform of this sect of monks, the sect of Saint Nicholas, to whom the small church is dedicated to, and in whose honor every inch of the inside of that church has been painted in scenes real and imagined from the bible, painted sometime in the mid-1600s and then abandoned by all before being heavily graffitied, with the eyes of every reachable saint scratched out in the traditional fashion of non-Christians wishing to defile, but also graffitied thoroughly and at chest height for the entire circumference of the room with such pithy observations as “Goran [was here in] 1830” and so on, so that we are moved to (nearly religious) wonder at the universal human compulsion to piss on one another's scent, and so not at all surprised to find, framed by the legs of two horribly blinded saints crippled not by their Creator but by their Viewers, a dedication to the seemingly distant place of our birth:

tallava forever, part 3

2010-07-21T14:46:00.002+01:00

another mashup of found tallava pieces.

stari trg, the tenth and eleventh horizons (still photos)

2010-07-21T14:32:00.002+01:00

stari trg, the tenth and eleventh horizons

2010-07-17T14:52:00.001+01:00

the embassy / the museum

2010-07-05T14:34:00.001+01:00

On July 2nd we passed through metal detectors, armed guards and police cordons so that we could join the other Americans and their invited guests eating hamburgers and hot dogs. There can't possibly be a single enemy of America in Pristina, but still, because we are Americans, we must shut down the streets and divert traffic and have the utmost in security measures for an early Independence Day celebration at the museum, with an exhibition honoring the relationship between our countries.

The Kosovo constitution had been reproduced by hand to resemble its American counterpart. There were numerous ordinary items of clothing on display too, clothing that had been worn by Madeline Albright and Wesley Clark. American flags were hung side by side with Albanian flags and there were pins for Greater Albania and signs for Get Serbia Out of Kosovo, and I was embarrassed to be seen there, as if this display was making any attempt to grapple with history and truth, because it wasn't. It was only more adoration and patriotism, hamburgers and rock music.

Not that the items on display weren't historical. Many of them were. But this was a museum, and the uncritical homage seemed out of place there, like a political speech in a church, or an execution in a hospital.

I had a funny feeling as we ate hamburgers and the band played “Money for Nothing” and “One Love.” I wished I could have celebrated, because there were people present who were truly happy and truly thankful to my country. But it seemed like such a simple and stupid mistake that my country had made—to use a museum this way. The displays were perhaps even somewhat less self-analytical than those in the Military Museum of Belgrade, and I was scared that my country had really become hopeless, that we had become incapable of learning, that we would always ignore that which didn't suit our needs until it was too late, and that when real tragedy struck again here—as it had only the day before, when a pediatrician died in the streets of Mitrovica—the people from my country would only stare in wonder, dumbstruck, convinced that there was nothing they could have done better, and then go back to patting themselves on the back. I felt like I was getting dizzy, and spinning in circles, because it was me and my fellow citizens who used a museum this way; we had paid to have our praises sung, and we would probably have to pay for it again, one way or another, for years to come, because I've never yet read of self-satisfaction like this ever coming to any good.

one thing I never expected to be doing; many things I never expected to see; so much left undone

2010-07-02T10:42:00.000+01:00

After a month or so the back seat of the car has been filled with empty plastic bottles, and then it's time to drive up into the mountains to the spring by the side of the road and fill them. We used to fill the empty bottles from the tap as reserves for those times that the water goes out. But then we saw the sediment in that water forming into brown algae-like clouds that rose to the surface of each container, and we smelled the toilet backing up through the shower drain, and we stopped trusting the tap water. We could buy it in the stores, and sometimes we do, but we try to get most of what we need from the springs, and today I went looking for one in Bajgora.

Halfway up the mountain I passed the mines, and then I entered the tunnel, slowly, because of the cows. There were four of them in there this time, one laying in the middle of the road, and the other three frantically licking the sides of the tunnel. They were pale colored, a dirty white with yellow and tan spots. Their horns flashed in the headlights, and they didn't seem to notice me as I wove between them, as if the time they spent down their had made them blind, or as if they'd been born that way, like enormous hairy albino newts in subterranean caverns. They sucked away at the slimy stone like leeches.

The spring was only a trickle, filling an enormous metal trough. Villagers passed by and said things to me. For all I know they were telling me “That spring is poisonous,” or “That's be ten dollars.” I finally found one who understood my mix of Albanian and English. He grinned and said, “Yes,” the water was good. Still, the rest of the village had so much to tell me I couldn't feel confident that I was understanding everything. Maybe I had offended them, or there was a trick to it, or maybe they just rarely had strangers up there.

I'm telling you this so you'll know how it was that I died, should I die. It was the water, from all the way up in Bajgora, that drips down across blind cow tongues, pass the entrance to the coal mines and seeps through piles of slag, into the rivers and lakes and then the pipes that empty into our sink, our toilet and tub: if I'm dead, then you'll know that the water turned out to be most deadly at its source.

tallava forever, part 2 (the return of tallava)

2010-06-11T14:27:00.000+01:00

a new mashup from found sources...

24 hours, parties and people

2010-05-31T09:40:00.003+01:00

The wedding party stepped backwards through the church doors, stopping to kiss the wooden door frame. The groom's brother threw candy and coins to us over the newlyweds' head. A man behind me began firing his weapon and the empty shells bounced off of the brick walkway and pelted my legs. The brass band doubled their volume in order to drown out their competition: a second wedding party was making their way down the hill towards us. Two local Roma girls stood to the side and waited for us to leave, eyeing the coins that we had left scattered about.

Below us apartment building walls and tin kiosks were plastered in layers of election posters. Not one of them was intact. They had all been torn, or plastered over, or defaced. I still could not remember which party was which. In the south there were new posters announcing Sunday's protest of the war veterans: this one displaying a map of greater Albania.

...

The next morning elderly people closed and shook their umbrellas as they entered the university to vote. Cars decorated in ribbons and flowers were parked outside of cafes, and gunfire celebrated more weddings. A small crowd gathered at the bridge in the north, waiting and looking south. Reporters were everywhere, and KFOR had occupied the Culure Center again. French soldiers aimed enormous camera lens at both sides. It felt like the old days.

In the south about half of the protesters were dressed in their football team's green and black in preparation for the championship game that evening. About half the crowd marched towards the park, but the other half split off and walked purposefully to the bridge. They chanted “UCK” and threw stones, and we thought that KPS or KFOR had set off tear gas, but this turned out to be fireworks from the other side. Rocks were thrown from the other side too, and a short burst of automatic gunfire sent KFOR into their tanks behind the Center. Most of the crowd in the south seemed happy and eager. A lot of people brought their small children to watch. I didn't recognize a lot of people because they had come from out of town for the protest. They tried hard to avoid stepping in the new flowerbeds that had been planted to welcome attendees of last week's “Cities in Transition” conference. We might have all come for a free concert in the park, except that a free concert would never have brought as many attendees. I was surprised by how many people were smiling and pleased. Ecstatic teens drove through the streets waving green and black flags, shouting, and honking their horns. Now the security would be higher around the bridge again, and things would be a little worse than they had been a few days before.

I figured that UNICEF ambassador Alyssa Milano's scheduled photo shoot on the bridge would be canceled. I never watched that television show when I was young, but I knew people who did. The cafes did a brisk business of old men and the security personnel of every organization in Kosovo, talking about what had and hadn't happened. The sky cleared, and they sat in the sun drinking macchiatos and smoking cigarettes.

may 30

2010-05-31T08:54:00.005+01:00

klinë e epërme

2010-05-28T11:00:00.002+01:00

election rally in north mitrovica

2010-05-27T15:06:00.000+01:00

babin most

2010-05-14T14:42:00.002+01:00

the orthodox cemetery in south mitro

2010-05-14T14:29:00.003+01:00

leposavic, year three

2010-05-13T11:30:00.002+01:00

Last night I went there to see a friend's band play, and we stood outside on the occasion of the Leposavic saint day, drinking Jelen out of cans and eating pleskavica out of a perfectly greasy paper wrapper. My friend's band setlist is chosen for the masses but the musicians are really top notch, including my favorite kind of bassist, perfectly in-the-pocket, dead-on drums and dueling guitarists with chops. Some of these guys would be heroes of the scene in Houston, heroes for their pure devotion to their sounds and instruments.

I've long ago gotten used to hearing thickly accented Kenny Rogers and Stevie Wonders as they might have sounded muffled and ringing harshly behind an iron curtain. Still this singer has a different problem, one of not really understanding all the words, and instead substituting wordlike phrases and sounds into lyrically critical moments, so that when he says, “Please allow me to intro doom ice elf, I'm a man of wealth and taze...” I am disappointed, yes: disappointed, and I find it hard to believe that he is anything like the devil. But this is just me, my feelings, not those of their crowd of entertainment-starved teens, and this band stood in front of the municipality building hammering out hits while five-year-olds in party dresses performed somersaults in the grass behind them, and they honored Saint Vasily Ostorzhsky with energetic performances of works by Lenny Kravitz, and Eric Clapton and other minor poets of distortion and assorted junkies, while the night previously, as has happened for more or less three hundred years, high on a cliff in Montenegro, the box containing his relics was opened and the Saint was honored for his anti-Papal fervor and Turk-evading dedication with the presentation of a new pair of shoes.

After a while we were distracted by friends, who convinced us to walk with them up those streets graffitied “New Serbia” to a club named for Belgian comic book character cowboy Lucky Luke and it was a tiny place, the walls covered in wooden beer signs like any pub in England but unusual here, and crammed with people. In the very back there were three musicians, at least I think they were musicians. The singer and guitarist might easily be mistaken for a homeless man, and the percussionist might just as easily be mistaken for a clerk at a New Age shop selling healing crystals and tarot cards, and the accordionist might simply have been a football hooligan, but they were hammering out well imagined remakings of plenty of classic material, Johnny Cash twice even, and the audience was jumping and singing along, and pretty soon so were we. This fellow's accent was strong but the words were meaningful—I agreed with him, yes, I thought: Viva Las Vegas, and this gaunt-cheeked bearded homeless man did seem to know full well what it was to have fallen into a ring of fire, and his deep understanding gave me pause during which I might be forgiven for wondering how this place came to be here, and just when Nova Serbia was founded, and where it had been for the last three years, and where I had been for the last three years too, and just how did I come to be here, in this unusual place within unusual places.

short spring rainfall

2010-05-07T12:25:00.000+01:00

43 seconds of aggression in north mitrovica

2010-05-06T18:50:00.001+01:00

a certain symmetry

2010-05-06T17:02:00.003+01:00

south Mitrovica neighborhood, 2010

Orthodox baptistry in Ohrid, 5th Century

north Mitrovica neighborhood, 2010

kqiç

2010-04-30T14:52:00.003+01:00

tallava forever

2010-03-31T14:47:00.002+01:00

a mashup from multiple live tallava performances:

songs that men sing about nightingales

2010-03-17T17:36:00.000+01:00

3.10.2010

2010-03-11T00:04:00.002+01:00

This morning scientists reported that last week's earthquake had moved the city of Concepcion 10 feet to the west. Nearby mountains had moved in the same direction, though less far. The earth's axis shifted three inches, and our days were hereafter shortened by one millionth of a second. I fried eggs and listened to the news.

By early afternoon it had started to snow. Tiny birds jumped from branch to branch, upset by the weather. I drove to the airport. The snowfall thickened. The flakes were heavy, wide and wet. Sludge built up on the side of the road, and I felt the wheels slip as the car changed lanes.

In the parking lot I sat in the car and smoked a cigarette. I could hear airplanes taking off, but they could not be seen through the solid sheet of clouds. A heavy wind rocked the car like a boat.

At home I chopped cabbage and listened to the news. It hadn't been a heavy wind rocking the car after all. The earthquake had sent people streaming out of office buildings in Pristina. Albanian news sources reported that the epicenter of the quake was Istog, a predominately Albanian town. Serbian news reported that the epicenter was Zubin Potok, an overwhelmingly Serbian town. That night the sun went down one millionth of a second sooner than usual.

scenes from the ride home

2010-03-04T21:41:00.001+01:00

from the airport: just two minutes of driving...

the thing to do

2010-02-27T14:32:00.006+01:00

It's become the thing to do, now that the razor wire and tanks are gone: to go down to the bridge and hang out there, spitting sunflower seed shells into the water, or passing back and forth a liter of Coke and, if there are kids on the other side, to talk to them, or really to shout a bit, over the noise of the river.

rugova valley

2010-02-14T22:48:00.001+01:00

viski coca cola

2010-02-12T00:20:00.004+01:00

It's a new mashup, this time comprised of found youtube footage containing performances of this Balkan classic. I've tried to cover as wide a spectrum as possible, believing that a complete cultural survey could be made of the region via the "viski coca cola" videos available on youtube. The weddings, parties, machismo, beat-up cars, scantily clad dames, clubs, hotel lobbies, lip-synching, low-budget variety shows, high heels and, yes: the drinking too.

But for most of my inspiration I am indebted to this guy--he's got it all: the moves, the look, that je ne se qua... no amount of mashing or remixing can really top his performance. Insanely hyperactive keyboard dude: I salute you.

Sometimes I just love the Balkans.

kapaonik, ostrich tracks and winter in mitrovica

2010-01-31T16:40:00.003+01:00

reel to reel (mashup)

2010-01-18T01:20:00.002+01:00

Without making too much of the immediately apparent technological leap between reel to reel tapes and youtube video uploads (a leap somehow bridged no matter how tenuously by the thin shining metal strings of the çiftelia, the epileptic convulsions of iron particles spun into tape, the brushed metal casing of a camera purchased on holiday in Germany before being hitched to so many cables strung around couch legs and tacked along window frames, strung through tree branches into a gathering of powerlines, down the road past the mosque and underground: none of it possible without and all of it brought to you by spindly fractured wearing down webs of metal spun three times and packed in cardboard from earth it came and to the earth it shall return, but it still takes a metallic resonance to make any of this happen) there remains something particularly charming about these videos: a man holding a lens, or balancing it on the arm of the living room ottoman for four to seven minutes in order to duplicate/preserve/share/force upon us/grasp himself the echoing shadow of a few ghosts, aware of the decay setting in, the warp of heat disfiguring tapes like the bandages falling from mummies revealing only dust inside; these particular breath-holding cellphone-muting extended pauses could (really should) and will only happen for a few years (these few years) in our history as a people, some time after the computers are bought (more for our children than for ourselves) but only until anyone (that child in particular) has stopped caring about those dancing electrons and what they infer and so, in honor of this decade—the decade when Kosovars filmed their reel to reel tape machines, the decade we are more or less living in now and which will be gone soon enough—I give you, in tribute, the mashup:

happy holidays from ko-kosovo

2010-01-12T05:15:00.002+01:00

* We strongly recommend you read the instructions for the Santa on the Dree before using.

the garbage fire

2009-12-09T18:31:00.003+01:00

While I was standing there, this Ashkalli or Roma boy came up and started kicking stuff around. Then he hid next to the fence and spent a few minutes peeking around the corner, waiting for someone who never showed up. He didn't seem to notice me.

berlin emmigration

2009-10-14T10:50:00.003+01:00

Roma refugees from Kosovo protesting their planned deportation. Potsdamer Platz.

Someone else. Kreuzberg.

august 20, 2009

2009-08-20T12:48:00.002+01:00

south mitro from the south

south mitro from the north

the castle

zvecan

unexplained dirt, 1

unexplained dirt, 2

unexplained dirt, 3

wildlife / streetlife

2009-07-09T06:54:00.003+01:00

Kittens and puppies are everywhere, every stray Mitrovica mother having birthed a Gemini.

The church on the south side is as empty as ever.

When cleaning the fountain, they return the fish to the river.

beetles, vivodan and blackbirds in the cherry tree

2009-06-30T20:47:00.002+01:00

qershor

2009-06-19T11:39:00.002+01:00

funded by unmik and france

2009-06-02T12:21:00.000+01:00

may 21, 2009

2009-05-21T16:58:00.015+01:00

The major streets were closed to traffic. We took the turnabout near the bus station and parked in a lot close to the Rilindja building.

It was strange to see the streets so empty. We walked to the parliament building and took pictures of the banners.

Then we went for a coffee on UÇK Street.

We figured it was a good place to keep an eye on things.

A reporter friend called from the airport to say that he hadn’t landed yet. We couldn’t imagine that they would make him take the road from the airport, still under construction. They had only blocked off the road through Dragodan.

So we figured a helicopter would take him to the U.S. embassy and his motorcade would leave from there.

There were a number of billboards with his image on it, and the words “Welcome and Thank You.” Alternating U.S. and Kosovo flags were hung from all the lampposts. It was very quiet.

They let the children out of school and armed them with posters, and flags. We heard the children coming and knew that it must be time. We paid for our coffee and walked towards the parliament building.

I found a spot near the security gate. An old man asked me not to smoke. It was the first time anyone had ever asked me that.

The children were chanting and singing. Their teachers directed them to different areas alongside the road in order to insure that the entire route would be well populated.

Their signs said “Thank you,” “Peace” and “Welcome Mr. Biden.”

An old man worked the crowd with American and Albanian flags tied to the end of a thick pole, the handle of some farm tool.

There were only two or three Albanian flags in the whole place. It was the first time I had seen that.

A few groups of young dancers in traditional dress were placed at the edge of the road before the parliament building. A large band began playing on the square above us. The crowd sang and cheered.

Additional police positioned themselves between us and the road.

A midget wearing an American flag baseball cap danced in the middle of the road. Everyone cheered for him.

From the audience he brought out an old man in a white fez and a young dancer in costume. They stood next to him and clapped while he danced. The girl seemed uncomfortable though.

A few police cars sped down the road now and then.

Most of the crowd was under eighteen or over fifty. The vice president might think that everyone between 18 and 50 was dead.

The band stopped playing. A helicopter flew overhead.

We could see the lights of his motorcade underneath the trees at the end of the street, moving slower than the police that had preceded him.

He sat by himself in the back seat, facing away from me. He was waving and smiling, and he did this in a way that was more natural than one expects from a politician. But I know you’re not supposed to think such things about politicians.

He seemed like he genuinely appreciated the celebration. He pointed to the dancers and smiled.

The last security vehicle in his procession had a piece of paper taped to the window. The paper said “Straggler.”

An ambulance ended the procession in front the parliament gates. The gates were closed.

Most of us started drifting away. I followed some members of the band: a guitarist and the accordion player.

Some people gathered near the National Theater. They weren’t ready for the party to end.

They had nothing else planned for the whole day.

The police were having a great time, taking turns at breakneck speed through the empty streets.

A protest against his visit was held near the bridge. The vice president wasn’t going anywhere near Mitrovica.

Instead he was flown to Decani.

His helicopters flew overhead, identical and evenly spaced.

elements of spring

2009-04-02T17:14:00.009+01:00

1. dance parties
Gjakova dervish video footage courtesy of GO

2. the blackbirds built nests

3. wishful thinking
Koha Ditore reports that Tom Cruise is slated to play prime minister Hashim Thaçi in a movie directed by Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas. (We were unable to verify this report with any other news source on the planet.)*

4. the bees are hungry

*...they celebrate April Fool's in Kosovo too.

south kosovo, february snow

2009-02-21T12:28:00.004+01:00

snowstorm

2009-02-19T16:26:00.006+01:00

first anniversary

2009-02-19T15:32:00.008+01:00

traffic jam, independence day 2009

every evening, above the confidence zone, and everywhere

2008-12-18T21:17:00.002+01:00

2008-12-09T10:42:00.002+01:00

south kosovo, looking to the mountains

south kosovo, looking to the mountains

tetova, macedonia

lake ohrid, macedonia