Let’s go east

Our original plan was to travel along Albania but well, plans can change when you meet new people. During the dance Festival in Montenegro we met Besi and Luki and they told us that in case we would travel to their country (Kosovo), they'd be very happy to show us around and to spend some time with us.
We couldn't miss that chance, so we decided to skip Albania (definitely one of our future destinations) and instead take another route to Turkey. After our experience here we couldn't be happier about our decision! Before reading our experience we just want to ask you to go to this country and enjoy their awesome culture and people. You won't regret it!

Kosovo declared themselves independent from Serbia on 2008 and they are recognised as a country for 114 counties but aren't for many others (including Spain, Greece, Argentina, etc). Kosovar's freedom is very restricted: they are just allowed to travel to Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and to Turkey. For the rest of countries in the world they have to apply for a visa.
For us it was hard to imagine that there was a war in this country only 20 years ago. Now the country is blooming like nowhere else that we've seen before and people are willing to make their country an unique place that they can be proud of.

Peja was our first stop and it surprised us how modern it was. It's said that they have the best macchiato in the world, but I don't know if Italians have something to say about that ;)
Streets were full of nice and cozy cafés that are quite busy during the day but specially at night. People go out around 7pm to enjoy a nice macchiato while smoking tones of cigarettes. You can always listen to some local or international music when having a drink but clubs aren't very popular throughout the country. Even that the atmosphere is awesome on the streets.

After two days in the city we visited our friends in their hometown. We will tell you more about our siteseeing and the fantastic time spent together in a different post :)

The next stop was Gjakova, an old city with a strong personality left as a heritage of the Ottoman Empire. It was severely destroyed during the war and most of their houses are either abandoned or destroyed. It has a lot of potential to become an important city for its picturesque streets and wooden houses and businesses.

After Gjakova we spent two days in the old capital of the country, in Prizren. The atmosphere on the streets was similar than the one in Peja. The only difference was that its strategic location close to Albania and Macedonia makes it a much more touristic city, where many cultural events are going on all the time.

Our last stop in the country was in Pristina, the current capital of the country. The contrast between the old concrete architecture from Soviet times and new buildings is quite significant.
The most special thing that we visited in Pristina was Termokiss, a social project founded by their own citizens. They asked permission to the mayor to start using an abandoned building for social and cultural purposes, a place where young people could meet and use their time to think about new projects or to use the space for events. By doing that they would gather young minds to create new things instead of spending their time sitting at a café drinking coffee all day long.
The project is working and they created the same concept in Skopje and they are thinking about doing it in Bosnia. Indeed a cool place to see!

We leave Kosovo knowing a lot of new things about their culture and history. Even though we will never be able to understand 100% about the details of the past conflicts that ended up in a cruel war and why the UCK, the civil army defense is seen for many as heroes and once they were seen from others as terrorists. There is never a good or a bad but we really hope that they can be the country that they want to become: an open minded and modern country with a very rich culture and to be seen and acknowledged for the rest of the world.

We love you Kosovo and we hope to be back very soon! ♡もっと詳しく