My Trip to Kosovo (Balkan Trip Part 3)
Last updated: Thursday May 19th, 2022
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Day 6: The Bus Ride to Kosovo
So the bus doesn't go to Pristina, it only goes to Kosovska Mitrovica, a city in the north of Kosovo. Many Serbian people live in the northern part of the city, which is probably the reason why the bus doesn't go to Pristina directly, because it is dominated by Albanians.
I talked with my neighbour in the bus, he was a student in Kosovo and he told me many stories about the country, which was really interesting, but also how hard life is in Kosovo and in Serbia. With very little income and an instable government and low employment, you are pushed towards committing crimes like drug dealing, which many people does, he told me.
Kosovo is known to be an important drug transit route to Europe. Most of the smuggled heroin in Western Europe came from Kosovo. Not only drugs, also human trafficking and organ theft is a problem there. But as a tourist, I should be safe, my neighbour says. Too rural and tourists are rare in Kosovo anyways, so they don't aim for us.
Entering Kosovo
The border was less strict than expected, we didn't even have to exit the bus like every other border I've crossed so far. One police officer came with a device on the bus and scanned my passport. They just checked the luggage compartment and we moved on.
My first impression of Kosovo was already shocking. There was a lot of trash on the side of the road, the last time I saw that amount of trash was in India. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture, because I thought it is a bit impolite to take a picture of that.
Suddenly, a woman on the bus started to scream. "Stop!", she said in Serbian. And everyone started looking outside of the window.
I was sitting on the other side so I didn't know what was happening. My neighbour told me, that our luggage was falling off from the bus, probably because the border control didn't close the compartment properly. Honestly, I was really nervous here. What if the mafia wanted our bus to stop to grab some drugs? I'm probably just more nervous than I have to be, but it is what I thought.
The ride continues after collecting our luggage. In the north of Kosovo, you can see many Serbian flags. Unfortunately, it is also the region in Kosovo with many conflicts, because the Albanians and Serbs live right next to each other.
Because of the Kosovo Serbia dispute, they agreed on covering the country symbol of Serbian licence plates in Kosovo with a white sticker and vice versa. Sometimes, cars with serbian plates gets attacked by Albanians, which is an another reason they cover their country symbols. My bus neighbour told me he sometimes had to walk to the border so that his friend can pick him up on the border in Serbia, because he couldn't use the car with the serbian licence plate.
After arriving in Kosovska Mitrovica, I showed the bus driver my ticket to Pristina and he brought me to an another bus. It was a very small bus and I was the only passenger. It was already dark and it started raining, but I finally arrived in Pristina.
I was looking for a restaurant and I ended up eating a "Tavë". It basically means Casserole and it's popular in Kosovo and Albania. In this picture, it's with Chicken Kebab meat.
My plans after Kosovo
My plan was to go to North Macedonia and fly back to Vienna. But because I didn't really plan in advance, I missed the chance to get the cheap flights. Flying back would cost me 104€ and it was cheaper to travel back the way I came from by bus, which would be around 50€. I also had enough time, I only needed to get back at the end of February, which was in 8 days. So I thought if flying back is expensive and boring anyways, why not travel back to Vienna by bus, but with a different route? So I had the insane plan to go to Skopje, then Ohrid, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and back to Vienna. After doing some research, I figured I can enter all of these countries without a PCR Test or Quarantine. Unfortunately, this route had too many places to visit and I calculated out that 8 days is too short and I don't want to stay in every single country or city for just one day. So I thought I should skip North Macedonia and Albania and go directly to Montenegro, so that I have the time to visit the town of Kotor and Dubrovnik in Croatia, which would be nice places to visit.
Day 7: Pristina and Prizren
So before I went to Prizren, I thought I want to walk around in the morning a bit in Pristina, to see how the city is like.
Pristina is I think definitely an interesting city, but I don't think I would recommend anyone visiting there. I think there are more beautiful places in the world, like Prizren where I'm now heading to.
Since I was already at the bus station, I tried to buy the tickets to Montenegro for the next day. Unfortunately there were only buses once or twice a week. Instead of waiting for the day, I thought it's faster to take a detour to Albania and then going to Montenegro. So I bought a ticket to Shkodra, the northernmost city of Albania, without really knowing what to expect there.
When I searched for Shkodra on the internet and looked for pictures, most of them were like this. It seemed like a place with tourism but I wasn't really convinced by the pictures. I thought let's just see, if there isn't much to see or to do, it will be a relaxed day and maybe I spend the time walking around and see how life in Albania is like. I was exited anyways, because it is a new country I'm visiting, which I thought I would not visit in this trip.
Arriving in Prizren
After 1.5 hours of bus ride, I finally arrived in Prizren and when I walked to the town centre, I already knew it was worth the trip to Kosovo!
The town center is small, but it's really pretty and picturesque! A calm place with beautiful traditional albanian houses.
I'm not sure why but this place has a special place in my heart. (Probably just because I impulsively thought I wanna go there, when I made the JetPunk Quiz, and actually did it.) But if I ever spend some time in for example Skopje with friends one day, I want to revisit this place.
I went back to Pristina and spent the evening by trying out a local beverage called Rakija. It is a fruit brandy with around 40% alcohol and is popular in general in the Balkan area. To me it just tasted like schnaps, as I expected.
My lunch and dinner was pretty similar on that day. It is the most basic thing you can get here, some meat with salad and bread. It tastes like how you would imagine it to taste, nothing special but I also only spent 2.30€ for the whole dish with the Ayran drink. In fact, I only spent about 30€ for the whole 2 days of stay in Kosovo including accommodation, food, bus and everything. (Did you know that you pay with Euros in Kosovo, even though they're not part of the EU?)
So if you are traveling on a budget, I can definitely recommend you Kosovo.
Day 8: Pristina -> Shkodra
It was quite an adventure and for sure an interesting country to visit. I guess if you really dig deep into the history, it's even more interesting, but my stay was just too short.
It was time to visit a new country and I was also exited to see how Albania is. All I can tell you is... it blew my expectations!
Stay tuned for the next part!
The Balkans does look amazing places to go. Got really sad when you had to jump North Macedonia and Albania. Lot of history in there.
I found Kosovo’s travelogue one of the best of them
but there are only threebecause of the trouble you had. Is nice to read this kind of stuff lolDo you plan doing a season 2 of travelogues? Maybe you could talk about another trip, or more about Vienna’s life :)
I could write an another travelogue after this one, I just need to think what would be interesting to share. Most of my travels were short, this one was one of the longest trips I made. I really need to travel more and longer and take more time in each place.
Google Maps said the bus ride went into Skopje first and then into Kosovo, so I was wrong.
Very nice to see that you enjoyed your stay in
PrizrenKosovo!An industrial estate in Skopje is pretty much the same as an industrial estate in Stockholm. Only the language and the signs are different.
And travelling to them you are mostly concentrating on the road ahead and only get short glimpses of scenery.
Keep up the good work.
And other friends that travel somewhere different each time (one is on her way back from India right now after visiting Nepal first !)
Both will think the others holiday was boring and their own amazing.
Each to their own I suppose. I know which one I would prefer.
I once travelled through tribal areas in the Andaman Islands and we were all scared. What if some random tribesman attacked us? Sadly, those tribals are the one who are scared of us in reality.
BTW, where exactly did you visit in India?
Yes, that was a fun trip! So it was a tribal reserve. The road ran straight through it. We had to take a ferry to reach a nearby island. Civilians are allowed to pass through that road at specific hours only. We approached some tribespeople as well. They spoke perfect Hindi and were technically begging for food. I felt very sorry for them.
For the most part, the RUB seems SUPER dry since I was banned.
This entry is special to me because I dream of travelling to Kosovo someday. I have seen all the pictures of Prizren and recently I was reading about some of their unique traditions during Ramadan (namely a special kind of bread eaten at the end of the day during iftar).
It is a fascinating place, and I hope to learn more about it :)