The following are excerpts from a journal entry I made in Prishtina on January 1st:

Last night, after randomly finding jazz music in a bookstore, I was invited to celebrate New Years Eve with an Albanian family. I, the random couch surfer, was treated like a special guest – served first, encouraged to eat more than I could, asked enough questions to feel like the star of the show, and even given the gift of an Albanian music CD. It was comforting, it was my Christmas dinner, and it was perfect.

I see a girl playing the clarinet on the T.V. – the same one I met earlier in the day at the café! She’s the one who told me she’d pick me up tonight if I couldn’t figure out how to get to the Hamam jazz bar on my own! I love it, of course. This does not happen where I’m from.

At a happening bar, drinking rakia with Nita, I meet a friend of hers who I quickly learn is the sister of someone I recently had a beer with in Sarajevo. What? We’re a 12-hour bus ride away.

At the club, I try to lose myself in the music, but can’t help stopping occasionally to look around at who might be judging the awkward foreigner timidly stumbling and swaying in his inebriated haze. Nobody seems to care.

Three 18-year-old boys just struck up a conversation with me, because of a cigarette I was about to light. 10 minutes later, I am impressed not only with their level of maturity (quite different than typical American boys of the same age), but their hospitality too. As they are preparing to leave, I find a cigarette and another latte on my table, even though they knew I had both in my pocket. Facebook names exchanged, they shake my hand and wish me well.

Yes, Prishtina has its quirks (a street named after a former American president, for example), and no, it’s layout, physical features, and cleanliness do not add to its overall level of comfort. But after four days of entirely positive experiences with the people I came into contact with, I found myself feeling quite comfortable indeed. 

What I saw in Prishtina is a place that can’t wait to unshackle its neighboring and international influences, to be allowed to show the world what it really is. Its image in certain parts of the world as a war-torn, “dangerous” place will continue to attract tourists who will come once, balk at Bill Clinton and the EULEX headquarters, and leave within a few days. But its reality as an intimate, hospitable place will resonate with some, who will tell others and long to return.

I find it funny and enlightening that I came to Prishtina expecting to feel the scars of conflict, and I walked away gently touched by the glow of a cigarette.

The article was originally written in English.

Illustration: Marie Fette

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