DATELINE: Gornje Selo, Kosovo    

Author: Andy      

Greetings from the world's newest country! The bulk of today was spent driving from Ohrid, up through the western part of Macedonia, on our way towards Prizren, Kosovo. The car they rented us was a "SEAT Ibiza" which is really a Volkswagen Polo. We got a bit of a late start, but covered a fair amount of ground and only made a few wrong turns. GPS wasn't available for our rental, so we bought paper maps that mercifully had topography on them. Numerous times we were able to verify we were headed in the right direction or catch a mistake because of where we were in relation to the mountains. The ride up through Macedonia was lovely, although at one point we did pass an epic trash fire. We made an attempt to take a shortcut back through Albania, but we got turned back at the border because our rental car agreement only covered us for Macedonia and Kosovo. We crossed into Kosovo at the Janhinze checkpoint, but sadly did not see any UN or NATO forces and did not even get passport stamps. Albania didn't give us stamps either, it saddens us. By the time we began our climb through the mountains of southern Kosovo it was nighttime. One thing I loved seeing as we drove along were roadsigns that had originally been printed with both the Latin and Cyrillic spellings, but since independence vandals had spray-painted over the Cyrillic (as a big "fuck off" to Serbia). We were planning on spending the night in Prizren, but 20km short of town we stumbled upon a mountain resort in the middle of nowhere. We asked about food and lodging at the front desk, and not only were they still serving dinner, but they would rent us our own bungalow for 80 euros total. So we just got back from a delicious dinner and now we have our own little 2-bedroom house in the mountains for the night. It even has a porch and a fireplace. The other remarkable thing is the view, which right now is absolutely pitch black. Looking out from our bungalow past the restaurant is the deepest blackest night I've ever seen. We think we can hear a stream in the distance but we can't tell how close or far it is or if there is a big mountain right in front of us. You look straight ahead and it's just a vast back void. It's pretty rad.