More and more tourists are exploring Kosovo. They are all surprised by hospitality, normality of life, history, culture and weird architecture. Here how the blogger Dom Giles, describe Kosovo:
"Kosovo is in our
heads because of the war in 1999 and the NATO bombing campaign on Serbia
when it refused to accept Kosovo's Independence in that year.
Ultimately, Kosovo gained independence ( in most people's eyes) in 2008
making it Europe's newest country. I wanted to see what it looked like.
I hoped and expected to find a 'normal' county with 'normal' people doing 'normal' things. And I did.
I went to the Enthnologocal museum and had a long chat with the
curator who was quite upbeat about Kosovo's future. More than 50% of the
countries population is under 25, which bodes well for the future.
So, little Kosovo (you can
ride across it in about an hour) used to belong to Yugoslavia and
Orthodox Christian Serbia refuses to recognise it. So it's a little
weird that the tourist highlights of Muslim Kosovo are two Orthodox
Serbian Monastery's protected by NATO. We had to hand in our passports
to visit.
The
20 or so nuns in the first one and 25 monks in the second one live in
almost total isolation as the local populations want them to leave.
My final stop was also the
highlight. Lovely little Pritzen. Kosovo's third largest town ( 180,000
people) It had a river, a castle, churches, mosques, coffee shops and
when we were there, an eight day film festival.
Castle at the top.
Prizen was also the place where I've seen my first ( for 10 minutes!) rain on the whole trip! So there you have it. Kosovo. Just a regular place full of people trying to get on with life."
read more:
http://www.thedomwayround.blogspot.com/
