Mud, dust and shit

It's been raining in Prishtina, and as always, the streets are slopping with mud. When it's dry, the dust and grit blows around, getting into your hair, your eyes, your throat, making you cough. When it rains, walking the streets is a constant test, trying and failing to avoid being splattered by passing cars, mud covering your footwear, splashed up to your knees. There's always some challenge.

Worst is the gauntlet that has to be walked every evening under the trees full of cacophonous crows, avoiding the torrents of shit they send down on to hapless humans below. I've worked out a route from my office down the road to my favourite café, dodging from one bit of open, treeless space to another. There's only one point where passing beneath a tree is unavoidable. Oh how I hate them, how they torment me. Before I go to bed I have to deal with the multitude of crows that spend the night in the branches next to my fourth-floor bedroom window. If I leave them be, I get a dawn call of cawing. Flashing them with a torch works quite well, but there are usually a few hold-outs, blasé in the face of human efforts to trick them. I keep a supply of plastic bottles to throw at them. But fifteen minutes later I have to repeat the exercise with the hard cases who have returned in the meantime.

Well, this is Kosovo after all, the "Field of Blackbirds". A Serb told me recently that the crows are the souls of dead Serbs, come back to haunt the Albanians and foreigners who have taken over their sacred land. Well, apparently they are not very discriminating, as he has been their victim too. Of course, the reason for their proliferation is the filthy state of the city. But where are all the cats? Don't they have any pride, allowing their town to be taken over by birds? I can't help thinking that a few men with shot guns one morning could wreak havoc among them. I'd volunteer.

Serb enclaves

Yesterday I went to Mitrovica. It was grim. After the recent troubles (a Serb youth stabbed, a café bombed, firemen attacked, a journalist beaten, and Albanian shops torched), armoured personnel carriers squat at key points, by the bridge and next to the court building. French and Belgian troops patrol the ethnically mixed Bosniac Mahala district where the trouble was concentrated. Some of the Belgians grin at passers by, trying to impart cheerfulness and good will. The burned out shops down one street are blackened, with broken windows and charred, damp little heaps of destroyed goods outside that once enticed shoppers to stop and buy. The grubby streets, with the filthy slush of the melting snow, spattering legs as cars drive by, are quite enough to depress spirits even without the latest damage the inhabitants have inflicted on their town.

Mitrovica bridge, under guard

Lunch starts with a spicy, greasy fish soup, with hunks of fat that did not come from any fish I am familiar with. It is followed by two trout, grilled according to the menu, but in fact fried and greasy. In the corner of the restaurant, Marko Jakšić, one of Serb north Mitrovica's duo of strongmen, holds court in his track suit. Who would believe that this silver-haired man could inspire such fear? Appearing relaxed, smiling gently, there is no sign that he is nervous at rumours that the Belgrade government is out to get him, or that he is concerned by media stories of corruption. Rather, the speculation has it, it is he and his cronies who have stirred up the recent troubles as a lesson to Belgrade and the internationals that they are still in control, and no one should mess with them.

The day before it was Štrpce, a Serb-majority area in the south, at the foot of mountains, with a ski resort that locals hope will one day bring prosperity. The 1970s hotels, even were they not shabby and broken now, seem a memorial to the shoddiness of that decade. To think that places like this actually made Yugoslavs feel optimistic then. Lunch is roast veal in a mushroom sauce - quite tasty.

I got in trouble with the police, for parking on a little bridge. Well, I couldn't find anywhere else, and there was no sign saying not to. And I was in a hurry to see the top man in the parallel Serb municipal administration. I returned to find a note saying to report to the police station, and that the front registration plate had been taken. They were very strict at first, and I was very contrite. I was in a hurry to meet Mr. Staletović, I stressed several times. They seemed to appreciate the fact that I, a foreigner, could speak Serbian. They let me off.

Štrpce is very different from Mitrovica. Isolated from Serbia, the Serbs here are interested in jobs, and ready to reach an accommodation with the Albanians who live all around them. Bizarrely, the official municipal administration and the Serb parallel one exist side by side in the same building. They rub along uneasily. Surrounded by spectacular mountain scenery, this is perhaps the one place in Kosovo where one can see Serbs having a real perspective. Here it will be possible to live well, so long as politics does not interfere. The locals probably know it.

Prishtina in sunshine

It is a cold, clear day in Prishtina, the bright sunshine sparkling on the snow. Young men are out on Mother Theresa Boulevard with shovels, breaking up the hard-packed ice and piling it in heaps on the side of the road. Broken steps hidden by snow have become slopes for children to slide down, or for adults to fall down. The book sellers are at their usual place near the Hotel Grand, in the sunshine, which, though bright, does little to cut through the chill. The little tables with cigarettes and mobile phone scratch cards for sale line some streets, but many of the sellers are not to be seen, presumably escaping the chill and watching from nearby cafés.

Prishtina continues to change at a startling pace. Pedestrians only now on Mother Theresa, the city centre begins to show some potential to be almost attractive. Lots of new cafes are packed with Prishtina's smart young things, dressed to the nines, staying for hours, drinking just one coffee, and smoking lots of cigarettes. The dwindling numbers of internationals congregate in their favoured pubs and restaurants. Gleaming new buildings tower over the city, either mocking the shabbiness of the streets below, or holding out a bright perspective for the future, depending on one's level of optimism.

For all its enduring grubbiness, Prishtina has an optimistic feel. It is a city and a country on the move. Though still poor, the proliferation of new buildings, the breakneck expansion of the city's boundaries, the upgraded highways, all speak of a brighter future. No doubt there is plenty of dissatisfaction. The young men hanging around with nothing to do, the youngsters reduced to hawking cigarettes in the cafes, point to the poverty and lack of opportunity that afflict many. There are still frequent power cuts, and the water goes off every night. Frustration at the challenges of realising Kosovo's independence still threatens to boil over into anger and violence. Yet this is the capital city of a new country. A long-held dream for Kosovo's Albanians has been realised. For now, it still seems that the hardship is worth it.

Snow

I prefer Prishtina in the snow. For once, neither dusty nor muddy, even the stink of the nearby power stations seems somehow to have been smothered. Snow makes all cities look a little alike, from the most beautiful to the most ugly. Or perhaps I'm trying much too hard to be positive about Prishtina.

I just finished reading Orhan Pamuk's "Snow". Another apparently ugly city that took on a new aspect when all white. It was a huge struggle, dreadfully dull. I forced myself to read to the end, mainly so I could say with conviction that it was awful. So slow-moving, such uninteresting characters. It was all completely unconvincing. Maybe Pamuk is as introverted as almost all his characters, analysing every thought, every action in endless detail. But most people are not so utterly tiresome. How did Ka manage to talk to so many people, sit in so many tea shops, walk so many streets, have so many clandestine meetings, get arrested and tortured, make passionate love so many times in such a short period, and still manage to fill several notebooks with every detail of everything he did? And why would he want to record every little boring detail?

My expectations of Pamuk were high, and I was dreadfully disappointed. Are any of his other books any better?