Kosovo

Well, it’s fair to say I’ve fallen in love with Kosovo.  There are lots of annoying beggars, the food was pretty terrible and you’ll all be delighted to hear that normal service has resumed and both museums were closed 🙄🤣. But the wine was great, the macchiato is now my go-to coffee, and frankly, how can you not love a country of people who love the English as much as the Kosovans do.  Please go and visit them; they’ll be absolutely delighted to see you 😊

Driving from Skopje in North Macedonia to Prishtina in Kosovo, we stopped at the Gracanica Monastery on the way. It’s a Serbian Orthodox monastery built in 1321 on the ruins of a 6th century basilica, and is now a UNESCO world heritage site. Bombed twice by NATO during the Kosovo War (1998-99), the head of the Serbian church in Kosovo subsequently transferred his seat here, so it’s not only an important place spiritually, but is also now the political centre of the Serb community in Kosovo. Although it’s called a monastery, it’s actually run by nuns, who – as a brief aside – were frankly terrifying in a Blues Brothers kind of way.

There is an enormous cathedral in Prishtina, dedicated to Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. There are no more than 65,000 catholics in Kosovo, but this was built entirely by donation. But then Mother Teresa was born in Skopje, in what is now North Macedonia, and she was born an Albanian, and Kosovo seems to be – in my humbly uneducated opinion – an Albanian province-in-waiting. It’s all very complicated in this part of the world. But there’s no doubt this is a spectacular cathedral.

It’s not very often you see modern stained glass. There was plenty in this cathedral, and here is an image of Saint Mother Teresa and John Paul II.

The museums were closed, so what to do?! Wine tasting at StoneCastle winery 🍷😆. StoneCastle, with its stone castle.

Some pretty good Pinot Noir and a really great Chardonnay, as well as a half-decent cognac. This is a big commercial wine making company, and some of the wine is definitely worth trying outside of its natural habitat.

But the best thing about it is that they’ve called their sparkling wine Koseco 🤣 … geddit?!!

The wine region in Kosovo has 279 days of sunshine every year. The day I visited was not one of them.

We also visited a smaller, more boutique winery called Bodrumi i Vjetër or “Old Cellar”. They put on a fabulous lunch for us and a tour of their production facilities. The wine guide here was absolutely delightful and very happy to have someone to drink with and talk with about football! Sometimes, the smaller local wineries are just so much more fun than bigger more commercial ones. Both the ones I visited had started out as Yugoslav state-run wine productions.

If you get the chance, try the Elephant Cab Sav from Bodrumi i Vjetër; it is really excellent.

We also visited Prizren – the ancient capital of Kosovo. The main photo is from there too; it’s a very pretty city. This is the courtyard of the Halvet’s Tekke dating back to the 17th century.

Here is one of the many monuments in Prishtina celebrating how much the Kosovans love the British and Americans for NATO assistance during the war and for acknowledging their independence. It’s worth remembering that still only 53% of UN members currently recognise Kosovo as an independent country. In fact here they love USA and UK so much that there’s a statue in Prishtina of Bill Clinton, plus a Bill Clinton and a George Bush Boulevard. And Tonibler is a common male given name … yes … Tony Blair is basically a first name in Kosovo.

Ahhh, the Macchiato. There is a big coffee culture in this part of the world, and I had a good quantity of Macchiatos with a variety of local Balkan fruit brandies 😋

After Kosovo, we wanted to go to Bosnia & Herzegovina. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s all a bit complicated in this part of the world; because Serbia doesn’t recognise Kosovo as a country, and we had a Kosovo stamp in our passports, we weren’t allowed to do the direct route through Serbia to get there. So we spent 9 hours driving over the Montenegrin black mountains instead. It turned out to be the only sunny day all week, and as you can see, it was absolutely spectacular!