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essays | places
Kosovo
Europe's youngest
Are there countries that are love children? All the ones I can think of were born from conflict and divorce, and the internet is lazy and unhelpful today. Europe’s latest baby, Kosovo, was conceived by fighting parents too – Albanians and Serbs – and half the world still doesn’t recognize the child as though it wasn’t already there in the flesh. But when you go to Kosovo, it is plenty there and plenty flesh – young, healthy, and strong.
Kosovo is Europe’s youngest in every sense of the word: the population’s age averages at a tender 29 years and the country has only been recognized as such since 2008. And what’s youth if not a fast lane where we fishtail towards raw horizons, driven by challenging potentials? Such is the promising quandary of Kosovo too, where unemployment was at 27.5 % in 2016, but had considerably fallen from 57 % in 2001.
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places / stories
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Prizren / Old Youngster
Europe’s youngest on paper, Kosovo’s lineage is a long line if not a straight one. Hard to find any one identity at the crossroads of empires. Prizren was already pretty old when I found it, and you could tell that rivalling gangs of nobles had laid their claims there in some century or another.
For centuries, those fortresses atop the world’s hills kept out enemies. At the time of building, it couldn’t have occurred to anyone that one day they’d be stormed by tourists. That kind of foresight only ever occurs in hindsight. Very long gone are the days when riches upon riches were guarded behind those buff walls. Now it’s all about making them more accessible and letting people pay their way inside. It’s just peaceful chatter and serene sunsets up there today, the only battle a brisk walk. Makes you wonder what all the fighting was for.
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Pristina / What and Why?
Pristina, I didn’t really get you. What exactly are you and how and why? No, don’t tell me. I like it better like this.
Unsurprisingly, it was surprising to see a Bill Clinton statue. Moreover, it was very amusing. Kudos, brass man, somewhere unlikely you’re remembered as a full-fledged hero. A parallel world just across the Atlantic, where you stand tall for the ages on Bill Clinton Boulevard. And to be fair, it is fair to commemorate a NATO intervention aimed at stopping a genocide. Whatever happened to those?
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