The Most Untrammeled Doorstep

We walked the last hour or so up to Rekë e Allagës.  The taxi driver had gotten fed up with the rough roads and a little lost - on foot, we followed a stream and a dirt track upwards, hoping that it was the way.  When we came up out of the pine forest, we asked at the first house - "Mustafa and Fetija?"
"Po, po," the man said, meaning yes, and sent us off with young children as guides.
When we stay at homestays, we always hope that it will be something like this - an idyllic setting, a unique culture, a world apart.  This is Kosovo at its most untouched.

We stayed on a dairy farm in Rekë e Allagës, a steep hamlet in the remote Rugova Valley.  Every morning, our hosts would pour their fresh milk into a pantry's worth of different pails and pans - some for kos (yogurt), some for djath (cheese) and some for mazė, (clotted cream).  Fetija, our hostess, cooked whole milk in low pans on the woodstove, letting the liquid slowly evaporate.  The mazė arrived on the table a chunky, shining mess of curds, very soft, to be used with everything.

Mustafa (second from right) had grown up on that very spot.  His uncle (far right) and father had been raised in a centuries-old stone house there, but the building was destroyed by a Serbian bomb.  "Boom" the uncle said, flattening his hands* out over the table and shaking his head.  "Nothing."
Fetija is also from the Rugova, but a different part - she talked quickly to us in Albanian, nodding to see if we understood, not caring that we didn't.  They talked about how cold it is in the winter, about snowshoes and several meters of snow.  Now, the family leaves between November and March, staying with Mustafa's parents in Peja.  The Rugova is beautiful in July, too hard in January.
*The uncle does have two hands, it's just that the picture is deceiving.

Mustafa had a rare energy and an amazing amount of hospitality.  He loved to talk with us, with hand gestures, some German, laughs and whistles.  In the Rugova, the people speak with lots of emphatic noises, a kind of separate language at the end of a sentence.  They make a swooshing sound to mean a long distance, or a semi-growl to express that something was incorrect.  At first, we thought that it was just part of the language barrier - but Mustafa and his friends used the signals in conversation amongst themselves, and Fetija would end her quick phrases to her husband the same way.

We spent a whole day hiking, making a long circuit around one wing of the valley, passing from meadow to forest to open fields.  We returned on the front edge of a thunderstorm, and found that Fetija had been busy all afternoon with something special.
If there were only one dish that Kosovar people claimed as their own, it would be flija.  We'll talk about it as a dish in more detail later, but the process seems like a separate, unique thing.
Flija is cooked from above, using heavy, metal covers that are heated up over wood coals.  Fetija spent almost five hours by the outdoor fire, laboring over the dish.  To be over-reductive, I'll describe flija as an integrated stack of dozens of crepes, cooked one layer at a time with butter and milk solids in-between.  It's exhausting and delicious. One can't find the true delicacy in stores or bakeries because it takes too long - the process is really one of waiting and burning wood.  Mustafa, Rebecca and I sat with her for the last hour, drinking beer and listening to the cows low in the barn.

Hiking here is an adventure of waterfalls and grazing cows, springs and - right now - millions of butterflies.  From his kitchen, Mustafa would point in one direction for Albania, to Valbona, and in another direction for Montengro.  In fact, he said that you could walk to the border with Montenegro - just three hours up the hill.  It's at places like this that one can remember how intricate the world of Europe is, where one alpine hillside can have its own traditions and people.   We heard of tours that passed through, walking from Albania to Montenegro to Kosovo, passing over peaks and sleeping in villages - we thought about what an adventure each new valley must seem, a new culture.
Some say that the Rugova Valley is the heartland of Kosovo, where all things uniquely Kosovar come from - but, really, Kosovo has just adopted the most evocative imagery from Rugova.  To call these people Kosovar is to call texans "North American."  It may be true, but it doesn't say much about the whole or the part.

And to say that we feasted isn't doing the food - or the portions - justice.  It's funny, but we hadn't found much "traditional" Kosovar food before we came here.  That partly has to do with Kosovo's taste for the international and the cuisines that have swept in from the wider world.  But it's also partly because "Kosovar" food is difficult to make, with recipes born in the mountains and given little thought in the lowlands.
Here is our supper the first night: a salad of sauerkraut, tomatoes and cucumbers; fresh bread; big tranches of homemade cheese; speca memaz, basically a pepper and cream soup; cups of fresh, cheesy yogurt; and leqenik, a dense, buttery cornbread.  All of the dairy - in four different forms - had come from the family cows.  It's heavy food, good for cool nights at elevation.

Staying in the Rugova, looking out at dark mountains and wild forest, one feels very far away from the KFOR-troop jeeps and supermarkets lower down.  There are no cafes or clothing boutiques, hardly any cars.  Men go to work with cow-twitches and chainsaws.  Mustafa told us that he doesn't want a car - he patted his legs and grinned, "very good," he said.
The truth is, it's not that far to Peja, one of Kosovo's largest cities.  The trip (when you can get a taxi to go all the way) only lasts about forty-five minutes.  The entry to the Rugova is just outside of Peja, though, and as soon as the canyon walls surround the road, one begins to feel far away.  The drive becomes twistier and rougher as it goes, with waterfalls and craggy spires alongside.  Turning up into the woods and towards Rekë e Allagës, all direction and distance is jumbled.  When a traveler emerges into the high meadows, there is nothing left of what they found below.

Under their porch, Mustafa and Fetija keep wooden barrels of cheese, wrapped in gauzy cloth and kept cool in the dark.  Mustafa talked proudly of the Italians that would come to buy cheese and mazė, of the traditions that he was part of.  He had lived for a few years in Switzerland, he has a brother in the Bronx, he knows about the outside world - but he also loves his home, and we could see the happiness he had there, in the hot and verdant days of early July.  On our first evening, we sat outside on the balcony and listened to his children play in the neighbors field - a gaggle of village kids rolled a tire down through the wildflowers over and over, shrieking and running.
When we try our hardest to reach into the ether of the unknown - try to make it to the furthest point, the most untrammeled doorstep - we always hope it will be something like this.  On our last night in Rekë e Allagës, we sat out on the balcony again with cups of turkish tea and the smoke of our hosts' cigarettes.  A full moon rose above the Prokletija Alps and we sat wondering where we were and how we had found our way there - it felt too distant to be real.

The Strange Case of Cigarettes in Kosovo

Kosovo isn't even that smoky a country - but, for a few reasons, there are lots of cigarettes around.  Here, on one of the busy market streets in the heart of Pristina, a man sells cartons of cigarettes, some legal, some probably contraband, some possibly counterfeit.  The bars and restaurants of this capital don't have the tobacco-smog problem that places like Belgrade or Bucharest do (much less St. Petersburg, Andorra la Vella or Minsk), but that hasn't stopped a strangely frantic culture of lawbreaking around tobacco.
There is smuggling into and out of Kosovo, counterfeiting, tax dodging and a whole flurry of other activity.

The most unusual part of cigarette selling in Kosovo are the men who wander from cafe table to table with boxes of cigarettes, offering them to late-nigh patrons.  They move quickly and smoothly, stopping barely a moment or two to complete a sale.  They are always men or, in some cases, boys.  They bear almost no resemblance to the "cigarette girl" Americana image.  In Pristina, there are dozens of them.  In smaller cities, like Prizren, the four or five cigarette men make smaller tours, appearing every hour or so.  Many of them also sell phone cards.
The cigarettes these men sell are often contraband, smuggled in from outside Kosovo.  Often, they cost significantly more than ones bought at a newsstand.  Why would anyone buy cigarettes from outside the country if tobacco is so cheap here?

Kosovo's neighbors have trouble with cigarettes smuggled out of the country.  Two years ago, a Serbian Diplomat was arrested in Austria on charges that he had smuggled 25,000 cartons from Kosovo to Western Europe.  Although the taxes have risen recently, Kosovo's prices have historically been below those of Serbia's, Macedonia's, and Montenegro's (and way below those of more wealthy countries) making smuggling basically profitable.  Serbia, in particular, is plagued by organized-crime smuggling from its southern neighbor.  Often, the wholesale sellers at markets are providing small-scale smugglers or trying to lure smoke-tourists.  It's only an hour by bus between Skopje and Pristina; why not stock up on one side of the border and pay lower taxes?
But that doesn't explain why anyone would smuggle tobacco into Kosovo.

The answer is somewhat amusing.  According to balkaninsight.com, the cigarettes that are sold legally in Kosovo are of lower quality than those sold in EU countries - so people pay more for contraband smokes than they might at legal, tax-paying stores selling Kosovo-spec products.  Apparently, because of health concerns, "safer" EU smokes go for a few Euros more than in-country products.
This hasn't stopped smuggling in the other direction, of course - wherever there's a significant difference in price between two countries, there will be illegal trade.  A now-famous 1994 example, showed that, when Kosovo raised its excise tax on kilograms of cigarettes from €2 to €17, imports decreased by more than 50%.  Of course, nobody smoked less - smuggling just increased.  And, because Kosovars, in general, have less money and lower product-safety thresholds than other Europeans, the higher excise tax has also resulted in lower-quality cigarettes flooding the market at cheaper prices.

There's also counterfeiting, believe it or not.  Fake, name-brand cigarettes are apparently very common, part of a widespread problem in Southern and Easter Europe.  In 2003, as part of a crackdown, Police found and destroyed more than 20 million counterfeit cigarettes - or about half a pack for every resident of this little country.
On one corner of Pristina's bazaar district, five small vendors compete with each other based on some metric of price and quality.  It's hard for an outsider (who doesn't smoke) to distinguish what the parameters of this little market are, why a customer might chose one wooden box over another on a late, humid night.

It's always a concern of ours when we enter a new country - what will the smoking laws be like?  Will we be able to enjoy ourselves indoors or get forced, bleary eyed and coughing, out of every bar or restaurant we visit?  Smoking is generally permitted indoors in Kosovo, which is bad.  People don't smoke that much, though, which is good.  We've come to like the cigarette men, moving so smoothly through the darkness, and the fantastic displays of cartons and boxes that appear in every market.  Kosovo isn't a visibly corrupt or crime-ridden country, so it's sort of thrilling to know that so much of this activity is illegal - it's exciting and comforting to feel like you're in a lawless place with such low stakes.

Euro Cup Runneth Over

We don't often whittle an explanation down to our nationality.  Especially having spent about seven times as much time in Europe than home in the last two years, it has gotten harder and harder to think of things - and people, really - in such certain and separate terms.  However, whenever anyone asks us why we don't watch football, we always respond, "we're American." Sometimes, Merlin can't help himself from working the word "soccer" into his answer.  We both grew up playing soccer, as most Americans do. But watching it? A live televised event with little to no opportunity for commercial breaks? Not our country's style.   So, we actually didn't know Euro 2012 was even happening until we read a news article about violence between Polish and Russian fans.  Once we knew, we made a concerted effort take part in the experience. 

Our viewership began during the last quarter-final match, shown on the ginormous screen at Beer Fest in Pristina.  It was between England and Italy and went into overtime, then double overtime.  Excuse me if these are not the correct terms.  The scheduled 11pm musical performance began to play over the broadcast and we assumed it would end as a draw.  The fact that that can happen is one of the few things I do know about soccer, having been in New York during the 2012 World Cup, when the Post famously printed the headline: "USA Wins 1-1."  As we walked past 91, an English pub just down the street, a television screen alerted us to the much more exciting outcome.  Penalty kicks!  The crowd inside was much less mellow - a group of British expats at the ends of their bar stools (and the ends of their wits).  The mood alternated so extremely between tension and jubilation that beer actually went temporarily untouched.  Eventually, Italy won.

The best thing about watching soccer in Europe, especially in the summer, is that it's an outdoor activity.  Unlike American football, which shuts people into living rooms and neon sportsbars midday no matter how beautiful the weather, soccer brings people out onto the streets.  This is especially true in places like Kosovo, where there aren't too many businesses that can afford a big screen television or ten.  Instead, projection screens are set up where they can be. When all else fails, the side of a building becomes a big screen.  You can walk around all day long and not have any idea where sports theaters will magically pop up after dark. There's usually a bit of finicking with the system.  Getting the picture to line up, synching the sound, a few switches to a blank screen and the words "Lost Feed," "Data Unavailable" or something "Interrupted" and then you're ready to go! 

Then, once it's up and ready, you get to enjoy the summer air while taking in the game.  Sure, there may be competing DJs or call-to-prayers through the broadcast, but it's a little like a drive through movie.  Something special. I can't imagine how well this would work other places.  In Pristina, Rahovec and Prizren, there was never a backlash against waiters or a loss of patience if the sound cut out or a play was missed due to technical difficulties.  The crowds were as far from rowdy as you get. People are laid back here, understanding, mostly sober.  Plus, it's not their own team's pride on the line.   Kosovo cannot take part in the Euro Championship, as they have not been allowed to join the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). 

I'm sure if Albania or even Turkey had been one of the 16 teams who qualified for Euro 2012, they would have been the clear choice for default favorite.  Without them, it was interesting to wonder who people favored to win.  In the case of the final - it was clearly Italy.  The fact that Spain (like UEFA) doesn't recognize Kosovo as an independent country, may have had something to do with it.  For that Sunday night final in Prizren, cars clamored for parking spaces and high-heeled young women searched for a seat (or just a sliver standing room) at a cafe.  There was definitely an atmosphere of festivity, of a big event, but it just doesn't pack the same punch when you don't have a team in the running.  We were just like everyone else, watching a championship our nation had no stake in - but enjoying the heck out of it.

It also doesn't pack the same punch when the match is a blow out.  By the end of the 4-0 final, the bars were almost completely cleared out.  Places kicked up their stereos a little more, people began to make their way back to their cars.  Spain was victorious once again, for the second time in a row.  It will be another four years before anyone gets to strip them of their crown and we will most likely be back in America with more knowledge about the relatively inconsequential NFL summer off-season than this large-scale competition.  Way before then, though, is the London Olympics and I plan on watching the soccer events a little more closely.  I've got some history under my belt now, I know some names and faces.  Super Mario and such.

The Art of Filigree

Prizren has been a craft center for centuries, since it stood right at the junction of Ottoman trade routes spanning from East to West and North to South.  Filigree, the art of bending and twisting threads of silver or gold into intricate designs, is one of Prizren's most time-honored traditions.  It's sort of like metallic lace-making.  You look at a piece and think, where does it start and end? How does it stay together?  What the heck is actually going on here?  The flower on the right was purchased at a shop down the street from Hotel Tharanda (it says "Filigran" like all the rest, but look out for the magnificent silver traditional house displayed in the window) from a warm, welcoming man named Faik.  He told me that Madeleine Albright once purchased a brooch there and I pinned it on with a bit of swagger.  "Would you like to see the workshop?" he asked.  Of course! The flower on the left was a gift - made right before our eyes.

There's something so coy about jewelry stores.  How their displays disappear from view after closing, how you have to bend your body in half to look at the pieces down far below your nose, the sterility of it all.  But the work that goes into making all of those delicate little pieces involves flames, chemical reactions, soldering, tools.  It's metal work - an art and a science. To Faik, it is something even more.  "For young men, it is like flying!"  After 30 years, he has since touched down, but still gets giddy talking about it.  On the walk over to the workshop from the store, he explained that his own sons are not interested in filigree "but there is no pressure."  Many other young people are, he assured, but lack of work space allows them to have only one apprentice at a time.  "This is a problem."  It's amazing to think that this traditional artform is in danger of dying out not because of a lack of interest, but a lack of financial support.  That just seems like the easier thing to remedy.. but, of course, funding is never easy.

There are shops all around Prizren selling "filigran," as it is called in Albanian - but not all of it is made in town.  "A lot of it is from Malaysia," Faik explained with no trace of bitterness or sign that this appalled him.  There was a bit of face scrunching and shaking of his head when he said that they do not use the 95% percent silver 5% copper mix that should be required, but then he quickly added, "but it is very, very beautiful."  Part of me thinks that he recognized the existence of the other shops (even if they are inauthentic) as a continued presence of filigree in Prizren. Which is important. Also, that these are far from the greatest changes (or indignities) he's seen over the course of his life in filigree, in Prizren, in Kosovo.   

When Faik first began to work here it was a big filigree factory in the former Yugoslavia.  Silver and gold came in from Serbia and was fashioned into jewelry, cigarette boxes, chalices, model ships, etc by over 100 artisans.  They had the whole building, then, a combined workshop and school dedicated to filigree.  Since privatization, they can only afford to rent a few rooms.   Faik pointed around the room and described what a usual day in the workshop is like, 10 workers (men and women) sitting around the table.  "Music, coffee," he pointed at a stereo and some saucers and smiled broadly.  He could clearly picture the scene in his mind as he was describing it, the family of workers immersed in this unique world of meditative toiling, of blowtorches and paintbrushes doused in borax.  Scorching and bending and pounding and sand-papering the preciousness right out of precious metal... only to make it more so.

Bashkim is the head designer and was working after-hours when we arrived.  They have a deadline on Monday, complex and beautiful candle holders for the Orthodox church in town.  The silver cage like pieces will be cupped around marble candle holders.  Even the chains that it will all hang from are being fitted with small filigree balls and crosses - everything with a specific meaning, the number of crosses, the order of patterns and such.  Bashkim flipped through a folder thick with papers on which he'd drawn the designs for every individual piece.  Lined paper, photographs, typed instructions, carbon paper, it all made sense to this creative mad scientist.  Faik, an engineer, works more exclusively with the chemical processes, elemental mixtures, readying of materials. He's also the manager of the shop and the head salesman.  These two had clearly been working together for decades, exhibiting the funny camaraderie of unlikely lifemates.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, and I'm sorry that I'm not going more into specifics here, filigree entails working with threads of silver.  It is absolutely incredible to watch this being done.  Faik assured us that the workers usually wear protective coveralls and gloves, but looking at Bashkim's fingers and the way he ran his shirt under a faucet after a drop of chemical splashed on (he only noticed at all because Faik gasped and pointed), I would assume he's a little more casual about all that.  We watched as he took a coffee stirrer like piece of metal and a pair of tweezers and began to fold it into 11 equal parts.  Somehow, that became an outline of a flower whose petals were then filled with spiraled clusters of even thinner silver thread.  To make it all stick together, fairy dust (made of silver and copper) was sprinkled on and then the whole thing was soldered together with this incredible torch contraption.

Check this out (Faik can be heard explaining the basic idea in the background). Gas was turned on, he clicked a lighter to ignite the end and then used a tube attached to regulate the power and direction of the flame with his breath.  This happened over and over as a new element was added to the design.  After each soldering, before the piece had yet lost its bright red heat, Bashkim would start working away on it again.  His fingers completely heat insensitive (though he may have tried to prove this point a little too confidently, wincing a little at a few touches).  Faik joked that Bashkim's father is a baker - so it's a family of burn calloused hands.

Just a week ago, before we left Prizren, we'd gone over to the great Ethnographic Museum, which was staging a week long Crafts Festival.  We had arrived on silverworking day and this woman was clearly excited to be interviewed by the evening news.  I wonder if Faik had watched the coverage over dinner and thought, "Why aren't we on the news?"  But probably not - that's not his style. He was probably just happy to see filigree on tv.   Plus, he's busyreadying himself for a trip to Ankara, Turkey to participate in a big craft convention, selling pieces in the store and educating visitors with visits to his workshop.  He wants to preserve this tradition and continue to make his art - along with Bashkim and the rest of his tight-knit group.  He told Merlin and I that if we were to come live in Kosovo for two years, we could get pretty good at it.  They'd just need a bigger table to fit us in.  Here's hoping that happens soon. I can only be optimistic, wearing a brooch made out of silver linings.

Old Barrels and Concrete Cellars

Podrumi i Vjetër roughly means "Old Cellar."  While it's not that old - the cement and brick shed was erected in 1953 - it is historic.  Built during communism, bombed during the 1999 conflict, partially rebuilt, privatized and now being spruced up, Old Cellar is something of a symbol for Kosovar wine.  In a country where many don't drink and few people vacation, viticulture remains a low-key affair here in Rahovec, the center of what might be called a "wine region."
Rahovec (pronounced "Rah-o-wits") is in a dry valley without a real river.  The landscape is full of new grapes, beehives, cows and rusting cars.  We spent two days in town and lots of hours being shown around the vineyards.  Everywhere we went, we were met with surprise and warm welcomes.

Farms and vineyards sometimes seem thematically separate.  In Kosovo, where wine tourism is still in the nascent stages, the country's largest vineyards feel different - any similarity to Tuscany or Sonoma begins and ends with rows of grapes.  The slick operations found in other places are noticeably absent here.  In Rahovec, wine vats rise like silos and tractors putter along the main street.  This is a farming town, not a resort.
Leki Killaz is one of the head "technologues" at Podrumi i Vjetër.  When we met him he was returning from lunch with a bag of onions, still dirty from the field.  He changed from shorts and a t-shirt into his overalls and led us on an informal tour of the cellar.

What stood out to us immediately was how relaxed the visit was.  Leki showed us the new, stainless steel vats, the pumps, the mashers - the typical trappings of any big vineyard.  But he also brought us into little-used, old corners of the basement, where musty oak casks sat unused and bats flitted in the rafters.  We tasted a very good chardonnay (Rahovec's best variety) and talked about our favorite wines - Leki liked California whites, South African and Australian varieties, South America in general.  Italy, he thought, was going downhill fast.  It was an easy, fun conversation, with none of the normal talking points.
The cellars survived, mostly, when the building was bombed, but couldn't resist the ravages of disuse and age.  Old Cellar is beginning a big reclamation project, re-isolating the concrete storage tanks and making plans for a prettified tasting room.  Still, the vineyards "shop" is really just the warehouse.  When we arrived, accompanied by the Rahovec Tourism director, we needed to wait while the guard phoned the owner - he wanted to make sure it was okay that we were there for a tour.  We got the sense that Kosovo's vineyards aren't used to visitors.

Saranda Shala, the director and driving force of Rahovec Tourism, expressed a lot of frustration about how slowly things progressed here.  She had spent seven years living in Canada and understood better than most what wine tourism can do for a town - and for Kosovo in general.
"It's really hard," she told us, when we had to wait at Old Cellar.  "Things like this aren't supposed to happen.  I try to tell them that they should be happy about tourists, but it takes a long time." She's been trying to set up home stays in town, and runs tours of the region.  It was exciting for her to have us there - even with all her work, visitors are rare.  And, really, that's the problem.  It's not that Rahovec vintners weren't happy to show us around, it's just that they get caught by surprise when someone arrives.  They still can't quite believe that anyone would want to come see their farm.

At Stone Castle winery, the biggest of Rahovec's producers, two men sat outside in the shade. They had glasses of coffee and a plate of apricot pits before them.
Stone Castle is Kosovo's heavyweight; when you order a local wine in Pristina, chances are it will be from here.  Unlike Old Cellar, they have a shop and a young woman who can give tours.  Still, when we arrived unannounced, the gatekeeper and guide were a little flustered.  It took some frantic calls and hand-wringing to get us in.  It didn't seem promising until we told them we were from America.  "Oh!" the guard said.  "America! No problem!"  And we were off.
Zenel Durguti was charged with showing us the cellars.  A softspoken, wonderfully polite man, he told our guide that he wished he'd known we were coming so that he could have worn something nicer.  He had worked at the vineyard for thirty years and knew everything about the process, about winemaking and Stone Castle - he knew the story of the oak barrels (Croatian oak, crafted in Slovenia) and the history of the region.  When he expressed sadness that he'd only had a chance to finish secondary school, we told him that he could be a professor of wine.

On a terribly hot day, it was wonderful to spend some time in the cool of the cellar.  The one constant in wine cellars is the smell - mustiness, dampness, sweet-rot.  It's the same everywhere, and it immediately brings to mind age and years of waiting.
Here in Stone Castle's cellar, some wine glasses had been set out hopefully on paper napkins. Zenel drew us two pitchers of wine - white and red - from big barrels, choosing our tastes carefully.  We stood and drank and tried to communicate.  Once we'd had our fill, Zenel brought out a decanter of brandy - a piece of masking tape was stuck onto the crystal, with "1986" written in marker.  They called it Raki, but it bore no resemblance to the supermarket firewater we're used to.  This was delicious, smooth, honeyed and strong - one of the best brandy's we've ever tasted. And, yes, it was from 1986.  Zenel remembered putting it in the barrel.

"They shouldn't sell beer in the cafes," Blerim Shulina told us. "In Italy, in France, they only have wine at the cafes, no beer.  We should drink what we make."
We met Blerim one evening by chance, outside his shop.  Within a few minutes, he'd gotten us into his car and on our way to his cellar, which was much smaller and more basic than the others we'd toured.  Blerim is one of a few dozen small winemakers in the Rahovec area, and one of the better informed about what it takes to develop the industry.  Over a bottle of chardonnay on his patio, he told us about how hard it was to market and sell in Kosovo.
Because his operation is so small, he has a hard time getting awareness for his brand.  At the same time, it costs him more to produce each bottle, so it's difficult to compete with the larger companies.  Wine is a volume industry here.  Blerim sells his bottles for €3.60 each; Stone Castle prices theirs at €3.10.  In Kosovo, that's considered a big difference.

When we arrived at Sefa Wine Cellar, Blerim's business, we found his father at work applying labels to their new red wine.  A few years ago, a German organization gifted Rahovec a bottling machine so that the smaller vineyards could have an easier time meeting European standards.  The bottler was a huge boon for cellars like Sefa but, as Blerim explained, "it doesn't do labels."

Blerim, his father and a few cousins produce about 50,000 bottles a year, and have entered competitions and expositions in Pristina.  Still, this is a tiny operation and it's focused on craft, taste and the family legacy.
In the end, the people of Rahovec are farmers and they approach winemaking as someone should. Not as a showcase for the brand, but as a process of seasons and time, harvesting and aging.  We got the sense that everyone - from Blerim to Saranda, Leki to Zenel - really cared that we liked the wine.  Unlike at other tastings in other countries, these people watched us sip and think and were genuinely happy when we told them it was good.  We're far from experts, but it didn't matter.  We were all having a good time.

Pristina

Pristina is often bypassed for Prizren or western Kosovo, places that come better recommended or seem better prepared to welcome weary and wary travelers to this land.  Pristina is hot and messy.  Our first impression, at the bus station, was of dead weeds in dried up planters and taxi drivers lying down in the shade.  It is a place of ideas not yet realized and the late stages of reconstruction.  It was a city of bombed buildings not long ago.
But Pristina is actually a wonderful, friendly, safe, lively city with modern restaurants, lots of fun cafes and bars and smiling people.  Given a chance, it's endearing and deserves many more tourists than it gets.

The first impression made by the city is one of tangled wires and half-paved streets, of traffic snarls and sidewalks crowded by parked cars and cigarette sellers. We stayed near the bazaar, where the streets become especially convoluted.  People seem to get caught here, like leaves swept into an eddie in the stream.  They sit or crouch on the pavement, talking over empty coffee cups and bundles of spring onions.  This is the part of town where the call to prayer is loudest and there are the most minarets poking up through the uneven rooftops.  If this was the whole of Pristina, it would be an intriguing, bracing place - but there were lots more impressions to be made.  For a city of just two hundred thousand, it packs a real punch.

The funny thing about Pristina is that it isn't parceled into sections of more or less energy.  In many cities, there are pockets of bright lights and expanses of quiet and emptiness - or there is energy in the outskirts while the manufactured "center" feels desolate.
Pristina certainly has a more wealthy and showy center strip, where university students parade and wealthy women tap at iPhones.  It also has lots of makeshift barber shops and kebab shops, haphazard tenements and dormant construction sites.  But it all blends together with a universal energy and general contentment.

It's also a place where people have become accustomed to internationals - there is a large community of foreign workers here, people who aren't tourists but are still only settled temporarily.  The first wave of outsiders were peacekeeping forces and UN officials - they brought new cuisines and a thirst for foreign beer and raki.  Now, aid groups and NGOs employ a lot of Brits, Americans and Western Europeans; there has also been rampant privitization of the country's assets, which has brought in foreign businesspeople and curious opportunists.  A man arrived at breakfast in our hotel with heavily greased hair and a thick binder labeled "Investing in Kosovo."

The effect has been interesting - in some ways, Prisitina feels more outward looking than most Balkan cities, even more so than places like Belgrade or Sofia.  In those places, there is a national identity to be upheld and mulled over, an urban self-examination.  Pristina is more open to the gusts and currents of the outer world, shaped as it has been by the whims of other nations and the newness of its independence.  There are bookstores that sell magazines in English and restaurants that serve what might - in another place and time - have been called "new American cuisine."  There are English pubs with actual Englishmen inside and coffee shops with actual Italians sitting outside.  

Amid all the ruckus there are plans for two huge new squares, carved out of old communist blocks and bomb-damaged buildings.  The city says that these public places are to become the focal point of downtown Pristina, and work has already begun.  Unfortunately, there isn't enough funding and some are worried that the construction sites will remain torn-up for years.  Meanwhile, other parts of town need drastic work and rampant development has also threatened the city's charm - building codes are often ignored and real-estate deals tend to get awarded only to well connected people and, it is said, criminals.

A taxi driver told us - half in German, the foreign language older people tend to speak - about a new highway project to link Pristina with Albania and Tirana.  He talked about an American firm and some september deadline as we drove through the outskirts of town.  It's true that the roads in and out of Pristina are excellent and new.  It's easy to see the appeal of more construction projects, a shiny center, but it also seems a little unnecessary.  The heart of the city is already going at full pace, old streets and all.

Fueled not by vodka and redbull, but by macchiatos and cigarette smoke, the "bars" and cafes of the capital are surprisingly lively. There are few cities in the region that can match Pristina's nighttime energy, in fact.  Even on weekday nights, there are sections of town where it is difficult to find a free barstool or table after nine o'clock.
And, in a wonderful twist, this nightlife is propelled by real locals, not by loud tourists.  In places as busy and cheap as Pristina is, it's nice to find that the stag parties and club-enthusiasts haven't yet arrived.  In the warmth of late June, there are greetings shouted from table to table, kisses exchanged, a sense of community.  Mother Theresa boulevard, the main pedestrian street, is a loud, pleasant mix of old couples and excited toddlers, high heels and scuffed sneakers.  The strolling continues until late - later than we were prepared to stay up.

Pristina is a city with purpose.  Our guidebook, published only two years ago, speaks of bomb damage and the lasting effects of war.  Now, in 2012, those scars are hard to find and the city is, more than anything, moving forward.  It's not as if the cobweb electric lines and broken paving stones can be fixed overnight, but it won't take long.  In fact, within a few years, it's easy to think that this little capital could be a prime destination, something like Skopje is today - a place that people are no longer afraid of.  Already, the recent past seems very distant.

The Ideas Partnership

"It would be a shame for you not to meet the children!" Elizabeth Gowing had said enthusiastically via email. Twenty-four hours later, we were in the village of Janjevo, surrounded by its youngest citizens. Elizabeth and fellow workers and volunteers of The Ideas Partnership were setting up shop in a rental house in town, which wasn't exactly ready for their arrival. The children began to help carry bedding, dishes, personal affects out of the dining room to turn it the dining room into their summer classroom. The Ideas Partnership was there to get them prepared for and enrolled in school for the very first time this September.  Everything about it excited the kids - the attention, the newness, the promises of games and classes, the foreigners. A group of older residents, all in their 20s plus a confident 15 year old, were there to sign up volunteering. The energy was high, filled with enthusiasm, nerves, expectations, trepidation. Just like the first day of school. This is the world of non-profit organizations, NGOs and Kosovo.

Google search after google search kept leading us to Elizabeth Gowing - known simply as "Elizabeth" throughout Kosovo if our countless interactions with people are any indication. Her articles for Balkan Insight came up while we were looking for homestay options, transportation advice, even for the name of a good gourmet store in Pristina. An English woman who has lived in Kosovo for six years, she's already mastered the art of Kosovar hospitality, putting herself out there so completely as to offer her personal email address in a number of published pieces. Of course, we used it, asking a long string of questions in the hopes that maybe one or two would get answered. What we wound up with was an immediate, lengthy response, a wealth of information and a glimpse of Kosovo that we never, ever would have gotten otherwise. Elizabeth is not just a published memoirist and poet, a journalist and advocate. She's a beekeeper - and upon meeting her, I couldn't refrain from making a lame joke about her being as busy as one.

She is one of three founding members of The Ideas Partnership, an NGO that focuses on helping Kosovans protect their cultural heritage and environment and educate their youngest citizens. There are somewhere around 4,000 non-government organizations (NGOs) registered in Kosovo, but only around 10% are actually active. Still, there are loads of internationals here to work and volunteer and to visit with one of these organizations felt like a truly Kosovar experience. Since The Ideas Partnership is particularly active, there were a lot of options for our involvement - but so little time. Maybe the Sunday Roma language class or the Tuesday evening team-building session? Elizabeth knew that the perfect use of our limited time was to go to Janjevo with them on their maiden voyage. She knew that the children would make the biggest impression on us and that our presence would make the biggest impression on them.

The education program is most likely dearest to her heart, and most demanding of her time. It began in Fushë Kosovë, just 5 kilometers outside of Pristina but a world away. Most big city residents have never visited the town, which shows a level of poverty hard to imagine over foamy machiatos. She said that when photos of the area and the children were shown to some acquaintances in Pristina, they had responded in disbelief, "That's not Kosovo."  The organization's mission, sparked by one little girl's story, was to enroll the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian children of the town into the local school. This involved working with the kids, their parents and the school system that had not made it all that easy for them. 'Step-up' classes prepared them to be students for the first time, lots of passionate diplomacy worked to change the system to allow entry and extra-help after-school sessions keep the children successfully enrolled. It was - and is - a success, swarming with local and international volunteers. Now, they are copying the model in a brand new town - Janjevo. And we were there on the very first day - on 'ground-breaking,' so to speak. Step-up classes begin this Monday.

Janjevo is historically Croation, so Serbo-Croat speaking volunteer Katarina (from Belgrade) has been laying the groundwork for weeks. She's visited almost every family, trying to get a truthful number of non-school-going children and gauge the reasons. She has met with the town's different leaders - the figureheads of the Albanian, Roma, Muslim and Orthodox communities. In a joint meeting between the Roma leader and the three women we accompanied to Janjevo, he spoke German with Elizabeth, French with Aurelie (an executive director originally from France) and Serbo-Croatian with Katarina. I would have loved to have been a fly on that wall. Something like the conversation at the urinal of the United Nations. Of course, most importantly, Katarina had gotten to know the children themselves. When our van pulled up, they swarmed so closely and banged on the sides so loudly that I felt like a Beatle (or a Bieber or whoever the kids are listening to these days). Katarina! Katarina! they shouted. The Ideas Partnership had officially arrived.

The children were fascinated by us, mostly because we were hanging around idly as the others talked logistics and made introductions.  The boy in the red collar, Cuka, was a charismatic ringleader who used every English word in his arsenal on us.  Photo! Photo! We clicked and showed him. Deleta! Deleta! if his eyes were closed.  Facebook! he said and then wrote down his email for us (and his password, which I assured him I didn't need).  At the end of it all, after saying I had nice eyes and hair, he patted Merlin on the back and said he had a good nose and good teeth.  With a firm handshake, he said the nicest thing of all: You are a good man.  So are you, dude.  So are you.

The children aren't the only ones with potential in Janjevo, the town itself is just waiting to be appreciated.  It used to be a wealthy mining town, but is now mostly abandoned.  They say that only one third of the houses are occupied.  The historic house of Stefan Gjecovi Kryeziu, ethnologist, historian, national hero, has been renovated and is supposedly going to be turned into a museum at some point.  Other houses are simply falling into disrepair as each day passes.  They retain signs of their former luster and the surrounding mountains and lack of modern architecture make the place feel even more magical.  Elizabeth and partners talked about the draw this setting could have for volunteers, how wonderful it would be if they could offer teachers a place to stay in a fixed up traditional house.  The potential for tourism is high and the leaders of the town mentioned their desire for it to Elizabeth, who reported that our presence (as two Americans with cameras) put big smiles on their faces.

While tourism could help the town's economy, we were far from the most important foreigners arriving in Janjevo that day.  Elizabeth, Katarina and Aurelie are doing such important, impressive work.  Economic stimulation is great, but intellectual and creative stimulation of the town's forgotten young people is even better.  We left wishing we had more time to give, more help to offer.  But we are really thankful to have at least been welcomed to tag along for the day - to see The Ideas Partnership at work and all of these wonderful children at play.