Dečani or Deçan: A Serbian Monastery in an Albanian sea

After this weekend, it will be harder to write as much as I did for Ohrid.  For this, I am thankful.  (I am sure a few of you out there who braved the non-picture posts feel about the same)  This weekend's destination was the city of  Deçan (pronounced Dechan), a little town between Peja and Gjakova which is famous for the Vioski Decani Monastery. (Високи Дечани for my Cyrillic readers)

A First Glimpse of Vioski Decani

I had originally planned to make it to both Peja and Deçan on Saturday, but my 9:00 wake up did not leave that much time for such a thing.  9:00 seems early, so Joe, how did you run out of time?  It comes down to the bus system of Kosovo, (and I suspect much of the Balkans, aka Fmr. Yugoslavia and former Warsaw Pact-ers) while surprisingly phenomenally efficient and reliable, follows Franklin's old adage:  Early to bed, early to rise, blah blah blah.  The first bus to most places is roughly 5:30, while the last bus is generally around 18:00.  So unfortunately, getting up at 9:00 means there has been now 3.5 hours of missed buses.  It's a problem that I am slowly learning to rectify.  I've digressed.

So I make it out to Peja and everything is going great until the most horrid and unexpected incidence occurs - our bus becomes the local school's field trip bus.  I'm talking 40+ 8, 9 , or 10 year old Albanian kids that just overtake our bus like a plague.  Am I being too harsh?  It might seem as such on the surface, but not when you've lived through it.  And by through it, I mean in the midst of it.  I couldn't move quick enough to change seats and get out from their evil clutches.  It even included a kid getting sick and puking everywhere (although not on me, just around where he was seated), to complete the memory.  The teacher offered his apologizes profusely, but the damage was done.  My brother has a certain famous quote that popped into my head, one that you'll have to ask him to repeat as I do not have the rights to reproduce it, that surmised the situation and confirmed:  I'm not ready to have kids.

Roughly 13:00 rolls around and I jump off the bus at the first indication of being in Deçan, which is a one round-about town, starving for some lunch.  I stop by the first restaurant with outdoor seating, coming in contact with my first language barrier problem to date.  Luckily, with the aid of my Travel Guide/ Phrasebook, I was able to mumble Albanian/make hand gestures/point a lot through ordering a pleasant meal of soup.  It seemed like a pretty traditional soup too, so double score!  I cannot say with 100% certainty of what exactly I was eating (a problem that can occur with a late night run to Taco Bell, too)  but here is my guess:  cabbage wrapped chicken/beef sausage in a delicious broth of I'd guess the beef variety.  It was thick and delicious, accompanied by a huge loaf of fresh baked bread and cabbage salad.  It + coffee was 3 Euros.  Kosovo is a lovely place.

I decide to walk the rest of the way to the monastery, supposedly a 30 min walk from the main roundabout.  However, the sign pointing the correct direction is a little ambiguous and I end up taking my third right instead of my 2nd one.  (To translate for those of you not in Germany circa '07, I went left instead of straight)  After about 20 minutes of walking down the main road (between Peja and Gjakova) and realizing that my destination, in a valley tucked between heavily forested mountains, is clearly not in this increasingly flattened landscape.  I head back and am presented with some absolutely gorgeous views as I recount my steps back to the roundabout.  It's the same Spanish-style tile roofs (At this point, I might as well call it Balkans-style)  with towering peaks rising from behind them.  These peaks, which are all around the monastery, are apart of the mountain range that forms the natural border with Montenegro.  Western Kosovo is of high acclaim for it's raw beauty.  I finally make the right set of turns to set forth on my journey, with the help of a nice old man who helped me through the fork in the road, in the right direction towards the Monastery. 

The Town of Deçan

Background: The charter founded the Monastery in 1330, and construction was completed in 1350.  It was picked by the Serbian King King Stefan Uroš III Dečanski and he is buried there as well.  He had passed away before his monastery was chosen.  

The correct path is a winding forest path with jagged mountain peaks as a backdrop so if you are in-country, aim for that!  You will also know you are on the right path when you come across a military check-point, complete with Jersey barriers, camo-netted bunkers, and Italian KFOR guards.  I had read that there was a presence there, but they waved me through like it was nothing so I didn't think much of it. About 10 minutes of walking later, I still hadn't found the monastery so I stuck my thumb out to hitch a ride.  Low and behold, success!  However, my elated feeling of successfully hitchhiking was deflated when I realized that after about 10m we were there.  I just felt like a lazy American, however my driver just laughed with (or at) me and left me to enjoy.    I ran into problems when I tried to walk in the monastery without surrendering my passport, small issue that was sorted out easily.  There just so happens to be a military base so the first round of checkpoints was mainly for vehicles since the turn-off for the base was back there.  So after all this, I finally headed into the monastery.

I'm on the road to Deçan

The monastery was really quite pretty, the frescoes were in such great condition.  That is a perk of a continuously active monastery, there were no periods of time where things could rot and be destroyed.  Plus this is definitely a big site for the Serbs and the Orthodox Church.  It might be one of the reasons that they are so eager to reabsorb Kosovo back into the fold;  I can't substantiate that with facts/figures/surveys/etc yet, but it feels as much.  (It's a part of the history of Serbia, though)  I spent some time conversing with the Monks, who were friendly and spoke very decent English.  They grow their own grapes, make their own wine, and produce their own cheese.  Of course, as a Madden this was all the push I needed to buy a bottle of Red and some cheese.  However, they had 3 different types of cheese:  Goat, Sheep, and Cow and I was not very interested in the latter one.  I don't know which one I got, whether it's Goat or Sheep's cheese, so it'll be a fun adventure to taste it trial-by-fire style.  

Views from the Road (If I ever release an album, that is so the name of it)

The cool part of this Monastery was talking to a Polish KFOR guy, they were touring the region.  They seem to do a good job of getting these guys off base and allowing them to view the country.  He was a neat guy, who spoke pretty fluent English.  

Here is the start of the tour:

Virtual Tour 2012

Chandelier and Soldiers

Dome Frescoes

Raining indoors?

The Ever Popular Bicephalous Eagle

 The pictures are blurry cause my hands were shaking with excitement from being in such an acclaimed monastery.  Or I am just an awful photographer in low light situations without a flash.  YOU decide!

The Massive Front Door

 This is shot just right from the bunker that the soldiers spend their days in protecting the monastery.  It's camo-netted and there are tiny "murder holes" (an ancient term, but somewhat fitting) that you interact with the soldiers.  Or if you are me, I just walked into their guard shack and chatted away with them.  Tensions are seemingly low.

The Perfect Backdrop

 On my way back into town, I struck up a conversation with a fellow backpacker. (I'm the weekend type) He was a Scottish bloke who just graduated with a degree in photojournalism and an interest in international work. (He has an internship in Palestine in December, a freaking gold mine!)  He definitely had career path that paralleled mine, though he had come to Kosovo for 2 weeks to do a project on Orthodox Churches here.  We both were intrigued by the military base, as a helicopter was flying around trying to land on base.  
When you are on the monastery grounds it is serene, like there is no where else beyond the walls.  The reclusive mountain setting coupled with it being an active Church really compounds upon each other to create an atmosphere that writers can only dream about when they have writer's block.  Then out of nowhere, a military helicopter buzzes the place and upsets the balance.  I am not blaming the pilots, they are just trying to land at the base, but it's a hold out from the war time that is hard to imagine.  
 We struck up a good conversation about life, politics, philosophy, human rights, etc which really made the trip back a whole lot nicer.  He was headed off to Gjakova and I back to Peja, but there is a chance I will run into him again in Prishtina.  

 The Monastery is hidden by those trees, but this was my favorite shot of the surroundings.  In the foreground is the vineyard that produces some tasty looking wine, complete with the ringing of cowbells (it's not an MSU game, Mark) by the estate's marauding cattle.  I never saw the goats or sheep, but there is a lot of forested areas that one cannot visit.

 By the time I got back into Peja it was roughly 17:00, so with only an hour to explore I decided to come back another weekend and headed home.  I was a complete waste when I got back here, my biggest accomplishments were choking back the tears after watching the GT game and getting a good night's rest.

I finally finished up my article and proposal for a travel magazine that I hopefully will get to be a part of in the coming few weeks,  so everyone keep your fingers crossed!  And hopefully this upcoming weekend I can do a bit of networking on the UN bus that I am taking to Sofia, Bulgaria!  Everyone cross your fingers again!