Ulpiana and Gračanica

Shadows and Ruins

So Laura, Jason, Andrea, and I grabbed a cab out to Gračanica and Ulpiana (not to be confused with the section of Prishtina) which are right outside of the city. They are next to each other and are the closest Serb Enclave. The city of Gračanica is known for the monastery there. It's not the same size scale as Decan, but it's still a pretty important place.  Close to Gračanica  is Ulpiana.  Ulpiana is a set of Roman-era ruins, complete with human remains.  A little eerie, but probably one of the cooler things I have seen since I got here.

Bonnnnnnnnnnnes

So we get out to Ulpiana, it's a field. It's not an archaeological site proper. There are farms on all sides of it, and a lonely, drunk, and (coincidentally) Serbian curator. He begins by yelling at us about taking pictures, no pictures allowed! Well that's how things go in most museums and ruins, so we oblige him and continue around the area. He leads us off towards the back section of the ruins. This was the old church building complete with tombs/catacombs. Here is where things get interesting. He shows us the human remains. I am talking full bodies, hands, limbs, skulls, etc. And we can take pictures. That's the part that blows my mind. The walls/ruins are way too fragile for photos, but human remains? Those are solid. Indestructible really.

Remainnnnnnnnnnns

We head back into town after gawking at bones and trying to communicate with the nice Serbian man, straight to the monastery. The frescoes inside are well preserved and great. The worst part about this trip was that the gift shop was not open, and there are a few gifts that I need to pick up for people! Still, the Monastery is so serene. It's surprising how well a 10 foot wall can block out all that is going on around you.

The Monastery

We leave from Gračanica, trying to find a restaurant called Ciao. It's highly reviewed, but none of us actually know where it is. We stumble across it accidentally and are a little wary of the outside. It looks run down and dirty. This gnawing worry leaves us as soon as we open the door to this beautiful, rustic, and Western style inside. All fear turns to enthusiasm as soon as we see the menu. Pork. Pork. Pork. More Pork. I personally went with the bacon-wrapped grilled pork chops. I mean of course I chose pork wrapped pork, it was the first time I had seen pork in 2+ months. I gorged. Jason had pork sausage that looked fantastic. He gorged. Laura had pork Gulag. She didn't gorge, because she's a lady. Jason and I gorged for her. Andrea had chicken, it looks appetizing and healthy. I preferred the pork. Writing this post is making my mouth water.

We ended our evening with some Rakija (from Montenegro) and tea over at Jason and Laura's. It was a successful day.

Shadows and Ruins

Prizren and Thanksgiving

So I want to first off apologize to all of my followers with my absence.  It has been a hectic time for me, with work, travel, and the weather, so I got a little behind with it.

So I left off right after Bajram, so I will try to remember all that has happened between now and then.  This is definitely going to be a 2-3 post update.

So the first weekend of November saw me visit the city of Prizren.  It is an old town that has retained a lot of its Turkish heritage, through the various wars and occupations.  It's a stunning city, with a river meandering on through.  The city is tucked at the base of some smaller mountains, though there were snow capped mountains in the distance.  Prizren is in the bottom left corner of Kosovo, near the Albanian border.  I was in Prizren for a CouchSurfing event, a meet up of sorts, which people came from all over the Balkans (and the rest of the world) to see old friends and make new ones.

This was definitely an interesting adventure for me; I rode down with two people I had never met.  A German police officer and a local Kosovar who works for the local telephone company were my fellow passenger and driver respectively, but it was far from awkward and was quite an enjoyable ride.  Every nationality and ethnicity was present when we arrived.  It was organized by this really cool girl from Serbia, who had been organizing these for 12 years.  There were Serbs, Albanians, Kosovars, Turks, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Croatians, English, Scottish, Australian, Kiwis (New Zealanders), Americans, and Italians.  I think that covers everyone, but needless to say it was quite the spread.

Besides making good friends (specifically: a Croat named Bojan, a German named Dori, and an English girl walking from England to Istanbul), two things stood out to me.

1) The Hike-   We hiked around 2 hours to a clearing out in the mountains that had a great view of the city and the surrounding snow caps.  It was exhilarating and welcomed.  The air was fresh and pure; it was overall a fun adventure.  When we came down the mountain, we stopped by the old city wall that towers over the main part of the city.  The sun was starting to set, so the views were breathtaking.  I was literally inundated with breathtaking views, it rocked my world.

2) When her fellow Serbian friends asked "Why are you hosting this event in Kosovo, it's shit!"  She asked them "Have you ever been to Kosovo?"  When their response was clearly no, she responded, "This blind hatred it stupid, you are stupid, please piss off” (She was taught by the Brits).  It was such a refreshing dialogue rather than the typical hatred between these two Republics.

So it was a nice weekend to visit another Kosovar city and get out of the grind that is Prishtina!

The week after was the Election, to which I had secured an invitation to the Embassy's gala event.  It was a grand ole time; I shook hands with the Ambassador, enjoyed Samuel Adams beer, and was in a good mix of American and International company.  I even woke up to watch the election results, but it was cold and rainy (and 4:30 in the morning) so I did not make it over to Jason and Laura's for their election breakfast party.

While I did not travel the following weekend, I did have a chance to get to know a great Canadian couple that I have become fast friends with.  Michael is a writer who followed his girlfriend Andrea, Political Affairs Officer for the UN, to Kosovo and continues to write.  We ended up hanging out at the Irish pub and then going to see Skyfall (Which I enjoyed immensely) with a whole mess of UN folks.

Since we did not have the week off for Thanksgiving, we opted to have it on the 24th instead. Our idea was for the Americans to produce the food, and our international friends produce the alcohol.  So much fun was produced that night.  That Saturday, which will live in football infamy, was an epic day.  While we did not kill our own turkey, per my previous post, we did have a good sized bird courtesy of my friend Mackenzie and her connections at Camp Bondsteel.  I personally made ajvar deviled eggs (turned out PHENOMENAL, to be humble), mashed cauliflower, and roasted beets.  I think three dishes is a good amount to make, but it was not even close to a fraction of the feast that we had.  There was turkey, two things of mashed potatoes, two things of stuffing, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, brownies, stewed curried pumpkin deliciousness, cranberry sauce, my three dishes, and plenty more that in my food (and nothing else) induced coma.

That was just the food.  We also had a whole mess of Raki, wine, and mulled wine.  The mulled wine I think killed about half of the international community; Jason might have been a little heavy handed with the Brandy (think like my eggnog a few Christmases ago).  It was delicious, but strooooooong.  The party was a great success; delicious food, plentiful drinks, and wonderful company was in abundance.  It was a true Thanksgiving.  We even had a second Thanksgiving the next night to over indulge again!

Pics soon to follow, my adventures in Greece to follow as well.

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! 

Obligatory Foodie/Food Culture Post

After a hectic and totally awesome weekend, this week has seen some downtime.  That's perfectly fine by me, but since this weekend will probably rival last weekend, I thought I should do a more subdued post to keep the Feng shui of the blog aligned.  Aka, the classic foodie post.

 Albanian pot roast - a very similar, yet distinctive take on the classic.  It is pretty standard, yet a little spicier.  Plus the two pieces of meat that I could not figure out, I suspect some sort of beef cut.  There is very limited pork here. (Muslim nation)  This was accompanied by a delicious cabbage salad, which was like a sauce-less cole slaw.  This was a standard lunch serving.  I should mention that Albanians eat super large portion of food, very similar to Southern style.  The difference is they are all skinny.  (At least here in Kosovo)

This was my first apartment-cooked meal.  Just simple noodles (Bowtie and Macaroni as the Mac bag was emptied)  with some fresh peppers.  A red one that wasn't spicy or sweet, so I have not fully figured out what it is.  Then a super spicy green one, it kinda lost a lot of color while cooking it.  Think pizza-box peppers, but 10x spicier.  So delicious.  Then to top that off, yellow bell pepper.  These are all fresh and seasonal, there is a market outside my building where I work.

Cannot forgot the ingredients for washing everything down, so I went with this Pilsner.  Peja is a city in Western Kosovo.  It's a standard beer, it's good on a similar goodness scale as Budweiser.  Which they do sell the Czech Budweiser here, so I'll be sure to stock up.

 After concerns for my mainly vegetarian diet, I broke down and cooked breakfast for dinner.  They are all brown eggs, with a different shade yolk which weirded me out a little.  Clearly did not stop me from devouring it.  The top is part of a spinach Byrek, a traditional meal.  It's a thin and flaky pastry that usually is filled with cheese, meat, or spinach.  And the left hand side is some sausage that I picked up from the store.  Very easy to cook and super filling.  It might be hard to see, but I a wedge of Happy Cow cheese on there too.  See below for more.

 Happy Cow cheese, does it remind anyone of anything?  Well I purchased the salmon flavor.  It was intriguing, the picture at least. The cheese itself was delicious.  Instead of a salmon flavor, it was more a smoky flavor that one usually gets with lox.  Definitely worth a purchase if you can find it.  It would be good on a bagel, that's 100% for certain.

Rahovec Weekend Spoils!

To continue the trend of breaking up food with liquids, I present to you the aforementioned wine and raki that was purchased in Rahovec.  The far left is a Cabernet Sauvignon (my personal favorite), followed by bootleg, then bootleg raki, then finally a Vranac.  I have had a sampling of them all, and they are all delicious.

Finally, the Salads (sallatë in Albanian)  

Sallatë Greke.  Cucumbers, tomatoes, chunks of feta, olives, a little bit of lettuce, and lightly tossed with some olive oil.  This is my main stay, pretty much my choice for about 90% of my lunches.  This one in particular is served out of the Restaurant Lion, which is across the street from my office.  It's very good, very large, and most importantly: very inexpensive (1.8 Eur)  

Sallatë Shope.  While I did not take this photo, the salad looked about like this.  But bigger.  Much much bigger.  It looks awfully similar to a Sallatë Greke, but there are a few difference.  No olives, no lettuce, and no chunks of feta.  However it does have a brined white cheese.  I had never heard of brined white cheese before, but it was good!  It was light in flavor, especially as it was shredded.  


To make things easier and to teach with this blog, I have thus quoted Wikipedia:  

"Brined or pickled cheese is matured in a solution of brine in an airtight or semi-permeable container. This process gives the cheese a good stability, inhibiting bacteria growth even in hot countries. Brined cheeses may be soft or hard, varying in moisture content, and in colour and flavour, according to the type of milk used; though all will be rindless, and generally taste clean, salty and acidic when fresh, developing some piquancy when aged, and most will be white. Varieties of brined cheese include feta, halloumi, sirene and telemea, a variant of brinza.  Brined cheese is the main type of cheese produced and eaten in the Middle East and Mediterranean areas."