Getting to Kosovo from Serbia

Getting to Kosovo from Serbia

I woke at 3.30, not able to sleep because of the light from the window. I sat up from the seat, lowered the window and looked outside to uninteresting countryside landscape. I woke up the Macedonian, my bunk-mate, an hour later to move his legs aside so I could get out and find a train conductor who was nowhere in sight. One thing about train conductors is they are everywhere when you don’t need them, interrupt you in your meditative state of being to check your train ticket and wake you up from your beauty sleep at night to do another ticket controlling. The Macedonian rose from his

The Macedonian rose from his seat made bed and looked out of the window to get a clear view of the station name. “No, not here, next stop,” he said to me. The train slowly made a stop at the station for a minute and slowly cranked its metal wheels away in the same tired manner it had come. I returned to my bunk and put on my backpacks, ready to jump out when the train stopped again as I remembered from the timetable the ticket man from Belgrade showed me, that the train would stop at my station for only one minute. I got off the train at the next station. I could not read Cyrillic texts, but I could tell that the name didn’t resemble any spellings of Bujenovac. I ran from the middle of the platform toward the engine where the train operator and a rail traffic controller were having a chat, flailing my hands to attract their attention. “What you want?” The train operator stuck his head outside the window asked. “Bujenovac?” I shouted. “No, next one.” This was a close call. You don’t want to get stranded at these hours in a passing-by station and try to get Serbs to tell you how to get to Kosovo.  I climbed back onto the train, just in time for the heavy, old train sluggishly pulled itself out of the station. We passed by uninteresting landscape often seen on train ride through undeveloped villages: tall grass not being cut for a long time, decrepit small brick houses, clothes drying outside and trash on wet soils.

The train conductor at Bujenovac, Serbia

Bujenovac station looked even smaller and more desolated than the previous one. I was the only person who got off the train and the only one at the station beside the traffic controller. “Hi, autobus to Pristina?” “Yes, yes.” The rosy-cheeked, cheerful man replied. He walked into his office to write something on a notebook. “Autobus to Pristina?” Concerned, I called after him.  “Yes, yes.” He smiled and signaled for me to enter the dim-lit office. He started a long conversation in Serbian, I think, explaining connections to Kosovo, which confused me why a Serb could muster such enthusiasm about Kosovo. “Are you Albanian?” “Yes, I am.” Ahah, that’s why. I grinned as if having discovered a big secret. “You speak French?” He asked and launched another long speech, but this time in French, oblivious to the fact that I didn’t understand a single word of it except, based on his gesture and the context of the situation, “I speak only French, and you speak English.” “Bus station is 3 km away.” He waved his hand across the rail track to the other side of the village where I could see signs of buildings hidden behind the grass. “You take a taxi.” “How much?” “Don’t know. Maybe three, four hundred dinars.” “OK.” “I’ll call you a taxi.” He returned to the office and dialed on a very old-fashioned phone.

Then I heard him shout to someone on the other line which I took as “take someone to the bus station to Pristina.” In less than 10 minutes an old man appeared on the rail track walking to us from his cab. These guys had a conversation with each other and asked me if I wanted to go all the way to Pristina in the cab for 50 euros. I said it was too much and wanted to go only to the bus station. “How much do you have?” “Not much.” “3 euros for only 3 km to the bus station. It’s 100km to Pristina.” They reasoned with me. “But a return train ticket from Belgrade to Skopje costs only 32 euros,” I said. “But this is a train.” They laughed. “Hey man, just take her to the bus station.”

The traffic controller told his taxi-driver friend. The taxi-driver asked me a few basic questions and picked up the unfinished Pristina subject and told me he didn’t know if there was bus today and wanted to know how much I had to Pristina. “10 euro?” “No.” He shrugged. I was still sitting in the car when two guys came over, and he drove them off. He definitely wanted to get from me the ride to Pristina. I didn’t mind at all as I got a free ride around the town. The local people in Eastern Europe seemed to have an aversion to walking. They either take buses, kombi, taxi or ride in their cars. Walking one km is unheard off. Walking two km is a little crazy. The cab driver drove me back to the bus station and tried to bargain one more. “We go to Gnjilane; there are many buses to Pristina.” “No, I wait here.” He gave up and let me off but now and then came to me and told me where the bus to Pristina would be and pointed at his watch at 6.45. It was 6.00.

I entered the bus station to hide away from the chill of the early morning. On the bus timetable, there wasn’t any information about bus connection to Pristina or Kosovo. I asked the man at the ticket booth. He said he didn’t know and told me to ask outside. The other guy, probably a bus driver confirmed the same thing. I had a feeling; no I was entirely sure that they were Serbians. How could they not know when buses to Pristina passing here in front of their eyes multiple times per day, every day? The taxi driver occasionally entered the bus station and tagged around me, reminded me about the bus to Pristina. “There. 6.45.” How funny, these Albanians! I bought a meat burek for him and me before walking to the street to wait for the bus. This bus didn’t go into the station, making only a brief stop on the main street. The ticket costs 4.5 euros (~4500 dinars). I gave the ticket collector 1000 dinars, and he gave me back a 50-dinar note and another five. I rechecked the ticket and remembered what he told me in the beginning, thinking he might have said 9500. “What?” Seeing me keeping looking at the receipt and the change, he asked. “Is it 4.5 euro?” “Yes.” Why the change is only 55 dinars?” He took the five note from my hand and wanted to shove it to my face. “5 euros.” Opps. “Sorry sorry.” He angrily walked back to his seat. The bus driver thought I couldn’t hear and understand what he said.

The 100km journey took almost three hours mostly because of the bad road condition through the mountain. The curving two-lane road, flanked by tall bushes and mountain in the outer range reminded me of the trip five years go from Montenegro to Albania. I rode in the same small bus, surrounded by Albanians, whose names only brought up ‘troubled’ and ‘uneasy’ thoughts, going to a country whose name also raise a lot of question. The only difference between these trip was the first one I was a nervous wreck, worrying if these Albanian would rob me or kidnap me while this time I was relaxed and happy as a bee and couldn’t wave to strike a conversation with any of them.

We passed by a military post and then to a lone border checkpoint, controlled by only Kosovo as Serbia doesn’t recognize Kosovo’s independence, thus doesn’t equate entering Kosovo mean entering a new country and exiting Serbia. I dozed off for most of the journey and woke up when the bus stopped to drop off and pick up passengers. Finally, we entered a bigger city, and the bus stopped on the highway where you could walk to the city. Many people got off, and I got out after them and followed a woman to a local bus stop to take the bus to the guest-house.

Ok. Let’s rock and roll. I’m in Kosovo, the country I’ve longed to for the past five years.

Photos from Kosovo

[slickr-flickr tag=”kosovo” “descriptions=”on” caption=”on”]