They’ll eat me. They’ll eat me not.
A few serious discussions with friends from Sarajevo effectively crossed out Albania from my summer trip. Why would I go to a place where local people told PG-10 rated stories about how unsafe the country was, how dangerous people were after many years closing their country to the outside world during Communism, how our school bus tour to Greece had to change route heading to Macedonia instead of crossing Albania. Thinking that Muslim countries sympathize with one another, I told my friend I would pretend that I spoke Bosnian so they’d be friendly to me. “No. Then you sound like a Serbian, and they will hate you even more.” My friend laughed and joked that they might ‘eat’ me. (For those who don’t keep up with events in this region, Serbia and Kosovo had been fighting for years for the independence of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians made up the majority of the population.)
The Balkan border is a disputing issue as Slovenia is included on some maps and not on the other, and the part of Romania which belongs to this region is unclear.
Balkan Scissors blogs a short but fairly detailed post describing the Balkan:
At my colleague’s farewell party last night, I met a friend of her who was Macedonian. With little knowledge about Macedonia, I asked her if they spoke the same language as Serbia, then I said “Kako si!” That was it for our initial conversation.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
