By Tom Vrolijk
Today is Tuesday, the 8th day of our trip, which means the trip is almost over. Even
though I am sad to leave, I can say this trip has been successful. Not only did
we enjoy ourselves, we also met amazing new people, learned about new cultures
and had some eye-opening experiences.
One of the
amazing people we met was Igo, she is the leader of the woman’s network and has
done an incredible job in promoting woman’s rights in Kosovo, before, during
and after the war. Yesterday (Monday) started out as usual, the sound of alarms going of
on 4 phones at the same time, multiple people wanting to shower at the same
time, Enver telling us to hurry up and making sure we get to the meeting with Igo on time (sort of). She gave one of the most inspiring talks we had during
this trip, and she is one of the persons that actually made change happen.
After
meeting with Igo, we went to Kosovo 2.0, a magazine that strives to bring professional
and neutral journalism to Kosovo. They publish about topics such as corruption,
sex, and general history of Kosovo in a neutral way. They have much less
funding than mainstream media in Kosovo, yet they are able to write about important
topics without bias, and make sure the public engages in these topics as well. They have an
online platform, as well as a printed magazine which is released every few
months in English, Serbian and Albanian. The whole day was filled with
positive meetings for once!
Nonetheless,
there are still many problems Kosovo is dealing with, one of these issues is
recognition. Kosovo is not internationally recognized by many countries and organizations,
including the EU and the UN. And then there is Serbia, who claim Kosovo is part
of Serbia, and should not be an independent country. Not being recognized
brings a whole bunch of major and minor problems. One of these issues is
crossing borders, or visa liberalization. This means that people in Kosovo have trouble
crossing borders, especially with Serbia. This problem is best explained through
our attempt to cross from Kosovo into Serbia on foot last Thursday.
(Serbian Flags on the Kosovar side of the border show how the people in the north of Kosovo think of recognition.)
At the
start of the week we visited a lake near the Serbian border. After having
refreshed ourselves and after having some beers, we decided we wanted to try to
cross the borer, just to be able to say that we have been in Serbia. On we
went, walking in a general direction towards Serbia.
‘The hard part about walking from Kosovo to
Serbia is that you cannot ask directions, since Serbs will tell you you are in
Serbia already’ Ilen Madhavji.
(Abandoned gas station near the Serbian border/boundary)
Luckily we managed
to find the border without directions. However, once at the border control, or
as Serbs call it, boundary control, we engaged in a conversation with the
border/boundary police. Anne had already told us we could not cross into Serbia
with our passports, only with our IDs. Yet, at the border this grey area of
politics became even more dark grey. The border control told us that we could
cross into Serbia, but could not come back to Kosovo with our passports. Once
we told him that we had ID cards, the guard said we could cross the border, and
most importantly, come back. It all seemed fine, until he asked us if we also
had our passports.
(Border
sign saying welcome to a particular area of Serbia, not the country itself)
As we thought it was normal question at a border
we gave him our passports, this is where the whole business became shady. At
this point he was holding my passport and ID card, as well as Ilen’s passport
and ID card. With a suspicious laugh he told us we could go. Both Ilen and I
realized he still had our passports and IDs, and we were never going to leave
either in the possession of the shadiest border police I have ever seen.
Wisely, we asked for our passports and IDs back, and decided our journey into
Serbia ended there.
As we were
walking back to the restaurant at the lake, some random guy in a tiny restaurant next
to the road which was heading towards the border asked us a ‘simple’ question. ‘In
which country are you now?’ This is probably the most loaded question one could
ask in the Northern part of Kosovo where there is a majority Serbian population,
and where most people agree Kosovo should be part of Serbia. We told him that
we would leave that up to him to decide, and walked onwards. Even though our
mission to cross into Serbia failed, we did get hands-on experience with the crooked
politics behind the issue of recognition ourselves, and now we have a good story
to tell when we get back.
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