Prizren

By Sahar Afzal
 
My blog post will be about our lovely day in Prizren: Sunday 17 June. Before starting my blog post on Prizren I want to write about something that I noticed quite often these past days. When walking around the University of Prishtina I saw two small boys carrying around fake guns. (At least, I hope they were fake). They would walk around, hide behind cars and pretend to shoot each other. For sure, I know this wouldn't be accepted in Dutch society. However, many kids in the Netherlands play video games like Modern Warfare, Grand Theft Auto, and War Games. How does playing in real life differ from playing in virtual life? I just want to keep in mind that these young boys are growing up in a post-conflict area. Therefore, I wonder how effective it is if they walk around with (fake) guns and play with them. I'd love to hear from other people, reading this blog: What do you think? Is playing with guns something that can also be seen as something positive in a conflict area?

 

 

All of us, woke up quite sleepy since we had a great night at club Zone. Therefore, many of us slept during the relatively short bus trip. A new highway was built so our bus ride only took one hour! I also slept and woke up quite amazed by how beautiful Prizren is. My first view was the beautiful mosque you could see from all over Prizren. This sight looked like a mix of Venice and Istanbul. Something that immediately struck me, was how many Turkish flags were hanging around. Turkey has a lot of influence in Prizren.

A nice tour guide took us around the city. Firstly, we went to the largest Serbian Orthodox church in Prizren. I was shocked to hear that only 30  Serbs are left out of 14,000 in Prizren. This is some context which is important to understand in Prizren. Prizren is a city like Prishtina where almost all Serbs left after the Kosovo war in 1999. They either went to northern cities in Kosovo like Mitrovica or moved to Serbia or died in the conflict. During this guided tour, the tour guide explained to us the 2004 riots that burned down several Serbian Orthodox churches in Prizren. I will come back to that later. Slowly the church got re-built, mostly with money from Russia. As Anne described it: "From Russia with love". I hope that the church will be fully restored soon. Moreover, this church has been under protection ever since it got attacked. It is quite sad to see that holy places like this church need protection.

After the visit to the church, we prepared ourselves for a hike through Prizren mountains. We got some water and went up-hill for the hike. It was quite heavy and I got very sweaty. Our first stop was at another Serbian orthodox church. This church was also destroyed by Albanians during the 2004 riots. Comparing this church to the church we visited earlier during the tour, this one did not get re-built. The roof is gone and it cannot operate as a proper church anymore. Personally, I am quite shocked by the level of violence used against these churches. Many Serbs already left, so why did they just not turn the churches into mosques? Why did they need to be burned down? What for example happened to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. I do not really know the answer to this, but it is interesting to think about. We spent some time next to the church enjoying the view, which is amazing. Our hike continued and it was very heavy. My legs were hurting a lot. So I was very happy when we reached the top. Together with Rabiya, I sat down and looked after everyone's bags. We enjoyed the sun and view all over Prizren.

One thing that I found very funny during our stay in Prizren was the following contrast. The Azan (call for prayer) would ring throughout the whole of Prizren. You could hear it everywhere. When we got down after the long hike, we stopped by the biggest mosque. Next, to the mosque, a hip-hop festival was going on. Hip-hop and house music was played so loud that you could hear it throughout Prizren, just like the Azan. Even when the Azan started again, the party and music would continue. So it was nice to see that religion/prayer could happen simultaneously with partying. By the way, the mosque looked so beautiful from the inside. The architecture and Arabic holy scriptures were written on the wall in a very nice way.

Our final stop of the night was close to the Albanian border. We had dinner between the mountains next to a lovely lake. It was a fish restaurant, which I particularly like since I do not eat meat but only fish. After eating our meal, we went outside to sit on the grass and talk to each other. With the sunset on our backs, we enjoyed the lovely view. When it started to rain, it was time to go home. We tried to watch some Brasil-Switzerland on the bus since many Kosovars support Switzerland. The reason for this is that many players in the Swiss team have a Kosovar background. Back in Prishtina, 30 minutes of the game were left. With a lot of excitement, I watched the match in a café at Newborn square. Finally, the score was 1-1. What made us all very happy and gave us a good night of sleep.