The best bakery

By Xanne Vos

The other day Lisa and Petra asked someone in a little shop what the best bakery in Prishtina was – they were sent to the City Bakery. In the bakery they met Baker Toni, with whom they had a nice conversation. As Lisa, Petra and I are doing our project for Peace Lab on the future of Kosovo, we thought we could incorporate his ideas into the project. For the project we have set up an Instagram in which we have pictures with little stories containing dreams or visions of the people we met on our trip for the future of Kosovo. We will keep posting in the next couple days, so you are all encouraged to follow our page: https://www.instagram.com/kosovardreams/.

We went back to the bakery on Tuesday afternoon. What followed was a fun and interesting conversation, accompanied by the many generous treats that were offered to us by Toni. At some point we were joined by Toni’s friend Besim. As it was so much fun, we decided to go out for a coffee at Lulu’s with them. As Besim is very fond of hiking and climbing and often gives guided tours in nature, we were invited to join them to visit a lake the same afternoon for a little hike and swim. They picked us up from the apartment and we drove to a lake near Gračanica. Besim convinced us that the best way to swim was to jump off a bridge. Hyped by his enthusiasm we just rolled with it! After swimming we visited the Bear Sanctuary, where bears who were previously held in captivity, were given a lovely new home. When the sun was setting we had a raki in a café nearby and finished the day with an amazing meal in a former Serbian farm – now restaurant – called Ethno House, in Gračanica. Even though our two Albanian friends spoke Serbian, the Serbian waiter spoke Albanian much better and so within the Serbian enclave of Gračanica, among a Serbian audience, we actually spoke Albanian and English, while watching Russia play in the World Cup.

On Wednesday, we visited the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Coming into the meeting I was quite sceptical, as our previous visits with big international organizations – EULEX, OSCE, UN – had been a little disappointing, because the representatives were very careful with their words; often their answers to our questions were just a lot of nice words, without real meaning. Moreover, international organizations often work from a much broader vision, that is not as well adapted to the specific circumstances that the situation here requires, whereas most grassroots organizations had very strong ties with the community, and the results of their work were much more visible. The IOM however is a big international organization, but their projects are much more grassroots and small scale. In addition to that, the organization was very open minded and had an extremely wide range of projects in many different sectors, ranging from agriculture to fashion. We got a chance to talk to both representatives afterwards and took pictures so their stories will soon be posted on Instagram!

In the afternoon we worked on our projects in a café and afterwards Petra and I walked to the Bill Clinton statue, which is unsurprisingly located on the Bill Clinton Boulevard, and accompanied by a big US flag. Another fun detail was that the dress shop next to the statue was called Hillary. Kosovo’s extremely positive stance towards the United States stemming from US support for Kosovo’s independence is something that really intrigues me, and therefore it is fun to see signs that show this relationship.

The day ended with a swim in yet another lake – called Batlava lake – and dinner in restaurant Adriatiku which had an amazing view. After dinner we all shared our experiences and realized how close we had become as a group. All in all it made for a lovely but emotional last evening in Kosovo.