Saturday 15 June 2019 Peace Lab

By Lily Doolan Burke

The 15th of June began the way the 14th of June ended: in a nightclub. The people of Peace Lab 2019 danced their hearts out on the opening night of a huge Kosovan club. A mixture of Albanian and English music blasted from every speaker. As a large group of rowdy foreigners it goes without saying we stood out. It was interesting to see how the clubbing culture differed here from back in Amsterdam. Many people in fact did not dance at all and we were told this was not uncommon. Our group however most certainly did and also managed to convince the students from the University of Pristina to join us as well, something they admitted they usually did not do. Needless to say the morning started late for everyone and real movement did not occur until the early afternoon. 

Immediately after what was meant to be breakfast but what can be more accurately called lunch, everyone once again convened at the “NEWBORN” sign in the centre of Pristina to reach our destination of the day, Gracanica. Gracanica is home to a majority Serb population and as such this would be the first time for all of us to leave the majority Albanian part of Kosovo. Our first destination was the Gracanica Monastery where we met our extremely enthusiastic tour guide who led us, his “friends”, into the Serb Orthodox church that stood in the centre of a large well-tended lawn between the residences reserved for both monks and nuns. The church inside was covered every inch in beautiful frescoes depicting many Biblical events. But most interesting to me and I think many of the other AUC students was the small door hidden away behind one of the pillars of the building. Our guide emphasized that he could not, would not, should not, show us what lay behind the door. Then, with theatrical flair, he scurried away to go get the key. The door it turns out was hiding a small steep staircase that led to a room above, where apparently devout worshipers and one widowed queen of historical importance were walled in and lived there for 6 months (in the queen’s case) to 1 year ( in the case of many of the worshipers) . Our guide then ran off to prepare for festivities that would take place the following day and we made our way to our next stop. 

The Serbian “MISSING” monument is sort of a play on the Albanian “NEWBORN” sign in the middle of Prishtina, however it is a monument to all those still missing after being taken by the KLA, Kosovo Liberation Army. Apparently it used to be heavily guarded, however there was no security in sight while we were there, and in fact the sign seemed in disrepair. Escaping from the heat, we piled into our bus yet again and drove to the restaurant where we would have dinner. I feel I can safely say that all of Peace Lab 2019 found the place to be beautiful. As the sun began to set many of us sat in the grass watching the golden sunlight play over the fields before us. It was an amazing way to end another eventful day in Kosovo.