Kosovo's Flag. Last time for now. When I moved to Kosovo last September, I was excited. I was also irritated. I was excited to be in a place I’d read about, but never visited. I was irritated, because change is hard. In Kosovo, the driving was chaotic and needlessly loud, the water would be out once or twice a day, and you couldn’t walk on the sidewalks because cars took precedent. These seemingly trivial things grated my patience and I felt on edge for the first two months I was here.
I started my time here excited by everything. Starting with the flight pattern to avoid Serbian airspace, to the first Kosovar I met who told me her stories from the war, to the large Skanderbeg statue in the middle of town: it was all exciting. I grinned the whole way from the airport to town as I kept trying to press the invisible brake on the passenger’s side of the car. Traffic was bedlam. Yeah, it was bad in the Caucuses, but this was the Embassy’s driver, and I’ve got different standards for your run of the mill Armenian marschrutka as compared to the official envoy of the U.S. government.
Weaving in and out of lanes because we could, speeding up just to slow down, and the honking. Good lord, the honking. Unbeknownst to me at the time, honking is both encouraging and chastising in Kosovo. Honking can be translated as “Hey, I’m about to pass you” or “I hate my life, this traffic, and your driving so much right now. Your ears will pay”. These nuances took Laura and I months to figure out.
But we figured it out. We got an apartment, we started our jobs, we met friends, and we set up a life in this often forgotten corner of Europe. And while I had one of those once-in-a-lifetime experience as a Fulbright Fellow, teaching university students, and researching juvenile justice reform in Kosovo, I think it will be the little lessons I recount most often.
Water outages are to be scheduled around, not fought over. Every night for the last eight months, my water has been turned off from 11PM to 6:30AM. For the last three months, it has also been turned off from 10AM to 3PM. I think to many this sounds obnoxious. To me, last September, this was obnoxious. But now, as I sit in my packed up apartment at 10:30 at night, I’m waiting for that familiar gurgling noise from the water heater to let me know it’s time to finish up the day.
You don’t walk in Pristina, you flow. The sidewalks here are molested by trash, stray dogs, and parked cars. So, pedestrians have no place to be but in the streets. In September, I’d timidly try to cross unnamed intersections (signs have since been added), hop in between cars at the sight of oncoming traffic, and generally avoid any main road in the city. Now, my movements through these named streets seem effortlessly symbiotic as I keep tempo in accordance with the timing of the drivers.
About a month ago, I was in Prague for a seminar with other similarly situated Fulbrighters in Eastern Europe. As if Tito orchestrated it himself, the Fulbrighters from the once-Yugoslavia found themselves united around common tales and similar predicaments. On the last day of the seminar, we were walking through the old town. These Fulbrighters were from Serbia, another in Macedonia, and the other was in Kosovo with me. As we were headed to one of Prague’s many beautiful churches, I looked at our group walking up the street. Then I looked to every other tourist in Prague. The tourists were using the sidewalks; the cars were using the roads. We’d gone native. Without even thinking, we just walked through the streets knowing we could dodge traffic and traffic would likely dodge us.
I imagine, in a very banal way, this is what cultural exchanges like the Fulbright are meant to accomplish: to take you out of your environment long enough and immerse yourself deep enough somewhere else that you don’t quite remember the finer points of existing back home. And that is where I find myself now. This is my fifth time living out of the U.S., three of those times have been spent in Austria. In Austria, I know the culture and language better than here, but I never felt as if I knew Austria. Kosovo is now a part of me in a way Austria never allowed. There is a tempo here that is different. It’s not better or worse, just different. And thanks to the last eight months, that tempo is now a part of me.
Tomorrow I’ll fly back to the States. The air will be cleaner, the water will be potable, and the traffic will be more docile, but it will feel foreign in some ways. It has to feel foreign in some ways. I don’t know if I can articulate it now, but it’s late and the water just went out, so it’s time for bed.
Weaving in and out of lanes because we could, speeding up just to slow down, and the honking. Good lord, the honking. Unbeknownst to me at the time, honking is both encouraging and chastising in Kosovo. Honking can be translated as “Hey, I’m about to pass you” or “I hate my life, this traffic, and your driving so much right now. Your ears will pay”. These nuances took Laura and I months to figure out.
But we figured it out. We got an apartment, we started our jobs, we met friends, and we set up a life in this often forgotten corner of Europe. And while I had one of those once-in-a-lifetime experience as a Fulbright Fellow, teaching university students, and researching juvenile justice reform in Kosovo, I think it will be the little lessons I recount most often.
Water outages are to be scheduled around, not fought over. Every night for the last eight months, my water has been turned off from 11PM to 6:30AM. For the last three months, it has also been turned off from 10AM to 3PM. I think to many this sounds obnoxious. To me, last September, this was obnoxious. But now, as I sit in my packed up apartment at 10:30 at night, I’m waiting for that familiar gurgling noise from the water heater to let me know it’s time to finish up the day.
You don’t walk in Pristina, you flow. The sidewalks here are molested by trash, stray dogs, and parked cars. So, pedestrians have no place to be but in the streets. In September, I’d timidly try to cross unnamed intersections (signs have since been added), hop in between cars at the sight of oncoming traffic, and generally avoid any main road in the city. Now, my movements through these named streets seem effortlessly symbiotic as I keep tempo in accordance with the timing of the drivers.
About a month ago, I was in Prague for a seminar with other similarly situated Fulbrighters in Eastern Europe. As if Tito orchestrated it himself, the Fulbrighters from the once-Yugoslavia found themselves united around common tales and similar predicaments. On the last day of the seminar, we were walking through the old town. These Fulbrighters were from Serbia, another in Macedonia, and the other was in Kosovo with me. As we were headed to one of Prague’s many beautiful churches, I looked at our group walking up the street. Then I looked to every other tourist in Prague. The tourists were using the sidewalks; the cars were using the roads. We’d gone native. Without even thinking, we just walked through the streets knowing we could dodge traffic and traffic would likely dodge us.
I imagine, in a very banal way, this is what cultural exchanges like the Fulbright are meant to accomplish: to take you out of your environment long enough and immerse yourself deep enough somewhere else that you don’t quite remember the finer points of existing back home. And that is where I find myself now. This is my fifth time living out of the U.S., three of those times have been spent in Austria. In Austria, I know the culture and language better than here, but I never felt as if I knew Austria. Kosovo is now a part of me in a way Austria never allowed. There is a tempo here that is different. It’s not better or worse, just different. And thanks to the last eight months, that tempo is now a part of me.
Tomorrow I’ll fly back to the States. The air will be cleaner, the water will be potable, and the traffic will be more docile, but it will feel foreign in some ways. It has to feel foreign in some ways. I don’t know if I can articulate it now, but it’s late and the water just went out, so it’s time for bed.
