A Weekend only in Kosovo...

It began with me rewarding myself by taking a day off work for a 'job well done' in successfully producing a Marketing and Trade Linkages Conference (separate posting). It ended with my worst day here...

A final blast of winter rolled through our area this week dumping 60cm of fresh powder in the mountains by Thursday night so a friend and decided to hit the slopes before anyone else carved up the ungroomed slopes. Leaving bright and early on Friday we were greeted by a ton of snow on the unploughed mountain road leading up to the lifts. In her 4 wheel Subaru we had no problem making all the way up to a waiting line of cars stuck behind a US Military bus that way stuck taking soldiers up for a day of R&R. At least the boys were resourceful enough to take 40 minutes and chain up the first bus only to be stopped 5 more minutes up the road by their second bus of kids they were hosting for a weekend camp. No chains required that bus to be careful manoeuvred back down the hill through a snow bank onto the side so all else could pass. So over an hour later we arrived at an empty mountain town with snow up to our thighs and thick flakes still falling...

Salivating we geared up and headed to the lifts, where we were told nothing was working because of too much snow and not enough people...Of course, why would they actually operate a ski resort on the single best day of skiing and snow they have had all season?? In absolute frustration I hiked up one of the slopes they had started to groom and boarded down once on top (and underneath) the fresh fluffy stuff. Almost too much powder and too short a run to get the hang of what it was like to board on something other than hard pack and ice (for the last 3 years). Not wanting to surrender we went to the only nice restaurant to get a warm bowl of Serbian soup and wait it out till they might change their mind. No luck so we acknowledged defeat and headed back to drive home. As if the point needed to be made that we had wasted our day off, there had been a fender-bender between two cars on the road which by Kosovo law requires you to not move the vehicles till the police arrive...up an unploughed mountain road. Almost three hours later they let traffic move again and in reality they had never even pushed the cars off the road...we just drove next to them. So we had waited for no reason other than to let the police tell us we could drive past. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Of course there was an element of humor to the day. For example seeing the old Jetta Golfs with no chains but 4 guys sitting in the truck to weight the car down so it might make it up the hill. Or a station wagon trying to pass all the waiting cars on the left where there was an unploughed lane. Of course getting stuck and requiring the soldiers to push it out. So, my 'holiday' was 8 hours in a car with no boarding and more frustrations than going to work...how nice. And to top it off everyone was planning on going down there the next day to catch the perfect powder (which they all said was fantastic).



Not being able to bring myself to suffer on that road again, I passed the offers and instead joined two of my other friends down in sunny warm Skopje for an afternoon of shopping and a first rate steak dinner. Of course KFOR had decided to set up an extra road block and truck inspection at the Macedonian border which let cars through one by one. No worries, as long as we didn't wait three hours my day was still a bonus. So with Apache helicopters circling overhead I snapped plenty of shots of a Kosovo traffic jam.





In Skopje, my objective was to purchase nothing more than a can of tennis balls (15 euros in Kosovo) which I succeeded in immediately. Followed by a bonus of purchasing all new casual work shirts and a sporty light corduroy jacket (for under $50US). I guess I figured spending money was a good way to move beyond the day of hell. We walked around in the sun, had some fresh baked donut circles and just enjoying 'getting out' for an afternoon. Sadly we had to end the perfect afternoon with a 5 star steak dinner and fresh salad that is impossible to come by in Pristina. And a smooth 2 hour drive back wrapped up another weekend, only in Kosovo.