A New Apartment, Bad Shoulder, Beach Volleyball, Kid's Peace Day and the Pool

Well, if you can believe it I have moved yet again. This time not by choice though. My corrupt landlord came to me 2 weeks earlier to inform me he had sold the place (or claims to vs. maybe getting someone to pay more rent) and that I needed to move out ASAP. So I argued to hold-out at least till the end of the month since for one of the two weeks I was in Serbia on business unable to search for a new home. Then I went through 3 depressing days of seeing crappy places all not nearly as nice as the one I had. But as luck would have it the very last place I had arranged to see was not from one of these agents who happen to show you places all costing exactly the max. amount allocated by my housing allowance but rather from a friend of a friend. The weird thing is that she and her husband and 2 kids were presently living in the flat. But as soon as I walked down this quaint old alleyway in the center of the old city and saw an orange and purple house, I knew it was the one.

Top floor of a family owned 3 flat house, 3 balconies, great sunlight and open air, modern appliances, furniture that matches and landlords that are so nice and accommodating. I negotiated the place on the spot and even offered to add more to their asking price if they were able to include Internet and cleaning (since their asking rent was less than any other place I had seen). What a relief!! Not only was I able to allow my mind to relax over the weekend in Greece but they had 1 week to try and move all their belongings to a house they owned around the corner. I found this whole arrangement to be weird but apparently this is common and the families make so much money (relatively) renting out their homes that they will happily find other lodging in order to make this happen. Lucky for me. Now all I have had to do is get used to the new sounds, operating the various appliances, and mastering the front electronic security door that wouldn't let me out to get to work on Monday.

After having done my turbo move-in strategy, it was great to have some friends over on Sat night to enjoy drinks and attempt to watch a DVD called '300' which ended up being only in German (not the same affect). I look forward to morning meditations on the sunrise/bedroom side of the house and evening meals/BBQ's/cocktails on the sunset side. I also love the fact I have to wander through a maze of old city streets, shops and crazy traffic in order to find my little island. In an empty (trash) lot below I can see the homeless dogs sleeping, little boys being little boys, and some older men releasing their trained pigeons out to do their dusk flights (just like when I was living in Amman Jordan) and shit all over my balcony. The landlord's very nice parents are on the first floor and cousins live on the second. Being the only one on the top I don't hear kids and high heals through the paper thin walls nor the stomping of people above or below. Just like my place back in DC (oh minus Fred's loud music downstairs, the 11th street bus, AirVac helicopter flying to Washington General and the non-stop sirens of the nation's capital). Hummm, maybe I should stick around Pristina longer ;-)

The only saving grace for having moved is I really like my new home. Otherwise, packing up 50 boxes, pulling everything off the walls and putting them back up, emptying and repurchasing a good amount of food, and having to make lists of all the missing items in the new apt just sucked. Not to mention seriously aggravating my bad shoulder to the point of getting bursitis-basically tennis elbow in the shoulder. Again with no proper doctor here my PT had me run around on Sat to do a blood test, get an X-ray (both costing less than $50 US) and start taking anti-inflammatory with ice. After 5 days of this and NO activity what-so-ever (hardest thing for me) we'll start to work on a new series of exercises. Sucks that I am still dealing with this injury to the point of not being able to teach yoga or just do my routine runs, tennis, biking or whatever else I can get into.

While running around seeing doctors I was able to happily stock up on food which required a simple visit to the green market and a long trip to my preferred hypermarket (mostly imports). Nice to have a full home to get back to cooking and entertaining. And since I had gotten an early start on Sat to deal with all this crap, I was free in time to get picked up by my man Justin and head out the the UN logistics base for an afternoon beach volleyball tournament. Of course I could only watch and what a scene it was. About one women to every 10 very large, built soldiers, police plus some of us much smaller average persons. It was nice to have some free food and beer while chatting with new and old friends. A highlight was most certainly when Rick (my old neighbor) and I found an empty ping pong table and played a number of very close matches--ok, so he can gloat, yes he won. But then we both got our ego's handed to us on a paddle as two different Ukrainian KFOR soldiers beat us silly. I guess they have a lot of free time on the base.

Sunday I again joined Rick and our UNDP friend Michael to head out to the ugliest hotel I have ever seen in the Serbian enclave Brezovice (yes, where they have that excellent ski resort). It was International Kids Day for Peace celebration and Rick's organization, World Vision, sponsors youth centers that all come together to promote inter-ethnic cooperation and communication. 350 kids later and a room full of song, dance, laughter and chaos, I had on a staff t-shirt and was dancing around with the kids. It was so nice to be interacting with youth again which I miss greatly since I no longer assist with the Boys and Girls Clubs or Big Brothers (obviously). The issues they face out here are so much greater with still very clear ethnic divides, a 'country' with a very bleak economic and political future, and about 65% unemployment which means many of there parents (not killed in the war) are not working. But they were all about their smiles, friends, wearing the latest fashion and knowing the raunchiest dance moves. Remarkably, I meet a Serbian girl who was nominated for the Noble Peace Prize at the age of 17 with all her work with local NGO's in Mitrovice. She is an amazing women who is already traveling around the world giving speeches and received a full scholarship to attend college in Toronto.

Just when I thought the day was over Rick and his roommate Julia decided to enjoy the last remaining weekend hours of sunset out at the pool. Yes, apparently there are many outdoor pools scattered around Kosovo in empty fields that are really nothing more than a cemented hole with water, maybe a wall around it and very loud music. No chairs, no filtration system (but I hope plenty of chlorine), no lifeguards. It seemed so surreal for us to drive back outside the city to another Serbian enclave to appreciate this somewhat peaceful place. Kind of funny that most of the cars in the lot were NGO/UN vehicles. Of course we knew several folks so just pulled up a slab of concrete next to them. That is the one nice thing about Pristina. You do get to know a good number of people and will be hard pressed to go anywhere and not run into a familiar face (sometimes a bad thing just as well).

So I ended my first weekend in my new home enjoying the beautiful large kitchen and prepared a nice stir fry followed by some blogging, skyping and emailing (hard to imagine that these words didn't even exist in the English language till recently). Finally curling up with the 911 report (good but depressing book) I dosed off into a full sleep of missing my alarm and arriving at work 1 hour late. Oops, but good proof that the new pad was worth the trouble.