A Night at the Luna Park

I must say I am falling in love with the life of a married man and my new family. A Friday night of heading to Pranvera's house and playing with the kids is more appealing than hitting any clubs or bars with friends. And especially since we will not be in Kosovo all that much longer it is really important for us to spend as much time with my new family. And where to better do it than at the Luna Park? The semi-permanent kids park built at the bottom of Pranvera's hill has only about 10 rides but enough to keep the kids coming back. And I just needed an excuse to go there and play myself. I figured our nieces and nephews were that excuse.

The Bad ride was just that. Except after the first 3 minutes I was getting graphic images of the spinning cart hurtling off into the cow pasture next door. It just spun and spun and spun. I guess I am not like I was 10 years ago insisting to repeat every insane ride. I was ready to get off this one and kept screaming to Rron when it would stop and he said he didn't know with a big smile. I swear it was the longest ride I had ever been on. All I could do once I stumbled off the machine was grab onto Pranvera and hold her tight till the earth stopped moving. About 10 minutes later I was ready to graduate to the bumper cars with Jeta. Much more my pace and funny enough, most people actually seemed to drive around avoiding one another. Whereas I was out for blood to get Rron back for having me on the first ride so we had plenty of fun bumping into one another.

And then there was Dumbo for Jeta. It was fun to watch her just spin around and around. Until the rain (almost daily now) came and chased us back home. But not before grabbing some ice cream and returning for a home-cooked meal to just hang with the rest of the family.

Kosovo's First Annual Packaging Design Competition Award Ceremony

You know the song that sings, 'It's better to burn out than to fade away?' Well, I guess you could say the close-out for my 2 year consulting contract in Kosovo has followed this tune. As some of you may have read in an early blog posting I came up with this idea to create a packaging design competition to improve the design agencies ability to produce professional labels as well as increase the demand and awareness among local food and beverage producers for this type of professional packaging. Well 6 months of work all came to a head last week as I produced the final Award Ceremony to announce the winners and hand out the trophies and prizes to the designers and winning companies. It was a huge success with over 150 people, including many VIP's, head of USAID, all the designers and many of the local businesses. It was filmed and rebroadcast in a 1 hour TV special and received very high marks from the Press and from my project. Best of all it is now being taken over by a local consulting firm I had pitched the idea to so Kosovo will hopefully continue to develop in this area for many years to come.

The whole program required an amazing amount of work but thanks to the assistance from the consulting firm and the cooperation of a national TV station I had brought in as a media partner, it all went off smoothly. Best of all were several videos shown during the event featuring an agency in Chicago, Akimbo, that agreed to be one of the 5 international judges, pro-bono. Their entire agency reviewed all the different label concepts submitted by the 6 local design firms and completed detailed scorecards adding comments so the designers here could learn from this experience and improve their work for clients in the future. The video worked it's way from the outside of their offices all the way through them actually judging the work. A highlight for me was to see my old agency, Leo Burnett, located directly across the street from them. A sight I haven't seen in almost 10 years. The second video was filmed over the 6 weeks of work the designers invested in the project highlight how they produced their concepts and it was choreographed to some good ole rock and roll.

A Press Conference was held afterward with everyone talking about the innovation of such an event and the fact that all the five businesses plan to hire the design firms to complete the work and launch the new products in the market as soon as possible. A win win for everyone.

One of the international judges, Ilan Geva, had agreed early on to fly out to Kosovo pro-bono to hand out the awards after explaining how the judging panel worked. And for the following 2 days after the celebration he worked with the winning 3 agencies to train them on how to do more professional design work in the future. A huge added value for each of the winners. And for his final day here we tried to show him around Kosovo a bit and braved the thunderstorms to arrive at a great lakeside restaurant in the northwestern most point of Kosovo at the Serbia border. For someone who grew up in Israel nothing out here seemed to faze him and believe he had a really nice time while helping take Kosovo design work to a whole new level

Weekend Away in Brezervice

It is always nice to get away for the weekend, especially when it is a close local drive but you still get the fresh mountain air and good exercise. Luckily another couple who used to work with Pranvera invited us to join them at their mountain house in Brezervice which they have rebuilt after the war. It is A nice A-frame house that they are still cleaning up on the outside and dealing with neighbors who are developing the land literally under their noses since property ownership claims are all suspect in that area. It is really a shame how their is no organized or protected development and all the house are almost touching one another even though their is land everywhere. Not to mention all the trash and poor construction practices being applied to really cause one to cringe.

But we came down to actually hike the mountain so we quickly got away from any civilization what so ever. And boy, did we get a hike. Now you must first know that Tim is a bit of an extreme hiker so I should have know we were getting ourselves into more than a simple day hike. It turned out to be an extreme summit off a trail into the clouds with patches of rain that started to chill the bone. Not to mention it was up for at least the first 3 hours, with our destination mountain lake almost being masked by the thick clouds and surrounding snow that prevented us from actually making it to the water (which you can brave swimming in the summer if you want to freeze). Pranvera was only wearing tennis shoes for our 'walk' which required her to follow in our boot steps across a number of snow patches. Not to mention the bushes we had to step through as we parted from the main trail to do a 'loop' Tim had done a long time ago...slightly forgetting the exact way leaving me quite anxious and we continued going up as the dark clouds descended down.

This aside, the views, rich greenery and awesome raw beauty were jaw dropping. No one anywhere to be found (since we weren't actually on a trail for the ascent this wasn't hard). Fresh mountain streams, budding post frost wild flowers, fresh air and our pesky little black flies that forced us to not scream out in join (cursing them for most the way till we got to high).

Had the weather not been turning our arrival at the summit could have been better enjoyed but we took 5 minutes to eat, snap some photos and then strategize on how to find our way off the mountain. Tim said the trail picked up on the top of the ridge which we could barely see through the fog and I was very concerned it would still be full of snow. Since retracing our steps was the only other way (no way) we headed further up into the rain and clouds until reaching the top where we found a marker. Unfortunately we knew we needed to traverse the ridge for a bit and then drop down the other side which we could not see due to the fog. But Tim's senses kicked in and he was able to guide us to the correct point for our final 1.5 hour descent.

No sooner had we descended to a safer altitude when some blood stopping thunder started to crash through the valley and quicken our pace. Fortunately Pranvera and I feel confident in our luck that we would make the car at the base of ski lifts from where we started before the skies really opened up. And we did, keeping out hiking luck still in tack. Returning to the house we were greeted by his lovely wife and 1.5 year old son, and Pranvera's new boyfriend, Luke. But all we could think about was a shower before a fantastic veggie meal prepared by Tim. However the mountain water pressure would only afford a bath that took quite some time to fill as we just rested our feet and legs wondering if we could walk again.

Once cleaned up, our energy returned and we had a lovely evening of fine food, wine, laughs and reading. I believe we lasted till 9:30 before exhaustion took over us for a wonderful solid night sleep in the fresh mountain air. And for Sunday we went for a nice early morning walk, had our tea and coffee before having some eggs and somehow finding energy again to do a 2 hours soft hike on the road enjoying the sun and fresh air. Upon our return the 5 of headed down the mountain a bit to eat at a wonderful trout restaurant literally built right in the stream. Our several hour meal was a perfect way to enjoy fine food, friends and a lazy Sunday.

Although it was time to head back to the city Luke appeared to have other plans and tried to hold onto Pranvera to stay. As we later found out he actually succeeded. He had held onto to a passport photo of her that we left behind and it somehow made its way back to Pristina with them. I can't blame him. Kosovar women are irresistible.

Family Walk to the Waterfall and Becoming a Godfather

As life has returned to 'normal' I am becoming more integrated into the family unit. We had a wonderful outing with Pranvera's two older nieces and mom as we day-tripped out towards an smaller city in the countryside, Gjakove where her Aunt lives. Since along the way are the Minusha waterfalls I have heard about since I arrived in Kosovo, we decided to stop and take a look. Much more of an adventure than expected. Not only was it about a half-hour of wandering dirt roads and trails to find the place, but they were much bigger and more beautiful than I ever expected.

Although the girls didn't seem like they are up for much outdoor adventure, we had a nice time none the less and I enjoyed spending more time getting to know them, speaking English and Albanian and just spending time with her mom who enjoys our company. Unfortunately we were able to eventually locate the falls by following the booming base beat of competing stereos ready to blow their sub-woofer entertaining all the graduating students that were already partying mid-day at the 2 new illegal cafes built right at the pool. All the sudden most of the natural beauty disappeared.

Since their are 3 cascading pools we plan to return with our suits to hike up higher for a more secluded picnic, swim and outdoor adventure. After our several hour stop we continued onto have a family gathering and nice lunch with her mom's sisters large family. Before I realized it I was surrounded by 14 women with only one of her Aunt's son returning from his work to bring in his son who I was asked to be a god-father for. The ceremony was quick as they slide a gold ring over a lock of hair and I cut it...But the boy seeing a foreigner with scissors was enough to send him running so he wasn't too keen on the whole idea. None the less I was honored since it means they want the boy to grow up like me. I guess he is already starting out in my footsteps since he had 1 earring in the same ear:-)

After stuffing ourselves for hours with a nice cafe afterward, we ventured back to Pristina in a soft warm rain. As usual, the white knuckled drive was anything but relaxing. Arriving safely Pranvera and I hosted a sleep-over for the girls while they watch the Euro-vision finals (like American Idol) I made American spaghetti and treated them to my secret Oreo cookie stash (which they later found:-( It was nice to show them our apartment and have family 'over'. I sent them on their way Sunday after a full meal of American pancakes with real syrup (thanks little Sis) out on our balcony with a warm sun. Just another perfect family weekend...