Our guesthouse in Pristina is up on a hill overlooking the
city. So it would appear to be simple to
walk into town. However Pristina is one
of those cities with roads going all over the place, and we take what we think
is a road to the centre, but it veers off and we end up north of the town. It is all confusing until we find our way to
the city centre and get our bearings with the map in Lonely Planet. Once that is done it is a fairly simple city
to navigate around, but in truth the map in LP is not that great.
The city is not really set up for tourists. There is a nice pedestrianized main street
with cafes, but little in the way of sights.
One interesting building is the university library, while there are a
few churches and mosques. Unfortunately
the placing of these are often tied up with the politics of the country. It is also impossible to ignore the politics
in the galleries and museums, the main exhibition in the gallery is one about
some survivors of ethnic cleansing and their fight for justice, and in the
museum it is about the NATO bombings and also a lot of archaeology trying to
prove Kosovo is a legitimate state.
After lunch we walk up to one of the main city parks, and sit on the grass while we read about any other sights we may have missed. We also read that in this park we should not stray off the paths because of landmines. Not the best thing to read at that point, although locals are also off the paths so we think the advice may be out of date.
The two main things we missed were the Mother Theresa and
Bill Clinton statues. Not two names that
often appear together, but here they are.
Mother Theresa because she is ethnic Albanian, and Bill Clinton because
he bombed the Serbs. Finding both
statues was not as easy as it could have been, as everything seems to be 200
meters away. But we do and after we go
for a great dinner (seriously one of the best I’ve ever had) in a restaurant
with no menu. They just gave us the
daily menu, which was great, although slightly expensive, but it is aimed at
all the EU/NATO/UN personnel in town.
After lunch we walk up to one of the main city parks, and sit on the grass while we read about any other sights we may have missed. We also read that in this park we should not stray off the paths because of landmines. Not the best thing to read at that point, although locals are also off the paths so we think the advice may be out of date.
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