Skopje, Pristina

As we crossed the border from Greece, the road for the first couple of miles was like a freeway, then became rather rough, then just a little two lane country road most of the way to Skopje. The driving was slow most of the time, because of the big, old, slow trucks. Some of these drivers are the worst for passing when they shouldn’t, even on curves and hills. There are a lot of horse drawn wagons, so with no passing room on this narrow road, it was slow driving.

We passed a big truck sitting directly in the right lane of the highway, with the transmission removed, and spread around the road in many little pieces. He has been here a while, and by the looks of things, will be here a while longer.

As we drive in Europe, we like to wave to people to see their reaction, but here, before we have the chance to wave, the Yugoslavians, old and young, have a big smile and a big wave.

We drove through here a couple of years before the wars of the 1990’s. A few weeks earlier there had been a riot near Skopje and about 25 people were killed. As we drove through Skopje, we saw more police and Army than we like to see, so made sure we just stayed on the main highway and kept going.

There was to be a remembrance of a war where the Ottoman Turks defeated the Serbs (lead by Prince Lazar) in 1389. Although 99% of the residents are Albanians, in 1989 a million Serbs poured into Kosovo for a rally at the Field of Blackbirds to celebrate the six hundred years since they were defeated by the Turks, who then ruled Kosovo for the next hundreds of years. They “celebrated” a war that was lost, hundreds of years ago. Amazing. In 1991 the Serbs went to war to try to unite Serb-inhabited areas of Croatia, and Bosnia, with Serbia.

From the highway, Skopje looks very nice and modern. Here, in what might be considered way out in nowhere, the apartment buildings would often be an architectural improvement in other parts of Europe, and in the US.

We arrived in Pristina in mid afternoon. While we know of no problem in this area, we know of no campsite either. It’s too late to look around much, and still get to the campsite we know about, a 100 miles away, so we must keep going. Again, what we see while driving through Pristina looks clean and neat, with many rather new, attractive buildings.