We wake up early. The alarm is set for 3.45am but we wait until it hits 4am before getting up.  We’re aiming to make the 5am Gatwick Express for our 8am flight, but figure we’ll settle for the 5:30. Luke puts on his red duvet jacket and heads out into the cold, dark London morning on Southhampton Row. When we arrive at the bus stop the bus had already left and the next will make it tight for the 5:30. We stop a black cab and after ascertaining an approximate price, decide to take it to Victoria for £14. I buy the wrong ticket at the station, but get a refund from the ticket desk. We walk onto the apparently secret 5:15 departure. We sit next to an Italian couple who of course have bought the wrong tickets and are therefore charged extra by the ticket conductor which I assume they must think is some sort of bribe, which perhaps it is. Mark is at the airport when we arrive.  I look at the screens to find the 8:05am to Sofia, only to find a 7:05am departure with nothing til 11. I check my tickets again to find that in fact we are booked on the 7:05am, it is now 6am so we make a hasty move to check in where we hedge our bets in the queue. Luke gets to the front first and so we attempt to join him at the desk before being confronted by an angry English man who thinks our tactic somehow undermines the queueing culture using somewhat more colourful language. We settle to wait an extra 2 minutes.  We rush through security and have to pick up the pace to a trot on the way to the plane which we get despite Mark’s insistence on buying a bottle of water.

The plane is uncomfortable but we still manage to grab a couple of hours sleep.  The queuing culture at Sofia airport is more relaxed than at Gatwick airport but without any problems we walk into the terminal building which seems only to have people from our flight around. Soon we are out of the terminal building and whisked away by our taxi driver who was waiting for us and helpfully took us to a small exchange booth where I was able to exchange some sterling into Euros with some very unhelpful change in Bulgarian Lev. 

We get back to our taxi (a modern silver VW passat estate), and Mark has his eastern European hat on and busily trying to confirm the price (185 Euros) with our taxi driver who plainly had no clue what was going on. Mark is satisfied with the information that I have an email print out with the price from our contact Krasmir. From the car we see the beautiful Balkan countryside, horse and carts with some relics of heavy industry lining the route. We find out why the driver had no idea about the final price when we pull into a disused petrol station near the Macedonian border. After 10 minutes, a car pulls up beside us and our driver ushers us to change into the other car.  Mark warns us that his last attempt at crossing the border took an hour but this time the customs official opens our bags, does a little rummaging and then waves us on. Our passports are finally stamped and we are on our way. We change again, into a car running on something which is surely not petrol. The car then whisks us away.  The driver puts on a CD, and “toxic girl” blares out as we weave through the mountains overtaking dangerously but not recklessly.  The CD skips all the way to the Kosovan border, but our driver seems not to mind. The car is hot, 27 degrees by the cars reckoning and we all fall asleep.  The UNMIK border guards are friendly, but the Kosovan Policeman’s attempt to check what the driver has said fails when I fail to understand a word the man is saying.  Our taxi drives onwards into Kosovo, stopping only 10 minutes from Pristina to fill up on LPG.  We think this must be a home, or at least budget, conversion since the petrol gauge has read empty since getting into the taxi in Macedonia. 

We arrive at a roundabout which looks like so many others we have seen, and the taxi pulls up behind some Pristina taxis.  The driver takes our address to ask one of the old men standing around in the darkness next to the lights of the taxis.  The driver returns with good and bad news. The good news is that they know where it is but the bad news is that they wont say unless we get in the taxi with them.  Fortunately, the driver says they will only charge 2 euros.  We change again for the final time, settle our Macedonian taxi, and confirm the 3 euro price with the new taxi driver.  This taxi races through the hilly streets of Pristina; cars come from all angles, but somehow everything is simple. There are a large number of UN, EULEX 4 x 4s, and some very nice local cars as we have seen ever since leaving Sofia.

We get dropped off outside the guesthouse, and have little time to exchange pleasantries with because a large lorry is wating to pass on the narrow steep street not wide enough for two cars given the cars and 4 x 4s parked half on what might be considered the pavement and half on the potholed road. The guesthouse itself is hot, and before taking 10 steps I have to remove my scarf and undo the jacket which had protected my from the cold outside. We step into a living room setup which is labelled reception and a smiling older gentleman of about 5 feet 8, not overweight but certainly not underweight. He shakes out hands, Luke says later that these are farmer hands, but at the time we are all overcome by their softness. Luke christens the man Pablo despite his introductions. Pablo shows us to our apartment which is in a seperate building to the living room/reception. He explains in broken by accurate English how he has improved his buildings. In this new building there is a TV with Albanian pop music showing to an empty sofa in the reception area of what could be a large house. Upstairs, Pablo opens the door to a room with a sofa with fixed benches around it, a tiled floor and a new electric cooker and hob with a hot water tank, fridge and work surfaces. The next room is large, with one king size bed and two smaller ones, some sofas, a TV, a huge electric heater and  with a waxed wooden floor.  Pablo explains how he has recently installed central heating, and it shows, the room is hotter than the Macedonian taxi. Pablo warns us of the cold and of the park at night, but is jolly throughout. He says that if it gets cold we should use the electric heater but we assure him it is quite warm enough.

We leave our suitcases and step out into the cold night. We walk up the steep hill which happens to house the Dutch embassy and has a reassuring number of UN SUVs parked along the side of the road.  When we get to the centre we opt to take money out from the Raiffeisen bank, garish yellow and with ATMs all over the city. My card fails and so does Luke’s so we are forced to opt for the Pro Credit bank which dispences enough Euros for us to pay Pablo at some point in the future. We haven’t had any food or water since Gatwick and we are getting weak. Despite it being Eid, a religious and national holiday, there are a number of places open on the pedestrianised and colourfully lit main square we dub the sunset strip. We find a place serving fast food. When we walk in, the owner swiftly clears a table for us and gives us a verbal list of what is on offer. We settle for some meatballs with salad and some beer. Satisfied, we stop at a shop to buy water and we walk the 30 minutes back to our, by now, very very hot apartment.  Luke and Mark are asleep by 9:30pm and I follow not far behind.

Tags: Kosovo, OXAB Kosovo Exploration Trip