Mark, who by now is developing the nickname of Mr Macchiato, is unable to get out of bed. When I say unable, I mean unwilling. The order of the showers today is such that he is the last to emerge from bed to face the world in which we have a busy day scheduled.

We know we have a coffee meeting (and what meetings in Kosovo aren’t coffee meetings?) at 0930, but we are only stepping out of the flat door at 0905. This means we have to be extra quick today at the bakers to get our pain au chocolates and/or pain au jams (as we refer to them).  Today we ask for all chocolates, but as Luke discovers in a cruel game of Russian Roulette we have a rogue pan au jam in the mix.  We cross the road in the usual non verbal negotiation with traffic at the zebra crossing. It seems in Kosovo, pedestrians know to stay on the pavement when it would be inconvenient for a car to stop, but otherwise cars slow down enough for pedestrians to cross, and sometimes this even means that they stop.

We’re running a little late to meet Faz when we spot the café which is the place of our rendezvous.  Faz is late too, fortunately.  We discuss the previous day’s events and despite the early morning are enthused to talk about out latest ideas and our planned meetings. Faz also informs us that we have a meeting set up with the Provost of his University.

After a quick macchiato we are forced to quicken the pace across town to get to the OSCE Headquarters for our first meeting of the day.  We arrive just on time and get security checked by the guards who are by now beginning to recognise us as semi-permanent features of the building. We are met by woman from the “Assistance Department”, a vague title indeed. She is very interested to find out about what we are doing in Kosovo, and how we are proceeding as students since she has only stopped being a (much more advanced) student herself. We leave the cafeteria (on one of the top floors with a fantastic view of Pristina), and although it seems as if again we don’t have directly related interests, we are able to gain valuable contacts who we are set to meet later in the day.

We again have to rush across town to make a handover ceremony by the iconic Grand Hotel (not in it mind you).  The University of Pristina has recently created a Quality Assurance body under the guidance of the OSCE and today is the handover.  We are also here to meet the manager of the LINK centre which helps the students of Pristina University find jobs. The handover ceremony is bi-lingual in Albanian and English with the relevant translation being provided via headphones with a wireless link. I notice we are some of the only people using the headphones during the Albanian presentations. It seems as if we are already becoming part of the Pristina higher education “scene” because we meet the tall chap from the OSCE we had met the day before. We only get a chance to arrange a meeting for the following morning (and at 0830, Mark gets into trouble from Luke who points out the difficulty we had in getting to a 0930 meeting).  We also receive a call from Amsterdam after meeting the Kosovan SPARK representative, which helps small business in Kosovo. There is a lot of food on large plates with a copious supply of canned fizzy drinks piled in one corner. We stay for as long as possible, as does another group of men opposite us on the large tables arranged into a large square with paintings on the wall.

By now it is time to get back across town to a restaurant near the OSCE, it has also started to rain, which is not good for the group of us not with umbrellas and wearing smart shoes in a hope to impress. Now these smart shoes are becoming progressively more muddy and wet as we are forced to walk around cars which are parked on the pavements (which seems to be the most common place to park in all of Kosovo).  We arrive at the “De Rada” restaurant and are directed by men in French waiter outfits to a table for about 5 with a man and a women sitting on the table. They look at us with slight bemusement and we quickly establish that they are not who we are supposed to be meeting.  We again question the waiter who comes to the conclusion that we must mean the “other De Rada” which is outside and down the street. He helpfully shows us the way. I can’t help but think of the scene in Monty Python and “The Meaning of Life” where the camera follows the French waiter out of his restaurant and into the countryside although we don’t go nearly as far with this waiter.  After sitting down at this place (a pizza restaurant rather than a café) we finally decide to go back to the first De Rada where we find the woman from the Kosovo Woman’s Network waiting for us. After explaining ourselves we sit down to another macchiato and discuss the problems facing women in Kosovo. We hear how the laws are already in place (for example UNMIK copied family law from Germany), but that it is not being put through in practice. We hear about how the network conducts research, generates public interest and organises workshops and protests.  Our contact says she only sleeps 5 hours a night which is believable since she called us at 10pm from the office the previous night.  Although the scope for projects here is limited, we are definitely able to offer our powerful networking and publicity skills to Kosovo Women’s network to publicise the internships they run for internationals (subject of course to OXAB committee approval).

We part ways and battle through the rain to our favourite internet café where the computers were charmingly slow as usual (it took an hour to upload a facebook album).  We leave just in time to walk to the Regional HQ for the OSCE in order to meet the team responsible for Podujevo. When we arrive we are greeted by a young OSCE staff member with brown hair, about Luke’s height and with a faintly surprised look on his face.  We soon find out from the other OSCE staff member that they were expecting to meet Oxford professors, not students. However, we soon establish a good rapport and there are interesting and exciting ideas on both sides of the table. We immediately get on which is real bonus in these things.  We try to pay for the macchiatos but fail once again.

It’s still raining when we meet Faz in order to take the taxi to the Provost’s house (not his office we find out). The taxi takes only 15 minutes before it drives up an unmade track: seemingly in the middle of the countryside with the typical half built buildings lining the road. We soon arrive at a huge house which is on the left hand side. We stop and pay the taxi.  Faz informs us that 3 families reside in the building, but we are still very impressed. We all wait with anticipation as Faz rings the bell. A small boy runs down the stone steps to open the door which leads into a cold but dry room with a stone floor which could be a well equipped garage but instead has many pieces of large artwork. We climb some stairs which brings  us to a large internal courtyard with neatly trimmed grass and impressively lit pieces of art on display.  We climb some more steps where the child shows us into the house. We are provided with slippers and walk into the marble floored hallway.  I am offered slippers too, but they appear to have a heal and are far too small so I opt to walk in socks instead. In the lounge the Provost greets us, a tall and slender man with glasses and a beard, black hair and well into middle age.  Even though there is a subtitled South American soap on TV (playing quietly), he listens attentively our presentation having given us a fruit juice delivered by the small boy.  Our conversation is translated by Faz, although the professor seems to talk for a long time before giving Faz a chance to translate, I am amazed that he remembers how he started.  We are then invited to drink Raki, which has a pear in the glass bottle.  The taste is nothing like the liquid we bought under the name or Raki in the supermarket the week before.  We carry on talking for a while, and as we have come to establish good relations, we consider the meeting to be a success. Before we go, we are invited up three flights of marble stairs to see the art room in the top of the house with some life size figures of extra-terrestrials.  We are given a brochure and a DVD each before we go.

Faz informs us that it is only a 20 minute walk to our apartment which we find hard to believe because we are in the countryside and our apartment seems so much in the city.  However, Faz is correct once again and despite the cold and wet weather we are happy but tired at the end of the day.  We once again go to the shop to buy vegetables (and are still unclear as to how to differentiate between peppers and chillies) and beer.  But this time, we are exhausted and head toward an early bed after discussing some of the ideas we have had over our tasty dinner.

Tags: Kosovo, OXAB Kosovo Exploration Trip