New week
During the afternoon break we played pingpong instead. The guys have learned that I played for like 7 years when I was younger so they all want to play me. I did it the first time on Friday - and lost. But then again I hadn't held a racket for like 8 years and they play every day. But yesterday I got revenge and won every game - yey! :-)
After work we met up with Katrine, a nice Norweigan girl who studies in France. We had some dinner and talked for a while. During all that Daniela, the czech girl came by too for a while. I love that I'm starting to know enough people here to randomly bump into them in the streets! This is becoming my home now...
Katrine also asked us if we want to join her to have dinner with a Kosovar friend of her in the village of Giljan (don't remember if that was the Serbian or Albanian name, all places here has two...) a while outside Pristina. And we accepted of course! It's gonna be interesting to see some more of Kosovo! :-)
Finally I just wanna add that because of some changes with the border passings in Mitrovica this week there might be some distrurbances close to the border. Unclear if it'll be violent or not. And it might be something in the news about it. But I wanna clarify that I'm not in Mitrovica and won't be going there during this time either, so don't worry about me if that's the case...
Getting settled in Pristina
Now I've been living in Pristina for almost two weeks and life here is getting more and more normal to me. But I also get more and more busy and I guess that's why my blog-updates haven't been that regular. Gonna try to be better though! ;-)
It's hard to describe what Pristina looks like, so I will post some pictures of the 15 min walk we have to work so that you get some idea... :-)
We start the walk by walking over a little field. In the background you can see Hotel Victory that has a small Statue of Liberty (frihetsgudinna) on top.
The big road with a lot of traffic that we need to cross. And it doesn't have any crossing so you need to make people stop. It usually goes ok though, but a little scary.
The we continue here...
Going through a tunnel which is building the first escalator (rulltrappa) of Pristina (maybe of Kosovo?)
This is the street of our Embassy, 100 meters before or something. In the end of the street is a lot of cafes and restaurants.
Here is the Swedish Embassy (and the Finnish one)! :-)
On Thursday this week me and Ella had also arranged a get-together for trainees in Pristina on the terrace of the Embassy and it was very successful! :-) Around 20 trainees turned up and we walked around talking to all of them and making new friends and getting new ideas of what to do here! After the get-together we went on with eight people to have dinner in a cool Mexican restaurant!
On Friday night we met up with some people and started off with a small art exhibition that was hard to find the way to. Directions here are generally hard because there are (almost) no street signs and the streets have changed names from normer Serbian names to now Albanian names, so it's all confused. So location here is all about naming places. Like that if we say that we live in the Arab apartments every taxi driver knows where it is but noone would know the street. After the art exhibition we decided to take some drinks at the Cuban, which has great mojitos! :-) There we also met some of the other trainees (Pristina is starting to feel like a small city where you can bump into people). We met up with another Swedish girl and her friends in a square with a lot of people on the street and ended the night with some clubbing!
Some cool girls I now know here at the Cuban! From the left Thea from Norway, Blerina from Finland, Karlijn from Holland, Venny from Finland and Ella!
Last night we went out as well. Starting off with dinner together with the two Norweigan girls, and then we were joined by an Argentinan, Italian and a girl from Czech Republic. I love being in an international atmosphere again! :-) Then we went to an Irish Pub and I had the Kosovan beer Peja. The night ended at the club Maroon which had good music, was crowded, fun and extremely smokey.
My opinion on the night life in Pristina so far is that it's way better than in most cities of this size (200 000 inhabitants). But the downside is the smoke. People are smoking everywhere and all the time. The reason I went home yesterday was that my eyes and throat were hurting from all the smoke... I've been to other countries where you can smoke inside and remember when you could in Sweden, but the way people smoke inside here is incomparable. It's just too bad. It's a lot of great places, but all the smoke takes down the spirit a little.
Saturday
But the main reason why I was concerned about the prices were that the people in Kosovo are relatively poor, with an average salary of 200 EUR (1800 kr) a month, and most of them can then probably not afford these clothes. But what clothes they can buy I don't really know because I haven't really found any cheaper shops...
In the evening me and Ella met up with Iris from the embassy and had a very nice dinner and some wine in one of the nicer restaurants in Pristina (but the bill still only landed on 12 EUR/person). But we were also joined for a while by the auditor General (riksrevisorn) of Kosovo, which is a Swedish man that Iris knows. And on the table next to ours were the Foreign minister and another minister of Kosovo. That's one of the things I love with Pristina - all kinds of people mix and you always meet interesting people wherever you go! :-)
My apartment!
The apartments are called "Banjesa Arab", which means the Arab-apartments and we can say that to a cabdriver and he'll understand! Which is good since I don't really know which address we live on. Addresses are not as important here as back home, as I understand it...
But it's easier to show pictures than describe how I live - so this is my apartment. First I'll show you the areas I share with Ella.
The entrance (hallen)
The living room, and we have TV with like 70 channels or something, and a lot of them are movie channels. Kosovo doesn't synchronise the movies either, so we can watch everything! :-)
The kitchen - and Kosovo is smart enough to understand that gas is a bad idea, so we have an electrical stove and oven! :-)
The big bathroom - then we also have a small bathroom with only a toilet and a sink.
Our guestroom - that I really hope that some of you want to come and stay in!!! It even has it's own balcony... ;-)
Our big balcony, where we spent all night yesterday talking about life... :-)
The view from the balcony this morning...
And apart from all these common areas I have my own room with a big double bed. The apartment all in all is 115m2, so it's really big. (My apartment back home is 29m2.) But still I only pay 200 euro/month for living like this! :-)
My room with my big bed from one angle...
And my room from the other angle... I've put up pictures of some of my favourite people around the mirror, but I have some more to put up. Just need to figure out where. But it makes me happy everyday to look at you! :-)
So now you know how I live... And hopefully you want to come and visit! ;-) Just fly to Pristina airport and then it's close to the city! I'm off all weekends so it should work almost any time...
The first days in Pristina
Now I've arrived, and started to feel a little bit at home, in Pristina - the capital of Kosovo, where I'm gonna spend the next 4 months! So far everything has exceeded my expectations, everyone is so nice, the apartment is great and the job seems interesting! :-)
I'm gonna work as an intern in the Swedish embassy together with about 15 people, of whom about half is Swedish and the others are Kosovoalbanians. And all of them are superfriendly! :-) I'm living together with the other Swedish intern Ella in a really big, really nice and really cheap apartment (Kosovo is the place to live nice!), and I'll post pictures of that later... Here comes some pictures of the view from one of our two balconys.
This is facing the city and the big tower closeby is the "minaret" of the mosque which calls to prayer at 5am every day (more times too, but that's the annoying time). 
The other direction from the balcony. The red thing in the bottom of the building is our closest foodstore.
Jag och Ella
All the crayfish in the middle of the table and mandatory hats. It's possible to have a proper Swedish crayfish party in Kosovo! :-)
