Prishtina
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7 October 2024 - Prishtina
This morning finds me sitting in a hotel room in Prishtina waiting to hear back from the Swiss embassy about a return visa. Yesterday after completing the Wizz Air Skopje Half Marathon and taking a nice long nap, I drove the rental car across the Kosovo border so I could be ready for my appointment at the embassy in Prishtina this morning. The Swiss embassy in Skopje unfortunately doesn't do vias. If the migrationamt in Zürich gives them the okay, then I get the visa. Hopefully that happens today, as my flight from Skopje is tonight at 9PM. Regardless, I need to return the rental car to the airport back in Skopje this evening. Then it's a matter of rebooking my flight after I travel to Prishtina again to get the visa. And I've already spent an extra 300 euros to get the car, the hotel here, and apply for the visa. Bureaucracy ever pains the wallet as well as the soul.
Yes, there is a statue of Bill Clinton on Bill Clinton Boulevard.
"I love Bill Clinton! He saved us!" are words that I never thought I would hear given Slick Willy's lackluster reputation in America. In Kosovo tonight I did hear those words in that order while talking to some locals. I did not get the visa today, so I'm here for another night. At least the rental car company let me keep the car another day so I didn't have to drive back to Skopje, and the hotel was happy to have me for another night and give me discount. I've been pleasantly surprised by my experiences here, but my expectations were fairly low after the dishonesty I encountered in Albania last year. Kosovars don't seem to want to milk tourists in the same way, but maybe that's just because of the debt of graditude they feel to my country. I think I also need to re-evaluate my opinion of Clinton after visiting Bosnia and Kosovo. No, neither has a great situation internationally. But it could've been a lot worse. I won't be running a half marathon in Iraq or Afghanistan anytime soon, and those were places where Bush went into wars without all the diplomacy that hamstrung Clinton in the Balkans. And then there's the mess Obama made of Syria with red lines that were just fine for Assad to cross and the just-enough-not-to-lose support that Biden's given Ukraine in that Sitzkrieg.
