Unfortunately for almost everyone, Bajram Curri is not a tasty local delicacy in the north (yet), but rather a makeshift town for Kosovar refugees right across the border from Gjakova. In fact, the only thing I can really say about Bajram Curri is that the text size used to denote it in Google Maps does not accurately portray the size and stature of the town one finds upon arrival. G and co. accessed it by hiking across a glacier. I took my 25kg backpack with me on the Koman Ferry (this is something I have even gone as far as to “like” on Facebook, so by all means go check it out. The facebook page, I mean). We stayed at the local AlbTourist hotel, had some great local food (curry-free), and then set off for Kosovo in the morning.
There is nothing like a good threepeat, and Kosovo is the perfect place to do so. After leaving Bajram Curri by furgon to Gjakova, G decided to drop the bomb on me that I was persona non grata in Tirana and that I was being abandoned, in Kosovo. For my own good, of course. This forced me to make some serious life decisions: do I go to Novi Pazar as per my most recent life dream, or do I embark on an epic push to the Black Sea and plunge into the last remaining bastion of Turkey-in-Europe?
We spread my large Ukrainian map out on the table at FRIENDS Café near the bus depot and plotted my next move. Thanks to recent developments in political geography, Novi Pazar is one of the impractically located and least accessible places in the entire Balkans, and getting there would have amounted to crawling through a barbed wire stockade in northern Kosovo or worse, going through Montenegro. I realised then and there that I have the rest of my life to go to Novi Pazar and that it was important to get to the Black Sea and across Turkey before that entire region began to smell as bad as I assumed it would later in the summer.
After a tearful goodbye* and much cheek-pinching, I bid farewell to G and Jon (remember Jon?! He was there too) and boarded a bus for my old nemesis, Prishtina, this time with a little more than 1.70 euros in my pocket.
* You may well ask if I was feeling a bit resentful about being cast out. Alas, I knew this was the only way for me to move forward and I’ve since dropped any bitterness towards G and I have even decided to vote him “Best New Friend 2010,” much to the likely dismay of several Hungarians if they ever discover and read this.
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