Pristina is a small place. While respectable in terms of population and geographic area, it is nearly impossible to walk around without drawing the attention of friends or acquaintances every five or 10 minutes.

There is no such thing as a quick, forced “stop and chat” when each encounter is nothing short of a minor celebration with some combination of warm embraces, hardy handshakes, kisses on the cheeks and increasingly frequent fist bumps, all combined with lengthy banter.

This is refreshing coming from the Bay Area, where not only is the threshold for acquaintance-worthy-of-public-acknowledgement so high, even running into a friend is sometimes too taxing for us.

“You Americans are like plastic,” said Nora, a 22-year-old hotel receptionist who raps in her spare time, quickly adding that she loves America “as a superpower.”

However, some of Pristina’s inhabitants long for the impersonal existence those of us who live westward (the course of empire, according to Bishop Berkeley) take for granted. Bashkim’s possible distant cousin Adrijana (it is believed that they share a relative who’s a pilot in Serbia, but this has yet to be confirmed) said a major problem is culturally appropriate levels of drinking and the embarrassing acts that result cannot happen anomalously. (See my Twitter feed)

In other news, Prizren is pretty amazing. Also two bombs exploded last night in Mitrovica/e.

Tags: Kosovo, Pristina

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