Country Hopping

May 14- To wrap up our stay in Kosovo, Linda spent the whole day showing me around Pristina. First we went to the school where she finished high school, The American School of Kosovo, where her brother now goes. The school holds only about 300 students spanning kindergarten through 12th grade.

Next I had my first visit to a mosque. We had to move quickly and quietly because people were praying inside, but I was able to watch for a couple of minutes before I started feeling like a sinner.

After running through the rain (It's rained every place we've been so far) we went to a museum, and even though it was being remodeled, Linda's mom, who from now on will be referred to as "Teze" (Albanian for "auntie"), convinced them to let us in because there was an American in the group (They really like Americans, specifically Bill Clinton, for their help during the Kosovo war) We saw some artifacts, but not surprisingly, most of the exhibits were about the war.

After running through the rain some more we made it to a souvenir shop so I could buy something distinctively Kosovo-Albanian. The name of it escapes me now, but I ended up with a traditional instrument that looks like small guitar with two strings that has the flag of Kosovo on it.

Parliament was next on our hit list. Teze's cousin works at the Parliament building and was nice enough to let us in to the assembly floor. We felt really special sitting in the seats of the leaders of Kosovo and snapped a few pictures of our mini Winston Blue Jay in the "hot seat."

The last stop of the day was Juridica, the school Teze attends. Serbians prevented her from finishing her degree in the years leading up to the war, so now that Kosovo is independent she has returned to take business and English classes.

May 15 - Back to Switzerland!  At night we made it to Linda's home of Chur, the oldest town in Switzerland. There I met another aunt and her kids and Linda's best friend (By the way, today we counted that Linda has 51 first cousins. I have a whopping 0.).

May 16 - Linda drove me around part of Chur, through the small town of Zizers, and then to Igis, where her aunt from the night before prepared fondue. After lunch we took 3 of the aunt's daughters to Bad Ragaz, a town with a really nice tourist area. It had several hotels and lots of interesting sculptures throughout the park. In the afternoon Linda, teze, and I left for Geneva/Genève/Genf with the first aunt I met, Melos, and Elijona, and two of the cousins I had met the night before : Laura and Florina. We arrived in Geneva late at night and crossed the border into Annemasse, France where Linda's uncle lives.

May 17 - After lunch the whole crew (8 of us plus the uncle and his wife and two kids) went for a walk along Lake Geneva and took a break in a park. Sadly, we had only a few hours to enjoy Geneva and started heading back to Chur in the afternoon. On the way back we stopped near Lausanne to visit the last of Teze's brothers and his wife and three kids. We arrived in Chur just a couple hours ago. I've officially met all of Linda's uncles and all but one of her aunts....on her mom's side.

Below: The three amigos in the Kosovo Parliament