I woke up intending to get an early bus out to Kosovo, but discovered I didn't feel like hiking all the way to the other side of town at 10 AM so I decided to take the evening bus instead. I still had a lot of lek to spend since I took out a fairly small sum intended to cover my whole time there, but everything was so cheap that I didn't need anywhere near all of it. Since it'll be useless in Kosovo, I needed to find a way to spend it. I went to a museum about the persecution of religious leaders under the communist regime. It wasn't great, honestly, since almost every panel was just describing exactly the same scenario where a priest or imam got arrested for practicing in secret. It was nice to learn about Albania's history of atheism, though, and to contrast it with the modern skyline which has mosques everywhere.

I got what probably constituted a very fancy lunch (1000 lek!) that was excellent even though I really couldn't tell you what I was eating. There were a bunch of dishes and eggplant was involved in a few of them but beyond that I was content to enjoy the food without more information.

I lugged my bags about 2 miles across the city to the "bus station" which turned out to be an unmarked gas station parking lot. Unlike in Sarajevo, I just had the translated name of the stop and no coordinates that I could verify the location with, so I was flying pretty blind. There was a nearby bus stop with a sign by it, but this wasn't where Google Maps had a pin dropped for the bus station I was supposed to be at and when I asked one of the gas station employees he told me to wait on the sidewalk more or less where Google Maps thought the stop was. I've heard a lot about the hitchhiking culture around here and someone actually asked me if I needed a ride while I was waiting - I might try hitching a ride to North Macedonia, more for the experience than anything else. I thought I might be in the wrong place for a while since the bus didn't arrive on time, but it eventually came about 15 minutes late. By Balkan standards, that isn't too bad. It was a very empty bus and seemed to mostly have old ladies on board, who kept asking me to help them and then getting mad at me for not helping them when they didn't tell me what they needed.

We got into Kosovo a few hours later. Border patrol was incredibly easy, even somewhat easier than crossing between certain Schengen borders. The guy looked at my passport, took it away for about 30 seconds, and gave it back. I didn't even get out of my seat. When I crossed the border, I got a text from T-Mobile saying that I don't have any coverage here, but my data did work anyway. A few moments later, I got another text from T-Mobile welcoming me to Monaco (?), so I'm really not sure what to make of this all. Let's hope it isn't actually costing tons of money to use the towers here.

It's hard to believe that this country isn't recognized by about half the other countries in the world - it's very different from Serbia. Sure, there's still a generally Balkan vibe to everything, but it looks much more like Albania than anywhere else I've been. The language is Albanian, there are Albanian flags everywhere, and it's similarly poor. There are also the familiar mosques all over the place, which certainly wasn't the case in Serbia. I think a lot of this Albania symbology is an effort to make the Serbs of Kosovo feel less welcome, but I don't know how many of them still live in this region of the country. We're just over the Albanian border on the southwest side of the country, so naturally I'd assume that there are the fewest Serbs and most Albanians here, but who knows. I'm hoping I can meet a local and hear their perspective on things, since this country is really in an amazingly unique position.

My hostel is nice, but it's very cold in the room and there's only very thin bedding. I think it might literally be empty except for the guy working reception and this one other Mexican girl who's in my room - I actually recognized her as having been one of the volunteers at my hostel in Sarajevo. I talked with her for a while before bed. Now I have to figure out what there is to do here, since I have absolutely no clue what might be in this city. There's a fortress of some sort that I could see looming over the city from a nearby mountain, but I'm not sure what can be seen there. I know there's a national park a little ways down the road that I'd consider trying to hitchhike to, but that would likely end up being a whole day thing so it would mean spending another day here if I wanted to explore the city as well. We'll see what I'm feeling like.