I go for a drive...

This last Thursday held quite a little adventure for me. A couple of colleagues and I were planning to drive up to Pristina to take a look around an investment summit that was going on. Since we were taking the company truck and since it's always parked a good 10-minute walk from our office and since I'm the new guy, I got volunteered to walk over, pick it up, and pick up my two co-workers. They also decided they were feeling adventurous and wanted me to drive. Off we went!

Driving in Kosovo is only slightly less dangerous than driving through Baghdad. No, there are no roadside bombs waiting to ruin your day, but you have to deal with the other drivers instead. To get to Pristina from Camp Bondsteel, you have to take the main "highway". I use the term "highway" with some reservation because I've driven down plenty of rural FMs in Texas that are better developed and maintained. It is a two-lane road, filled with potholes, and lacking shoulders. Driving along, you will pass all sorts of interesting modes of conveyance, from tractors to horse-drawn buggies, from a brand-new Corvette to the so-called "Kosovo Harley" - a roto-tiller pulling a trailer that the driver sits on. A little more than halfway to Pristina, you come upon the safety-conscious road crews, working to widen the highway. Unlike road construction in the States, where generally concrete barriers are put in place to prevent drivers from plunging off the road into the work zone, Kosovo's road crews seem determined to tempt your fate with sheer drop-offs ranging from 2 to 6 feet. And in place of blaze orange traffic cones, they use dirty, red-and-white striped concrete blocks, which won't prevent your car from plunging over the side, but will definitely tear up your bumper/radiator/axel before you go over. Unfortunately, I was not able to take any pictures, what with having to concentrate on the road and all.

Thanks to my highly skillful driving, we arrived safely in Pristina and set about looking for a sidewalk cafe to eat lunch in. I had my first two beers since I arrived in Kosovo and a cheap but decent bowl of penne pasta with some kind of meat thrown in as we watched the (relatively) gorgeous women walk by. Peja (pronounced with a "y" not a "j") bills itself as the finest beer in Kosovo. I've also been told it may be the only beer in Kosovo. It kicked my taste buds around a little bit at first, but then it calmed down and was pretty decent. After lunch, we walked around until we found a Nokia store and I bought a phone. Nothing fancy, just something I can use (hopefully) to get in touch with people here if I need to while I'm out gallavanting around southeastern Europe. After that, we headed to the hotel where the investment summit was being held. Oops! We arrived too late, as the summit had shut down 30 minutes prior to our arrival. Oh well, I wasn't too upset. I got to take half a day off from work, drive around the countryside, and have a couple beers. All in all, not too bad.

Had to work all day today, because I'm taking off Thursday and heading to Spain! I'll actually spend Wednesday night in Skopje, Macedonia so hopefully I'll get to do a little sightseeing around there as well. I might even end up trying to look at some apartments there.

Fotos de Mi Casa

I think I've got things arranged in my room like I want them finally. At least it seems like this will work. Anyways, there's not really a whole lot you can do with the limited space. Here's my little hovel, home for a year!

More Pictures!

I went on a bus tour of the American slice of Kosovo yesterday and took lots of pics of the countryside. You'll have to forgive me, but since most of the shots were from a moving bus, they're not the best quality. But they should at least give you an idea of what the surrounding area looks like.

We left Camp Bondsteel around 12:30 and first drove through the city of Ferizaj. I was pretty lazy about taking pics here but it's a large city (over 100,000 people) and I plan on spending some time there once I get my own vehicle. Then we headed to the far southwest of the American sector to the Serb-majority municipality of Strpce. It's a really pretty drive through the foothills of the Sar Mountain range - there's even a ski resort in the area, though we didn't get close to the resort.

After Strpce, we backtracked, stopped at the Ballkan Petrol station, and then drove through Vitina, Partes, and Gnjilane. The first pass through Gnjilane, we stopped at the Drini Supermarket. I bought a Fanta Exotic (which I still have not drank because the tab popped off as I was trying to open it), a Crazy bar (with "Extra Crazy" - it's a chocolate wafer bar covered in chocolate and popped rice), and two Pop-Keks. Pop-Keks are delicious little concoctions of various flavors that are kind of similar to a Hostess cupcake. One was "Cocoa Creme" and the other was "Karamel". This bounty of Balkan junk food set me back a total of one euro.

On the east side of Gnjilane, there's another Serb-majority community called Ranilug that we drove by, but not through. After Ranilug, we turned around and headed back into Gnjilane, where we stopped at the Restaurant Bujana. Bujana was a really nice place to eat (I heard people talk about how good their steak was), but I stuck with the pizza, which would actually compare pretty nicely to some pizza I've had back in the States. After Bujana, we were stuffed and tired and it was time to head back to Bondsteel.

Take a look at the pics, enjoy, and check back later in the week. I gotta get some things in my room rearranged and then I should be able to post some shots of what it looks like now that I've filled it up with all my crap!

Photos!

Only two so far but I'm still trying to figure this out. Hopefully, this will work as an online photo album that will have a permanent link on the right-hand side of my page. And when I update it, I'll announce it here.

The Gym

After my first real workout since I've arrived in Kosovo, I feel weak and confused.

Confused because when I'd been working out back home, I knew exactly (more or less) how much weight to use on each machine. Here, the machines are completely different so I had to figure out what machines to use to get an effective workout and then I had to guesstimate how much weight to use. I had to keep adding or subtracting weight to find one that felt manageable and then just do as many slow and steady reps as I could.

Weak because I've been a lazy fatboy since I first found out I was coming to Kosovo and almost as bad since I got here. I've got a long way to go to get back to where I was in April. But there's not much else here to get in my way so I've got plenty of time to do it.

First trip!

One of the reasons I decided to come to Kosovo is to travel. So I'm trying to not waste any time doing just that. In two weeks I'll be in the air and on the way to Spain. Not exactly the first place I thought I would go while I'm here but the opportunity presented itself so off I go!

My friend Danny from Sam Houston is headed over there for a 12-day vacation which will include (for him, not me) the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Hopefully he won't get gored. I have Friday July 4 off already so I'm taking that Thursday as well as the Monday off to fly over.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday I went up to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, to take a look around NATO Headquarters. The excuse for going was that we had to get some face time with some US personnel up there since I'm new but it was really just an excuse to get off Camp Bondsteel so I could get a look at the surrounding area. The NATO base, which is called Film City, has soldiers from all the NATO and affiliated countries taking part in KFOR and is a much more civilized setup than what we have here on Bondsteel. We have a Taco Bell, Burger King, and Anthony's Pizza. They have a full service Thai restaurant, a German restaurant, an Italian restaurant, two pubs that actually serve alcohol (which is not allowed on Bondsteel), a tailor, and numerous other places to spend money. If I ever come back to Kosovo after this year, that's where I need to work.

The ride up there and back was pretty nice. The roads suck but the countryside is very pretty and there's new construction of businesses and homes everywhere. There's a lot of money pouring into Kosovo and it is easy to see. The drive to Pristina is mostly through the middle of a wide valley but there's green rolling hills on each side. It's hard to believe a genocide was taking place here not even 10 years ago. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera and so do not have any pictures. That's something I'll get to soon though.

Coleman gets a lesson in...

...Electricity!

An eighty-dollar lesson, to be exact. While trying to make my accomodations a little more livable, I went to the PX and bought a speaker system for my computer. Assuming that since my computer works fine when plugged into a surge strip which is plugged into my 220-volt outlet that my new speakers would work as well, I got everything nice and ready to go and plugged it in. Pop! Speakers are no more. Hmm, laptops are rated for 110v and 220v. Nothing else is!

I'm an idiot.

Kosovo Weather

I'm learning pretty quickly that the weather here is damn near unpredictable. You would think having the United States Air Force, with its access to a worldwide network of satellites and weather stations, as our "weatherman" would mean you have an inkling of what the weather will be from day to day. Apparently not.

Yesterday started off bright and sunny and remained so for most of the day. However, at about 6:30, the sky opened up into a torrential downpour. Today started off bright and sunny as well, but at 4:00 we had more torrential rain. Within 45 minutes though, it had passed and the sky was bright and sunny again.

I had planned on buying a bike from the PX today but the rain kind of dampened my enthusiasm for riding around. Maybe this weekend will be clear and I can do some sightseeing.

A Boring Week

Okay, okay, I know everyone is hoping for daily updates but there's really just not that much going on. I've started working so that's exciting but not really. All this week, I've just been reading all day, every day, trying to get up to speed as to what is going on around the American sliver of Kosovo. And there's not much going on. But I have to get familiar with the various towns and municipalities and the various characters associated with them.

On Friday, I managed to talk one of the systems admin guys into installing some new software on my computer that will make my job easier once I finally get going. So that's a plus.

One thing that's sure to impress the parents (and, to be honest, anyone who knows me), I have woken up, without needing the alarm clock I went out and bought, at 5:50am every morning since I got here, without fail, no matter what time I've gone to bed at night. This is deeply disturbing to me since that's at least an hour and a half earlier than I need to get up. Maybe something has clicked in my screwed-up brain that since this is a real job, with a meaningful employer, I can't be screwing around and showing up late. Even though the Army captain who is my military supervisor said he didn't really care when I came in to work, as long as I put in my 8 hours. I don't think I'll try to push that by showing up at noon though.

Maybe next week there will be some more action but for tonight, it's movie time.