A walk through Pristina, Part I

We went on a long walk through Pristina yesterday. Part of our intent was to check out an apartment that we may sublet for three weeks (it ended up seeming perfect, being centrally located and at least three times the size of our hotel room, and so could be a real possibility).

But just as important, we wanted to check out more of the city . We ended up walking down from our hotel in the southeastern hills toward the center, then north-northeast along Nene Tereze Bulevardi (yes, the good Mother Teresa was an ethnic Albanian, born in what is now the Macedonian city of Skopje, which is an hour and a half by car from Pristina).

We walked past the National Theater , checked out the National Museum of Kosovo , a three-story building that had a smallish exhibit – only the building’s ground floor was open – of pottery shards and photos of various archaeological digs around Kosovo.

Though we passed by several mosques, we were again struck by how little religion – strict religion, at least – seems to rule life in modern Pristina. At one point we walked behind a trio of teenage girls whose tight jeans, bare midriffs, jewelry and makeup attracted the eyes of any men, young and old, whom they passed. And these girls are hardly the exception.

Once again, I’m struck with how one-dimensional we tend to see Islam in the U.S. As Colin Turner wrote in his book “Islam: the Basics” (Routledge, 231 pages, $17.95 paper), “(O)ne only has to scratch the surface to reveal that Islam is no monolith: It is a vast, multifaceted entity with as many different forms of expression as there are people to express them.”