Pristina is for lovers - of food, that is

Can’t say as I’m a fan of jet lag. Of course, who is? Those are the kinds of thoughts that plague you when, after 33 hours — broken only by the occasional nap — you finally fall into a hotel bed. And wake up five and a half hours later.

But, hey, the breakfast spread here at Pristina’s Hotel Victor y is probably the best in the city. And far better than many I have experienced in Italy, France, Germanty or England (much less Hungary, Macedonia, Greece, Spain or Poland: but shut up, Dan; now you’re just bragging).

Not that you’re likely to come to Kosovo as a tourist. Pristina is certainly not a destination stay for anyone with a camera. Oh, the city had its charms. And the people, at least those I’ve met, are engaging and friendly. And they tend to love Americans, nothing to sniff at in these post-9/11 days. But the city itself, even as it labors to redefine itself now in its second decade following the war, and three and a half years after Kosovo declared independence, is not particularly picturesque. Not nearly as scenic as Prizren, the city in Kosovo’s south that sits at the foot of the Sar Mountains.

If you did visit, however … you could do far worse than the Hotel Victory.

Anyway, last night 9/11 Film Festival director Blerim Gjoci took some members of the 9/11 Film Festival jury out to dinner. And i was pleased to rediscover one of Pristina’s great joys: its restaurants. When my wife, Mary Pat Treuthart, and I lived here for a couple of months five years ago, we ate out virtually every night. And of the two dozen or so restaurants that we haunted, we enjoyed too many meals to recall, all of them superb, all of them unbelievably inexpensive.

It was at last night’s meal — of blended cheeses, stewed vegetables, fresh salad and grill-roasted meats and veggies, all washed down with glasses of raki — that Blerim, who reported that during the day he had taken maybe “200 meetings and did five live interviews,” told us the theme that the festival — now in its eighth year — was founded upon: “We create because we are strong; they destroy because they are weak.”

The “they” is those who perpetrated the events of 9/11. The “we” is anyone who rises above such tragedy and pursues life and everything that makes it special. But it especially means the filmmakers who have participated in this festival of shorts, 18 of them this year.

Tonight we will have the grand opening, held at Pristina’s National Theater , but no films in competition will be screened. Instead, we will meet, greet and party as only Kosovars can. Tomorrow we start the festival proper, with six films screened every day for the next three. Then we’ll decide the winners, party some more, and I’ll return home.

Maybe then I’ll be able to sleep.

Below : Isa Qosja’s “Kukumi,” the Kosovar film that I brought to the 2007 Spokane International Film Festival.