Germia
This is a park that we have written about in some of our journals. A good place to go for an enjoyable walk in the hills outside the city. The local transit system also runs to the front of the park. Take to number 4 bus.
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As one enters the park, which is from the upper right in this image at the edge of the pool, one can travel along the road on the right or take the trail, on the opposite side of the pool, which we are on. Both take the traveler up a gradual canyon with several spurs till the paved road ends. That is where the real hiking begins. Oh did we mention that this is said to be the largest pool in Europe. This picture doesn't do it justice but it is huge. It is feed by a creek and has several thousand people in it over the weekends. It has a high diving board, lap area and of course a kids slide and littler pools. Surfs up! |
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As one hits the end of the road past the Swiss type chalets serving all sorts of inexpensive food (for the area) this ominous sigh greets you. Do I want to go any further-you bet! |
| And these were the mines that were put into this area! |  |
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We encounter several blown up buildings in an area still mined. The signs were correct (well we didn't wander past them) and followed the road up the valley. |
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Another look at the rubble. We're still trying to find out exactly what happened here. The general story is that as a recreation area they didn't want folks to recreate. So put in mines, blow a couple of people up ands scare the crap out of them. There is more here than meets the eye but we haven't been able to get the details yet. The rubble and destruction sure is impressive. As are most building here it was all concrete and that that quite a bit to reduce to ruble. |
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These folks, Julia and Rob, were on companions on this journey. This is looking across from the buildings above. |
| As we progressed up the road we had to choose between a left or a right hand branch. We choose right, saving the left for another adventure, and after about 45 minutes came upon this old abandoned ski lift system. We were also able to see a path way into another valley that we travel through to go to Gjilan. This will be an overnight hike when the weather warms. Kinda like a hike from Boise to Robie Creek. |  |
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Gotta figure out when this was last in operation. We've talked to several of our Kosovar friends and none of them knew about this. One has to wander off the main pathways a little to find it. A friend even wen to check it out and said that he's had more internationals tell him about things here than he knew about. He's going to take us to some caves outside Pristina in a few weekends. Ah trading information. |
| On the final curve we ended back at the buildings we started at and a left hand turn took us back to the Swiss like chalets and food. It was then about an hour and a half walk back to out flat. |  |
