Urban Hikes 1, 2 and 3
Feb 9th-Set out for an urban hike yesterday. Although it was cold, the weather looked fairly clear amidst the smog of the inner city. The blue skies above and sun reflecting on buildings had us inspired. We trekked up in a direction toward the new American University (possibly another story) which Jim had toured recently and it was definitely up-hill. He figured this would get us out of town the quickest.
We passed by nicer apartments and even full size houses, eventually gated dwellings too with nice views of the city and valley below. Then, it seemed we broke out into the country a bit more. The houses kept getting further apart. We saw two women (at two different houses) dumping water out of their basins into their yards, obviously a great day for laundry. They were dressed in more traditional Albanian dress: burka scarves on their heads, pants and big socks over them and with mid-length dresses over that. We supposed the socks might not be there in the summer. Older men with traditional white Albanian caps and canes and walking slowly up hills and down muddy roads, someday to become streets.
Soon, our last dwelling gave way to a dirt road that seemed like a forest service road leading to the pine forest through a draw with some drainage below. This is the first water we have seen in town, as Prishtina has no rivers. The drainage was essentially a landfill/dump. We kept walking as there were tire tracks in the snow and footprints. This was a good sign that there would not be landmines (we assumed if they were; the vehicles would have exploded them). As all good roads lead to paths, that’s what happened. Soon, we felt like we were walking from Camp Blackdog to Morgan Lake. The path kept narrowing and the footprints stopped. There wasn’t even trash! Ahhhh, we made it! Out of the city and to the forest. It was quite and snow began to drop lightly. We stayed for a while to take it all in. Passed by a deer carcass which the local dogs had found and cleaned well. Just like home, we thought. Then, we figured we needed to get back to a path once traveled, as Fuji expressed concern about landmines and Jim admitted he wondered secretly about them too.
So, we bushwhacked through some brush to pop out on the top of a ridge by the power lines. There has to be a road there we thought. Sure enough, we had come full-circle through a draw and around a knoll. Backtracking our way back to town/the city, we encountered children (of course!) who wanted to walk with us and look at our long hair. They didn’t speak or understand much English which was odd. Many kids know English around here and even German, in addition to their native Albanian.
Arriving home, it was snowing and blowing—good timing. Took some ibroprofens for the sore bones/knees and settled-in for the two hour power outage and cooked some dinner on our propane stove. Ahhhh, wonderful day in Prishtina!
Urban Hike # 2 & 3:
We just got done a 5 1/2 hour urban hike and ended up finding a park out of town in the forest at the base of some mountains. But ran into a mine area, some blown up buildings and some very nice restaurants at roads end. The area is called Germia (see Germia photos) which runs out of town to the east through a park with some Swiss chalet type restaurants. The paved road ends and turns to dirt and that is where we found the mine area and blown up buildings. Needles to say that was the turn around point plus it was 4 pm and time to beat feet back before it got dark.
So now we’re home got a beer in hand, power just went back on and are checking email that we grabbed from a cyber café this morning. So all is well. Left over Italian food for dinner tonight.
One week later. We needed to get into Germia Park deeper and higher. Our new friends, Julia and Rob were up for the hike (see pictures). We knew the way and went directly to the road with the mine warnings. If we stay on the road (park roads) we should be fine. It was great. He got higher and higher with nice views. We were into the snow and darkness became an issue again. But from this high point, we could see very far and over to a Serb town where there is a non-operating mining operation (minerals that is—not explosives.) we took a short cut down, following an old ski lift. Might have been a nice ski area at one time.