Bus to Pristina

Photos taken on the way to Pristina.  The bus ride was super comfy, and a steal at only 1.30 euros each for the hour or so it took to get there.

Cake

Yesterday was Romain’s birthday and I wanted to make him a birthday cake.   Having visited the supermarket once already, I knew that I was going to have to keep the recipe very very simple.  I had thought initially of making a pavlova (we had some nice kiwi fruit in the kitchen) but realised my chances of tracking down corn flour and vanilla extract were going to be pretty slim.

So I googled a recipe for a fairly straight-forward chocolate mud cake.  Eggs, butter, chocolate, plain flour and instant coffee were all things I knew I could get.  Caster sugar, cocoa and self-raising flour I was cautiously optimistic about finding.

So I set off to the supermarket in about 6 layers of clothing and a pair of sturdy hiking boots.  The supermarket is only about 400 m from the apartment, but it had been snowing all morning and the maximum temperature was forecast for -3 degrees.  I wasn’t taking any chances.

I love supermarkets in new countries.  Everything is familiar, but so very very different at the same time.  Things are not quite where you expect them to be – or what you expect them to be.  The deep freezer section was pretty cool  - massive chunks of mangy meat and piles of drumsticks from some kind of bird all just sitting there loose and unwrapped – next to the frozen beans and carrots.  The dairy section is mostly feta cheese – so many varieties! – and yoghurt.  Then there is the aforementioned ubiquitous tacky cheap biscuit aisle, an aisle of soft drinks –only Pepsi and 7up, so Coca-cola must have been squeezed out of the Kosovo market (I’m sure it keeps their executives awake at night), an aisle of soups, pasta and condiments and a personal hygiene aisle with familiar favourites like Palmolive and Nivea making an appearance.

I wandered the aisles for a while – mostly taking in all the new and unfamiliar brands and products and occasionally smiling nostalgically at a box of Barilla pasta or Omo washing powder.  I tracked down most of what I needed fairly easily.  Turns out there was heaps of choice in the cocoa department.  No Cadbury’s Bournville though, so I just chose the most expensive box at  1.40 euros and hoped for the best.  The extensive flour section had me beaten.  There very well could have been self-raising flour but I really had no idea.  We had plain flour at home so I bought a sachet of baking powder (thankfully written in English). 

But sugar of any description I could not find anywhere. 

I went and asked one of the ladies stocking the shelves if she could point me in the right direction.  There weren’t very many of us in the supermarket and I’m sure she had been wondering who this weirdo was slowly roaming the aisles.

“Sorry”  I began (best to apologise in advance for anything stupid or offensive I was about to say).   

“English” I said, pointing to myself (surely that would be sufficient explanation for my apparent incompetence).

“Sugar?” I tried. 

She looked at me blankly.  “Hmmm.....Sucre? ..... Suiker......?  Zucker......?”  I rambled, trying to remember the word for sugar in any language.

She continued to look at me with a blank expression.   Then finally she said “sugar?”   “Yes!” I nodded enthusiastically, smiling widely because I had made myself understood. 

She pointed next to me at the many bags of sugar proudly displayed less than 1 metre from where I was standing.

“Oh”.  I said.  “Thank you”.  Her blank look was obviously not because she hadn’t understood what I was saying, but rather because she hadn’t understood how I could be so daft. 

The only thing left to find was a cake tin and some candles.  Down a secret set of stairs tucked out of sight there was another room full of home wares that Romain had thankfully introduced me a couple of days before. 

There was only one kind of tin – spring form and round.  Done!  Candles were not making themselves obvious, and just when I was thinking about drawing a picture and taking it back to the shelf lady, I spied a pack of things called ‘cake candles’.  They didn’t look like the cake candles I was familiar with, but they’d do.

So home I went and started pulling it all together.  I pre-heated the oven and greased up my tin.  The mixture was very oozy and I tipped it all into the tin.  I turned and opened the oven door and turned back to the tin to find the mixture oozing out the bottom of the tin and all over the bench and onto the floor.  ‘Oh my!’  I exclaimed.  ‘Fiddlesticks’. 

Clearly the tin was not cake-batter-tight, even though it was definitely ratcheted closed.  So I frantically dammed up the ooze with a tea-towel and fished the bowl out of the sink to tip the mixture back into.  Despite having lost about a quarter of the mixture to the floor, I was still determined to cook this mother f(iddlesti)cker.  With no other baking vessels at my disposal (a chicken and veges were roasting away in our only other baking dish) I decided to clean out the tin, line it with aluminium foil and hope for the best.  If the batter dropped onto the chicken roasting on the rack below, I figured I could pass it off as that Mexican chocolate-chicken dish.

So into the oven it went, and an hour and a half later as we were all finishing up our (un-chocolatey) roast chicken, out came a fairly reasonable looking cake, given the circumstances.  I bunged on some whipped cream shaved some chocolate over the top (so fancy!) poked in a few paper umbrellas I had found in the home ware section and poked in a candle.  I set the scene with Stevie Wonder singing ‘HAP-py Birth-day to ya!’ in the background and my plan was to walk triumphantly to the dining table with the cake – a surprise! (sort of.  I think the chocolate mixture all over the kitchen might have given me away earlier).

My cunning plan was dashed, however, as I lit the candle and it exploded in a jet of sparks that shot to the kitchen ceiling.  ‘Fiddlesicks!!’ I shouted in shock and horror.  Everyone came running into the kitchen.  The sparks died down and so did the excitement so we brought the cake out.  Despite everyone’s wise protests, I was still convinced we should use another exploding candle so Romain could blow it out, the way birthdays should be.  So we lit another one – less shocking this time but with an equally dramatic plume of sparks.

It was all good fun, except for the fact that the exploding candles had left weird yellow waxy flecks all over the top of the cake.

F(iddlesti)ck.

The bits underneath the umbrellas were ok though.

I'm Dreaming of a White (_orthodox_) Christmas

And so begins my life in Kosovo.  I arrived a couple of days ago, yesterday being Orthodox Christmas. 

At the moment I still feel like a cat that has just been shipped to a new home - someone needs to butter my paws!  But I thought I might get down some first impressions of the place before all the things that make me go ‘oh my!’ and ‘wha-huh?’ become a regular part of everyday life.

As I sit curled up on the couch, nice big fat flakes of snow are drifting down outside, dusting the red-tiled rooves and oily streets of Gjilan (my new home town for the next bit). Our apartment is small but cute and cosy with lots of little windows offering interesting views. Out of one I can see minarets of a mosque, out of another an orthodox church. From the lounge room there is a view out over a small hill – the Hill of Martyrs - with a monument on top dedicated to Kosovo independence fighters.

These are some of the moments that have made up my experience so far

·         Watching a group of be-robed monks entering the orthodox church next door on their Christmas morning

·         Listening to the imams sing the call to prayer every couple of hours

·         Cooking pasta for lunch yesterday, with sausages bought from the US Military Base (pig-related meat is hard to come by in these parts)

·         Trying to order a drink in a cafe and realising that I don’t speak a single word of Albanian, or Serbian for that matter.  "Hot chocolate" didn't translate.  "Hmmm.  Coffee?" the waiter kept trying.  I ended up with a mint tea.  So hard!

·        Walking down a street packed with shops selling bridal wear that made me go both 'oh my!' and 'wha huh???'.  Lots of tulle and shiny white satin.  Lots of big puffy sleeves and plunging sweetheart necklines.  Lots and lots of bedazzling.  I subsequently got chased away by the owner of one of the dress shops when I tried to take a photo of some of her truly spectacular creations in the window – I guess she thought I might be trying to steal her designs.  Not likely, lady!

·         Being amazed by the enormous mountains of cabbages for sale at the market.  Cabbages and ... well.... that seems to be about it really. 

·         Visiting the supermarket and realising that aisles packed with cheap, tacky, sweet biscuits seem to be a staple of any developing country (but then again maybe Arnott’s Family Assorted looks cheap and tacky to foreigners as well)

·         Watching a story on the local news about a ‘kanguru’ in ‘Australi’ that had been ‘arrestuar’ at an airport (see – I am picking up a few Albanian words already.  Too easy!)

·         Realising that as a ‘foreigner’ I am going to stick out spectacularly in this town.  I don’t think tourism is a mainstay of the local economy and Romain estimates there are probably less than 20 expats living here.  Might need to learn more than ‘kanguru’ to help me integrate a bit.

·         Feeling happy that my obvious status as a foreigner has so far been met with bemused smiles and crinkled brows, rather than pitchforks and angry chants.

Tonight – an adventure to a local restaurant.  I have been promised meat and meat.  And more meat.  And maybe a potato, just to make the plate look pretty.