Stubla

Spring has sprung in Kosovo.

It is hard to fathom that in less than 3 months we have gone from snow boots and -10 degrees to t-shirts and +30.

But the warm weather lends itself very well to weekend walks.

A couple of weekends ago Romain, Camille (our neighbour who works with Romain) and I went for a walk in the hillside near Stubla.  Stubla’s claim to fame in these parts is that it is a village whose majority population is Christian Albanian (as opposed to the norm, Muslim Albanian or Christian Serb).

We wended our way up a hill track, that was marked on the way with Stations of the Cross, until we reached this crucifix and sat down for a picnic.  

Our lunch was a spread of food from around the region – a salad with tomatoes from Kosovo, feta from Turkey and olives from Greece.  For dessert we had cakes from Georgia and a not-so-regional pineapple from Hawaii (bought at the US Military base).   We weren’t trying to be fancy or rack up a ridiculous food-mile tally.  That’s just the way grocery shopping is in these parts.

We stopped at the local church where Mother Theresa (everyone’s favourite Albanian) graced the church walls.

There was also this lovely old gypsy-like cart happily rusting away in the garden.

On the way back to the car we were accosted by a friendly group of French-speaking nuns who sussed out our credentials by engaging us in a bit of small talk before trying to marry Camille off to a local girl.  He politely declined, and we narrowly avoided being trampled by these cows before jumping in our car and heading home.