My Memories of a Military Kosovo Check Point and No Evidence of War
Posted 3/2/2009 11:52 AM EST
I remember driving with Darko and Bojana about three hours or more south of Budva Montenegro to spend the day lounging on the beaches in a small coastal town where we spent the day swimming; near the Kosovo border.
I’ll always remember as Darko drove through the military checkpoint at which place he had to show some paperwork for us to pass.
This was the same day that Bojana had a terrible toothache and we walked around enjoying lunch in the ethnic majority comprised town just outside of the Kosovo border in 2002.
The swimming, bar and waves were great there.
Paterson New Jersey resembled many times more reminiscent of a true war zone than the Kosovo checkpoint.
Upon receiving my Euros from the men, I walked away back to see if Bojana was through with the dentist; she was. I excitedly told Darko that I had successfully managed to exchange American dollars for Euros thinking he’d be pleased with me; he wasn’t. Darko was always very protective of me. Instead of commending me he immediately got very angry; scolding me he said exchanging money illegally in the streets of Montenegro was both illegal and dangerous. You can’t change the past so I diplomatically apologized and Darko soon forgot his anger I lieu of the fact that now we all could have lunch. Afterward, Darko brought us to a beautiful beach nearby. The majority of the sunbathers were ethnic Albanian and again no one harassed us based on our ethnicity. I tried pushing Darko into driving into Kosovo but he flatly refused. I found it interesting that the international news at this time was reporting that there were hundreds of thousands of homeless ethnic Albanians being ethnically cleansed to Albania, I did not see one ethnic Albanian or Roma homeless on the streets anywhere. All seemed normal only ten meters from the Kosovo border.
Insofar as sequence of events, at this junction in time it was the last couple of days spent in Montenegro; it’s difficult now to remember the exact timeline of events. In other words, I remember visiting Old Town and Podgorica also in Montenegro but uncertain of which one we visited first.
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Jill Starr
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Jill Starr members.fortunecity... (Who am I?) Jan 16 2009
bloomingdale, United States
Insofar as sequence of events, at this junction in time it was the last few days I spent in Montenegro; it’s difficult now to remember the exact timeline of events. In other words, I remember visiting Old Town and Podgorica also in Montenegro but uncertain of which locations we visited first. During the last two days, Darko took me one day to Old Town in Montenegro for dinner; there we greatly enjoyed an expensive seafood meal afterwhich we walked around. Darko got a parking ticket that night in Old Town and greatly complained of the five dollar fee he said for some, five dollars is equal to an entire weeks pay in Serbia.
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Jill Starr
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Jill Starr members.fortunecity... (Who am I?) Jan 17 2009
bloomingdale, United States
. Darko got a parking ticket that night in Old Town and greatly complained about its five dollar fee; for some, five dollars is equal to an entire week pay in Serbia. I think I offered him the five dollars for the ticket feeling guilty because it was only for my benefit he parked there at all. Darko wanted to show me Old Town; he already knew what the beautiful cobble stone streets looked like.
We also went to the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica. I really don’t remember much of Podgorica except for walking around the streets one night. Since we didn’t swim there so it wasn’t a high point for me. When our ten day stay in Montenegro was finished we all packed and returned the way we came in Darko’s car. The day before we left, Darko’s car required maintenance. We didn’t have enough cash on hand left to pay for the needed repairs so I called Arnold Stark, my fiancée in the states, asking him to please wire us five hundred dollars cash to Montenegro; he did. This is fact that Arnold himself can verify being that he alone possesses the charge card receipt for wiring us the money through Western Union to a town not far from Budva.
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lpcyu
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Jill Starr members.fortunecity... (Who am I?) Jan 17 2009
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On the way back to Beograd we made two more important stops. One was Hercegovni where we met up with Darko’s cousin, a soon to be freshman college student and her friends. We had a couple of drinks, snapped some photos and Darko and I went for a quick swim in the sea. When it began to rain, we called it a day. The other stop was somewhere on the way back, where I have no idea. We pulled up to a large lake. Darko pulled his car onto a large ferry boat. There were some people on the ferry, but primarily soldiers from the Serbian military. Reaching the other side we drove around but I can’t remember much.
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Jill Starr members.fortunecity... (Who am I?) Jan 17 2009
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Returning on the ferry, we piled into Darko’s car and appeared at his apartment several hours later. We were all extremely exhausted and passed out as soon as possible in our separate rooms. Again, we walked past the same old men sitting in front of Darko’s apartment building seeming to do nothing; they waved at us.
There were only two days left of my vacation at this point; I didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I’d come down with terrible stomach symptoms that began in Budva several days prior. This was probably owing to my ignoring Darko and Bojana’s warning not to drink the tap water but bottled only; a lesson I ought have learned in Indonesia as a young girl. We were all feeling under the weather and very tired merely wanting to recuperate.
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