I have seen Kosovo
I started my travel on October 22th 2008.
I rushed to Berlin-Hauptbahnhof. Jumping down the elevator I saw the train leaving.
Shit,.....I missed it.
Back home I saw that it's best to go next day, same time...
I went really early that day and got on the train to Munich.
The train was overcrowded, the Deutsche Bahn called waggons of the ICE, the fastest german train, back because of something went wrong.
I was changing seats all the time, sometimes I had no seat, I jumped onto the reserved ones which were not used from this city to that city.
People were sitting on the floor, standing in the restaurant. That..s the way I made it to Munich.
In Munich I had to change the platforms fast and I was on my way to Zagreb. I shared the cabin with a drunk and stinking croat, he had some beers in his bag and fed himself ever so often.
In Zagreb I got a ticket and I was looking for my train to Belgrade.
When I found it I recognized the wagon was the same I came from Munich with.
the stinking croat ( he was really stinking, sorry) was on the same train but I shared the room with some old guy who looked like he was a politician in Tito..s time. He was not talking german or english, but we were joking about this and that happening.
It was warm in Belgrade. The sun was shining and I had a "turkish" coffee in the sun.
What a nice weather!
I walked through Belgrade and saw the last reminescents of the war NATO against Serbia. One building was still down and I made photos of it.
I explored Belgrade, never been there before. Suddenly there was a wonderful smell of Barbecue and I saw the grill. It smelled so fine that I ordered what was on the grill.
I asked: "Hamburger?" The guy said:"Yes".
But it was no hamburger. It was my first Pleskavice. Very delicious!
I discovered the Sava river and walked towards. Before I reached it I saw some little monuments under a bridge. Photos of people who died 1999. Some guy passed by and he was looking like he could explain.
he..s told that these people jumped down the bridge. I said that I think they were lucky because the bridge wasn..t that high!
I enjoyed walking up and down the river and decided to call my wife in Germany with my cellphone. It was beautiful to talk to her, explaining my impressions.
Some days later I found out that this call costed 100 Euro! But I couldn..t regret the beautiful moments...
The train for Skopje was already waiting and I was alone in the cabin.
A man came in and told me that he needs 7 € in order to enter greece. The railway was on strike and he had to pass the border by bus. He gave me his telephone number in Thessaloniki and said he comes back and we can talk all night. His name was Alex, I still got his number but I don..t know whether he missed the train or he was a junkie from Belgrade. I will call him one day and find out.
My way to skopje was dark but first I had a cabin on my own. I slept until the conductor woke me up because the wagon was ruined and everybody had to go to the next one.
I was with two smoking serbs in a overheated cabin, I left the door open for fresh air.
The serbs left waving hands to me.
On the border the custom asked me where I go. I replied "Pristina" and he was amazed: "Pristina...very good".
Later I found out I shouldn't have said it and I was lucky that the guy was albanian.
I was alone when I woke up in Skopje.
I left the train and the platform was kind of crowded...of taxidrivers!
"You wanna go to Pristina? 50 Euros!". All the way to the bus I was guided by different drivers.
The station was like of the setting of "Solaris" by Tarkowski. fucked up science fiction concrete. I changed to much money because I understood the prize for the bus to Pristina is 300 denar and one euro is 5.5 denar.
In fact it was 5.5 Euro for the bus and 60 denar for one Euro!! And I even could have paid with Euros on the bus.
So I left Skopje towards Pristina by bus.
Then the border appeared.
An old guy who had lots of plastic bags full of household equipment on him was troubled by the customs. The bus driver was taking party for him, very intense.
in the end they let him go, it looked like they told the old guy "Next time don't do it!"
The passport controller asked me if I'll get in trouble when he stamps my passport, I said:"No..." and got the stamp.
The area between Macedonia and Kosovo is a beautiul mountain landscape with a river.
When we arrived in the plains lots of new build houses with no doors or windows jumped into my eyes. I saw the first old men with their traditional cap, the "plis". It looks a bit like half an egg on the head.
Bus station Pristina:
My cellphone was out of power and I had to call my friends to get me...
I entered a coffeeshop, ordered a coffee and asked them if I can charge my phone.
They took my phone and plugged it in somewhere in the kitchen.
After some coffee and a Pleskavice I asked the waitress for my telephone.
She asked:"What telephone?"
I was upset. I said:"Mach keinen Scheiss, du weisst genau, mein Telefon... mobile...handy.."
She was grinning:"Ah, your phone....".
I called Wout, my dutch friend, who turned up within half an hour. His driver was starving and we sat down, ordered coffee and food, we talked about what to do and left towards Skenderaj.
Skenderaj is located in the Drenica area which was worse hit by the serbian forces because it was the main region of the UCK, the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Once Skenderaj was called Srbica, little Serbia, but no Serb was there anymore.
We arrived at the office of the NëPërJu, a newspaper from youth made for the youth, produced by the NGO Mobile Arts & Media, run by Wout and Natascha from the Hague, Netherlands.
I met Wout the first time in Prague in 1994. He introduced himself as from "Radio Tonka", a pirate radio this time in the hague.
I met Wout the first time in Ladronka, a wild squat in a medieval customs house in the park by the stadium in Prague, I was there with a bunch of artists mainly from Switzerland to paint murals and decorate the bar with monsters made from papiermaché.
After that we went all together to Kosice in Slowakia to paint a huge mural again.
Next year, 1995, Wout invited our group of artists around Mark Divo, to make a mural on the huge squat "De Blauwe Aanslag" in the Hague.
It was endangered by eviction and some cosmetics were wanted by the squatters.
We painted for around 2 weeks and it was beautiful.
The court decided to ask the citizens of The Hague if they want the building teared down. Most of them did not want to get rid of the "beautiful painted house".
After that I was several times in The Hague. I heared very little of Wout since 1998 but already then he wanted to go to Kosovo.
In 2003 I turned Marina Zivkovic into Marina Zivkovic-Schmacke by marrying her. She was born in Hamburg, has a croatian passport and is an ethnic serb.
I wrote an email to Wout mentioning it but he never replied.
I made a bit of a career in animation film and then was recommended to Radijojo, a childens network radio. I started making animation workshops and had a chance to do projects.
I remembered Wout and his Kosovo NGO and send him an email to ask if he wants to make something.
He came to Berlin nearly immediately to negotiate with Radijojo to become partners.
We decided to make 5 films in three days in Kosovo at 5 schools in the Drenica area for a pilot and to recommend us to future sponsors.
Thats why I went all the way to Skenderaj, Drenica, Kosovo.
In the office of the NëPërJu I met Natascha again, Wouts friend and colleague. They met in a refugees camp and work and live together since then.
Then 17-years-old Egzona appeared, Arsim and another woman, editors for the paper were already there and we started to work immediately because I was one day late.
We made a little film, "The Test Film", a hero saves a woman and her baby.
The next day was the first out of three days we planned to work at five schools. This day we choosed only one school to evaluate and see what could be done better.
The plan was following:
First introduce us and present previous works I did with children.
Then go outside to animate the kids, make a group photo/animation and make the children understand how animation works with their own bodies..
The next step was to put the name of the village onto a Kosovo map with paper letters.
Afterwards we developed the story and asked the kids what they want to tell the world about Kosovo and their life. In the meantime Wout recorded sound and music with the kids.
We put different themes onto the blackboard and the children voted their favourite theme.
The first village was Terdec.
We started fine, the kids made up their story and it had to be a film about the bad road conditions and the cows which are walking around everywhere.
Everything went fine until I realized, oh my god, I forgot to charge the batteries for the camera and the laptop....the camera went out of power first and we could not even start making the actual animation.
SHIT!
We went back to Skenderaj but THERE WAS NO POWER!
But thats usual in Kosovo. the more poor an area is the less they can pay their fees. When they don't pay their fees the power is shut down for an hour twice or more a day for around an hour but sometimes even longer.
Drenica, where Skenderaj is located is very poor and the power is off nearly every day.
When we arrived with the empty batteries the power was down.
Our hearts were beating and the generators were actuated.
We went off to see the house of Adem Jashari.
Adem Jashari was the leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army and got heavily on the nerves of the serb politics around 8000 serbian police troops attacked his house and killed him and his entire family except a small girl hiding under the corpses.
After that we went to see a "Kula" a traditional house of the Kosovo albanians and we met the grandson of some hero from the 1912 war who got famous fighting wth his axe against the serbs, sorry, I forgot his name.
Back home the batteries were charged(!) and we raced back to Terdec.
Luli, our driver, was a real racer, he dashed down the road, the engine was howling, we took over cars in dangerous situations.
But we always arrived safely.
In Terdec we were surprised, all the kids from the morning were there even though school was out.
And much more kids...
One had a hemp leave on his wristband, I asked him what it is. He got nervous..."Ää..ö..it's the sun!..."
We started to animate outside, everybody was very interested. Two old guys with their cows passed by and stopped to watch the proces.
I made a photo of the one man and he said: "thank you". This never happened to me before.
When the shooting was finished I took my Nikon off the tripod and started to take photographs of the kids. They were going mad like usual, "Me! Me! Make photo here, of us! " etc. Wild posing, pretending to fight and lots of stuff that amused them.
Back home we made the postproduction, had a beer and food and rested to be ready for the next day.
Next day we were ready to do two schools and the accus were charged in Gradicë and Qirez.
In Gradicë the kids decided to make an animation about the landmines in Kosovo.
In Qirez they couldn..t decide whether they are making a film about the electricity situation or about football. We advised them to combine it and thats why the film came out like it does.
We always got a selection of kids from the directors of the schools. In qirez all the other pupils were looking from outside, knocking at the door, yelling and jumping.
Then my accu of the laptop went low but we managed to get a generator from a shop nearby and we could work on.
After all that stress we wanted to drink a coffee in Qirez but there was no possibility.
Luli, our driver, invited us into his house instead where he was living with his family, parents and sisters .
This is usual there, 90 % of the kosovo albanians live in big families on their own property.
It was very interesting to see a family living on their farm. The father and son were sitting on one couch and his wifes and the daughters on the other. Wout, Natascha and me sat on a couch in between.
Not only that they got lots of couches but they had a huge amount of coffeemachines, coffeepots and cups!
But WE had tea!
Very good turkish style tea and when the cup was empty the elder daughter came and refilled it automatically. The father pushed me to eat the cookies on the table and the mother said I look like I don..t like Kosovo because I let my head hang down a bit.
Natascha got some nice handcraft work of her and we had to leave because Arsim was waiting
Arsim suggested the day before to go to Mitrovice and have a dinner.
Mitrovice got famous with the clashes between Albanians and Serbs. The north of the city is dominated by serbs, the south by albanians.
The bridge over the river Iba was the hot spot and all over the news in 1998/1998.
Today the bridge is illuminated at night and guarded by international police.
When we entered the bridge I saw shortly a Bear of Berlin somehow at the policeman.
I swapped phrases of serbian-croatian I know with arsim time and he was surprised. on the bridge I remembered the last phrase I learned of my beloved wife Marina, "this woman can sing beautiful, too."
We hovered a while, watched cars and people pass the bridge.
On the way back I watched the policeman again and, yes, he had the bear of berlin on his jacket....
"Hey, are you coming from Berlin?" (of course we talked german)
"Yes!"
This was funny, we were happy to meet, he just arrived, was a young guy and told us the bridge is quiet. we told him our mission and said goodbye.
I still regret that we did not shake hands.
It was a good moment, i really saw him as a man, despite his uniform!
The pizzeria was full of flags from all over the world. I think it was a favourite place for international forces.
On the way to the car we went pass the UNMIK headquarters. it was surrounded by a wall similar to the Berlin wall! I remembered the police guy from Berlin, divided cities in my life.....
Next day we headed to Kllodernicë and Izbice.
The school in Kllodernicë was one of the schools mobile arts & media had contant for a long time. They..ve made a playground in front of the school and a museum of toys inside. There was a museum of war before there but some, I think, UN-Forces disliked the idea and demanded to put it away.
Natascha and Wout(mobile arts & media) asked the kids if they want a museum and what kind of. The childrens decided to make a toy museum.
It was still there, I saw it, funny, their grannies and parents gave them their old toys to display there.
Here I remember that in every school some kids knew a bit of english and, even more, german. I think everybody we met had a relative living in Germany, mostly in the south, where there are more jobs.
So, the kids in Kllodernicë wanted to make a film about Kosovo wants to go to the EU. We made a road and on the road the kids anted a russian and a serb standing trying to stop Kosovo to enter Europe.
They already made a serb but we said that not only Serbia and Russia do not want to have Kosovo in Europe but many more states.
So we left this one guy representing them all.(On my way back to Berlin I saw serbian police in Belgrade and I recognized the figure painted by the boy)
Kllodernicë had no water and no power, the toilettes there were the most dirty, stinking like ammoniak , a heavy impression.
but the kids were very happy. during the lessons, in the breaks, all the other kids knocked on the door again, really wild. I went out, first they ran away but when I started making photographs they went mad again, posing, fighting , jumping, demanding a photo of them.
These were the moments I really loved.
For the next village we were prepared that the power of my laptop would run out and we had an aggregate with us.
The kids in Izbicë were really small, most of them 8 to 10 but they did a really good job. But after the outside group animation and the map introduction the power of the laptop ran out.
We switched the generator on and we worked on.
Then I remarked that the laptop is not recharging. The generator was working, we got a cooking device to test, it was working!
The power supply was destroyed by the unstable power from the generator....
my new macbook!!!
We finished the film by shooting direct into the camera instead of shooting into the computer.
The exciting question now was if the computer couldn't get power anymore or the powersupply itself broke.
Somebody suggested an electronic workshop in Drenas, a city nearby, because the workshop in Skenderaj was known as really bad.
We found someone driving me there and...wroooooom...we went of.
The master of electronic sat in a pile of electronic devices and spare parts, could he fix a macintosh power supply?
He checked it and there was no current coming out the thing.
I was happy, it was not the computer! Because the adapter haD no screws or anything to open he said it takes until next day to open it with a saw and then he wasn't sure if it is too high tech would be in it to repair it.
We exchanged the telephone numbers and we went home to pray :-).
Next day Mr. Kabashi, the master of electronics called, he sounded proud and happy!
"You should come and bring your laptop". He said it in german, he was some 7 years in Germany (south of course).
we found someone to get me there, I forgot his name, he spoke english well and we talked about soft- and hardware on the way.
Mr. Kabashi was not in his shop but when I just dialed his number he turn around the corner, we connected the laptop and.....everything was fine!!!
Back home i started the post-production of the remaining 4 films while Wout gave english lessions to young people.
There I made a mistake! Instead of putting the "a film by.." in front like in the first film I placed it after the film. The evening before we where talking where to put it.
Well, while Wout and me were working on the sound design and the final cut we didn't noticed that. Until the DVD was burned and the films were uploaded at youTube!
it was a shock!
I also think that it would have been better to put this title in front of the films but there was no time to change it.
We left it like it was but the results are still very impressing to me.
I got to bed at 5:30 in the morning and got up at 9:30 and i wasn..t tired at all. I was appointed with Arsim at 10:30 who kindly wanted to take me to Pristina.
The problem was that wintertime, it was one hour earlier since last night and Arsim turned up at 9:30! When I heard his voice I jumped out of bed to say good morning.
We had breakfast, evaluated the whole procedure until 10:40.
Then we headed to Pristina and arrived at 11:30. The bus was going at 14:30. Nearly 3 hours to wait.
I walked a bit, taxidrivers in my neck at the bus station, explored a supermarket and bought some "vegeta" for marina.
I made some photos, had some coffee and water and waited in the sun.
The bus arrived and I was on my way home. first I was annoyed about the fat guy sitting beside me but then we were laughing when a guy hit his head on the TV. we showed each others passports and made jokes.
I arrived in Skopje. I could enjoy the futuristic atmosphere for 3 more hours until my train got to Belgrade. I took a couchette so I can sleep a bit comfortable. Something really funny happened:
The train guard told me he knows someone in Berlin, who has a gallery and I said "Jovan Bolav?", a macedonian gallerist I know and...
it was him! So incredible, the world is so small!
The train arrived too late and I had to spend 7 hours in Belgrade which was interesting. I walked around Belgrade. I arrived at 6 in the morning and the city just woke up. I found a nice café and they even had wi-fi.
I skyped with a friend, he was naked in his bed and I was sitting in Belgrade having turkish coffee.
Then the train was leaving with me on board. The sun was shining, all the people and their behaviour reminded me on Marina, my wife.
I text her that I feel that the balkans became part of my life because of her.
Then I thought about the films I made and the pressure and all that hatred poisining the air in Kosovo was streaming through me and that I couldn't tell anyone of my cute and peaceful wife and that she..s serbian.
I started to cry, honestly. I cried and cried for half an hour, I couldn..t stop. I even recorded it by coincidence, I recorded the train starting with the mike on the floor before I started crying.
My wife got nothing to do with Milosevic or Arkan, fucking hell. All the serbs I know don..t like Milosevic or Arkan, what crazy bullshit is this?
The flatened land and the people who where living in the woods for month not to be killed, such a heavy situation.
Just because of some idiots. the Albanians made mistakes as well I think. They also did silly stuff but if one's in a rage no wisdom is guaranteed.
In terms of the recognition of the republic of Kosovo have to admit that I recognize the earth and its people first.
The globalization could be a solution.
But what rule an earth state will follow?
Will mankind develop right-minded and what is it?
Do I know it?
Does anyone know it?
Don't we follow the sense that we like?
Is it the necessary right sense to keep life alive?
Question by question.
The answer lies in the future.
the results!