Exactly one year ago, I wrote about Kosovska Mitrovica, a city that I fell in love with as soon as I set foot in it. Then I knew him a little more than the average tourist. Now, after a year of living here, I have made many friends and got to know every corner of this city that I often feel like I know Mitrovica better than my Parish, and especially Belgrade.
Therefore:
Dirty streets, lack of bins, and quite often a few dead birds. A town with about four hundred abandoned dogs whose barking can sometimes be heard so loudly at night that you shudder to think that someone might be on the street.
A city where you don't go into certain bars and shops because they are "unfriendly". Across the bridge, to the southern part of the city, one goes more often than Serbs from central Serbia think, but mostly to the notary or to go shopping. But not in the dark and by no means alone.
A city with cheap and excellent coffee, excellent and cheap food in just a few cafes. A city in which people are constantly changing, and in which the local population mostly no longer lives.
A city where you will meet KFOR soldiers eating cookies, drinking coffee, trying brandy on the street at a local vendor while passers-by stare at them as if an unseen miracle is happening.
A city where Elektrosever is constantly repairing something, and the electricity often goes out due to the already poor signal. And then the internet disappears and it barely works anyway. Electricity is paid for, and disconnections to debtors are not rare. Someone even had to take out a loan to pay off the debt. The water is still unpaid.
A city with several names, depending on the political and social context - Kosovska Mitrovica, Severna Mitrovica, Mitrovica, Severna Kosovska Mitrovica or the former Titova Mitrovica. Today it is Northern Mitrovica for the Albanian community, and still Kosovo for the Serbian community.
What hurts the journalist the most is that there are no newspapers and books. I'm sad about that and I can't wait to get to Belgrade, then the direction of the newsrooms and bookstores.
A city without a theater, cinema and library. You might have to wait months to see the movie premiere. And going to the same will take time, but there is magic in that anticipation.
For example, I was quite looking forward to the screening of the film Hajduk in Belgrade, was shown in Zubin Potok, in the House of Culture Stari Kolašin.
At that moment, the only transport from Zubina Potok to Mitrovica was a van that runs several times a day, and the last one was at 20 pm (now there are also at 21 pm, which makes me very happy!). After the movie, I had to go back with my friend in that van because there are no taxis in that municipality.
The driver told us: "There is room, but only in the trunk." So we had an adventure together with two kids whose mom couldn't get them to sit in a regular seat. We rode on a chair made of boiled plastic in the trunk of a van to Kosovska Mitrovica. We laughed the whole way, and the memory of this movie wouldn't be so vivid if it weren't for that ride.
Readers will probably wonder if someone who describes Mitrovica like this is normal and where is the enjoyment. I may be able to answer this second question.
The living conditions here are not enjoyable, they are sad. Riding in the trunk on a chair made of boiled plastic is not safe. It is not normal that the cinema does not exist. It's not normal for unfortunate people to walk the streets because the local authorities are not interested in solving that problem in the slightest. It is not normal that you cannot buy the medicine you need in your town, but 60 kilometers away from it. It is not normal for mayors from the Albanian community to paint murals on the walls of your streets just because their content and message are not to their liking, as happened this summer in municipalities in the north of Kosovo.
The whole newspaper would not be enough to explain all the abnormality of living in Kosovo!
When they ask me: "How are you doing down there?", I answer that it's beautiful, and then I remember where I came from and start explaining that I have good friends and colleagues here, but that life in general is not good.
I remember pictures of the suffering of the people of all communities, especially the Serbs, who are deprived of their rights in Kosovo at the moment, so it makes me feel stupid that I even said that I was happy. I remember, for example, that the bells of the Church of St. Sava in the southern part of Kosovska Mitrovica do not ring, that it is surrounded by barbed wire and is constantly guarded by the Kosovo Police. I remember the arrest of minors for wearing t-shirts with the logo of the Crvena zvezda club. I remember when the Kosovo policeman grabbed a high school graduate by the neck. And then the constant anniversaries of some deaths - bombings, March violence, inter-ethnic conflicts...
Then I understand - maybe because of that suffering, the constant need to embrace Kosovo and Kosovska Mitrovica as the last multi-ethnic city (in an attempt) is felt.
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