--Sunday, 09 July 00--
In Prishtina, at least, there is a lot of building and rebuilding underway. Frequently you hear a sound from the street that seems like a street sweeper slowly moving along the edge of the road but when you look you see a farm tractor pulling a flatbed with a cargo of long iron rebar on its way to some construction site. The rebar is so long that it hangs out of the flatbed and drags on the asphalt for twice the flatbed's length more. The sound is the iron being dragged protestingly along the asphalt.

Today I went with Smile and Kimeta to Batllava, a beach on a lake created by a dam. It is about 30 minutes north of Prishtina on the road to Podujevo. There is a van that you can take there that leaves from about a half block before the end of Mother Theresa or Marshall Tito or whatever the name of the street is.

The street names in Pristina are a problem. They were changed by the Communists, then when Tito died (1981?) they were changed again, then when Milosevich took over (1990?) they were changed again to honor various unknown Serbian heroes. The result, abetted by inadequate street signage and a lot of spray painting, is that no one knows the names of streets, even the locals who have lived here all their lives. So directions are given by relationship to various landmarks: noted mosques, the Government Building, the traffic circle at the bottom of Mother Theresa street, etc.

So we crowded into a van and drove off when it was overfull. This is part of the private and extremely informal transportation system given birth by poverty, entrepreneurial spirit and desperation. It works, in its own sweaty way.

Thirty perilous, stomach-churning, white-knuckled handle-grasping, center-of-gravity swaying, minutes later we arrived, by the merciful grace of Allah and the soundness of German engineering. It got so bad the man in the luggage compartment at the back shouted at the driver angrily that we were not potatoes to be tossed around. Given that he was with his wife and three sons, he may have felt that he had something at stake in arriving alive. In evaluating this, bear in mind that the writer is a firm believer that a turn in the road is there to be felt in your organs and that the fastest safe speed is always the right one.

We found a spot near the water's edge, put down a blanket, and began to relax. Smile and I went into the water which was muddy-colored near the shore but a more natural green about four meters out where you were already over your head. It was cool and refreshing if not clear.

As we sunned ourselves we had to put up with the wind which was breezy all the time and intensely gusty in spurts. The spurts were extreme and propelled clouds of dust towards us. We put up with this for a few hours until a line of clouds advanced and cast a shadow over the whole event. Clearly a weather front was moving in. We took one of the vans back to the city.

Smile said that if his ankle was OK he would walk over to see me on Monday. He has just started to walk normally and his ankle is still visibly swollen, so we shall see. Moving so far from Smile's home and his sprained ankle (he can't walk distances) have really reduced our time together.

The sun sets over an incomplete Serbian Orthodox church near where Smile works.

--Monday, 10 July 00--
I have discovered Cipso potato chips, made in Turkey. A lack of quality control is my reason for buying them. Some of the chips in most bags, are burnt and over-salted; in other words, delicious. Cipso reminds me of Wise Potato Chips in the late 60s: a number of chips in every bag were over-cooked and over-salted. Carbonized is what I called them. In my opinion, this is not a bug but a feature. I bought Wise just because I could pick out the burnt ones and put them on my tongue and crush them against the roof of my mouth. It was bliss. But Wise got religion and quality control. They have no good chips now; I never buy Wise anymore. But now I have Cipso.

I have noticed a lack of wall plugs and a lack of things that use them, such as table lamps. Reflecting this is a preponderance of ceiling lights. I loathe ceiling light but what do you do when there is no alternative?

Up early, at work by 7:15. The air was cool and the sky was clearer than usual. Started to get my desk organized, it was to be an all day struggle.


--Tuesday, 11 July 00--
Someone, a new person, came from DPU today with the same forms we had rejected three times already. I really let him have it. He was burnt pretty bad. It is sad that the innocent suffer for the sins of the guilty.

George of Civil Docs came by to reconcile his and our accounting records. We made some major progress. In particular it led to the use of my Error Reporting Form (Form 9) which showed up several deficiencies in its design. Fixed the problems with the form.

My cold seems to be easing up -- I didn't cough as much this morning.

I visited Smile at 7:30 PM when he was working guarding the Chesvee cars. He was worried; he has the apartment problem again. The same old problem of being told he must pay rent when no one else in the building is. He said very little to me but chatted with Sahdik and Halil in Albanian at length.


--Wednesday, 12 July 00--
I can tell that I need a vacation. Yesterday I vented at an innocent party, Giel, sent by a guilty department. The food seems less and less interesting. I have begun counting the days until I leave at the end of the month.

The day goes so fast that the evening seems to arrive in about 90 minutes and when you ask yourself what you have been doing all day and you can't think of an answer. I went to the BPK and looked at all the pending CPO forms. Found a wire, a strange duplicate original and three Health and Social Welfare POSA forms that totaled 200,000 from April. What is going on here?

Tonight cooler air arrived. A pleasant relief. Late at night it rained heavily sweeping the streets clean.

Joe