Radical Education discussing alternative education with Mehmet Behluli and Dren Maliqi of the School of Missing Identity and Rizoma / Prishtina, Kosovo

Radical Education (R.E.): What was the context in which the School of Missing Identity was initiated?

Mehmet Behluli (M.B.): We must look at the former Yugoslav territory in its cultural and also in its political meaning. As you know, Kosovo was very underdeveloped in that context and it was a society with a strong patriarchal way of thinking, as well as a closed one. In fact, only Kosovo was a big problem as regards integration into that Yugoslav society. Probably also because of the language, as our language is completely different from the other, Slavic, languages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/world/europe/09albania.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

For One Visit, Bush Will Feel Pro-U.S. Glow

Hektor Pustina/Associated Press
Workers in Tirana, Albania, prepared the area in front of the “Pyramid,” a cultural center, for President Bush’s visit Sunday.

By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: June 9, 2007
TIRANA, Albania, June 8 — The highlight of President Bush’s European tour may well be his visit on Sunday to this tiny country, one of the few places left where he can bask in unabashed pro-American sentiment without a protester in sight.

Visar Kryeziu/Associated Press

Kosovo set on path to independence as envoy sketches out final chapter in Balkan conflict

· Serbia rejects blueprint as violation of sovereignty
· Russia opposes UN vote to create EU protectorate

Ian Traynor, Europe editor
Saturday February 3, 2007
The Guardian

A Kosovo Albanian stands behind the Albanian national flag at a market in Pristina Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP-Getty

The majority Albanian province of Kosovo was put on the path to independent statehood yesterday by an international blueprint that redraws the map of the Balkans and effectively strips Serbia of sovereignty over a region it regards as its Jerusalem.
The plan was presented to and rejected by Serbian leaders in Belgrade and also given to the ethnic Albanian Kosovo leadership in Pristina by Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who has spent the past year as a special UN envoy crafting the settlement. "It's a compromise proposal," Mr Ahtisaari said, pointing out the plan had to be endorsed by the UN security council before it could be implemented. The aim was "a future Kosovo that is viable, sustainable and stable".

Albania wakes up to green issues
By Nicholas Walton
BBC News, Tirana

The environment is starting to become a political issue in Albania
Albania does not at first sight seem to be fertile ground for environmental politics.

Rubbish bins on city streets and country roads overflow with refuse.

Plastic bags blow around the fields, catching on the branches of trees and on fences.

Dust, diesel and smog choke pedestrians braving the chaotic traffic of Tirana.

Albania is a very poor country, and many citizens seem to have too many other problems to worry about to concentrate on ecology.

Smouldering rubbish

But with fiercely contested mayoral and local elections due in February, environmental issues are firmly on the agenda.

"I think they have started to realise how important environmental issues are," explains Xhemal Mato, the executive director of Eko-Levizja, a grouping of NGOs.

http://www.xn--wirsindkeinekunstfachverkuferinnen-z4c.at/

is a diploma project at the Tu-graz, austria, dealing with the cities of graz and nis.
we recommend this project to all the people interested in the balkan and the city subject.

the Expedition is going on in Wien: Stefan´s Birthday!
Giulia, Jaume, Kati, Stefan ... and Heidi, Rainer, Wolfang

It is amazing how you can find such different landscapes a couple of blocks away. Belgrade has lots of different cities mixed up in one.

This is the first (or the last) gasstattion at the highway from prishtina to the border of Kosovo with Macedonia.
A couple of years ago the gasstation bussiness on this route got a tax stimulation.
The result is a wildgrowth of gasstations allsorts. Including popular brand copies, UN checkpoinnt style and even whole shopping mall styles.
I shot them all with my cmera and will upload/make them in a compilation mozaique.
Perhaps even into a memory game.

What would happen in a changing economy? Will all of them (43 on a Amsterdam-Rotterdam stretch) survive?
Or just a few?

Might be an interesting motive to go back to Kosovo again.
Also my car got a great tuning at the mechanic with that juicy apple tree in the yard.

Pic by Arnoud Schuurman

Two views of Tito's Bar where old men gets too drink for me to stay there too long. Genuine enviroment becomes kitsch here, an exotic toursim. Anyway, its still good to have these crazy people and places, where people stay themselves, even if they are merely imagining about that. Pics by Kyong 23,08,2006 Sarajevo.

Here a sample of a lid in front of Sarajevo's railway station (23 August '06), an open source of a streaming network, an entree of the hidden files, stories and history. The forgotten marks of these remarkeble, undestructed lids, show the exchange of production, design and use of the covers, spreaded over the Republics.
.Be welcome into the Put discovery and reflect yours.

Pristina outscirts 2006-08
photo Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss

today i ran a race with my sister down the road in front of the house i grew up in

hope everyone has a great time in Skopje this weekend

amy (runner)

From Metropolis, January 2005

As ethnic conflict persists in Kosovo, churches and other buildings have become disputed territory.

An Italian soldier is standing in front of a sign that reads “THIS IS THE LAST CONTROL POINT IN KOSOVO” stopping cars as they weave through large concrete blocks on the road outside of Peja, formerly known as Peć, a scenic city on Serbia’s southwestern border with Montenegro and Albania. To the left of the checkpoint, a metal barrier blocks the way to the Patriarchate of Peć, one of two medieval churches placed on the World Monuments Fund’s “100 most endangered sites” list after NATO took control of the territory in 1999. Since then, more than one hundred Serbian Orthodox churches in the province have been burned down, including thirty-four last March in a series of politically-motivated riots.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050627fa_fact2