Kosovo
 Kosovo














31/8 Transit, Kosovo
Lat N 41° 59,80', Long E 21° 33,17'
Today: 86 °F ( +30 °C)
31 Aug 2005
13680 km

We did not need a visa to enter Kosovo, but we needed to pay 50 € for a traffic insurance because the green card is not valid here. We thought that 50 € was too expensive. Our plan was just to transit Kosovo on our way to Montenegro. We tried to get them to change their minds, but they where relentless. We decided to travel through Serbia and round Kosovo instead.

We turned around and went through Skopje again to get to the Serbian border 80 kilometers further east. At the border they hardly looked at our passports when they noticed that we where from Sweden. Arriving in Serbia we got the brilliant idea to try to cross Kosovo only using bypaths. We thought maybe they do not have such a extensive control there. After a while we got to a Serbian checkpoint and a few minutes later we reached the Kosovo border again. We still had to pay traffic insurance, but this time we managed to get by with only 30 € because we could register our car as special vehicle . We did not manage to outsmart the system, but a small victory is also a victory. We had to pay only 30 € instead of 50 €, and we also got some new experiences.

The presences of the KFOR military forces are highly apparent in Kosovo. Armed soldiers in helmets and bullet proof vests, army vehicles and UN cars along the roads and big military camps hidden behind barded wire and road blocks. As usual taking photographs of military targets are prohibited; this means that it is hard to show you what we have seen here in Kosovo. It is with mixed feelings that we see all this. The military forces are here for a reason and it gives us a feeling of discomfort to see them, but on the other hand we also feel more safe knowing that they are here and that the help is close if something was to happen.

During our 150 kilometers long trip through Kosovo we did not see many signs of the war, except for a few houses that probably had been bombed . But something striking is that wherever we turn they are building houses and commercial buildings.

Our journey through Kosovo took less than four hours. This means that the traffic insurance for Kosovo set us back about 8 € per hour, in spite that we already have a car insurance with a world wide coverage, except for Russia.

There are no camp sites in Kosovo, and we did not have a good enough knowledge of the security situation to stay for the night in Kosovo. We choosed to stop for the night as soon as we passed the border to Montenegro.