Complex History On A Day Tour From Albania To Kosovo

On my latest mad trip, I finally made it to Kosovo!

I’d been trying to devise this plan for quite a while, and couldn’t quite put it together with the time off needed. I decided I’d probably put it off until I had a bit more time to allocate to Albania, but then perusing some flights one day, I discovered I could get cheap flights over a bank holiday weekend. One less day to take off work? Perfect!

In the end, I decided that actually I didn’t have the time to allocate to Albania, but I’ll go into that in a separate post. The important thing was, I could finally get to Kosovo!

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It’s possible to take a bus from Tirana to Prizren, but I’ve heard enough horror stories about the public transport in Albania, and for once I wanted an easy trip. It didn’t take much convincing for me to book a tour instead.

The tours to Kosovo are a long day out, because they go not only to Prizren but also to the capital, Pristina. I’ve got to admit I wasn’t too bothered about this when it added on so much driving time, but it was where we got a lot of the history on the tour… and *boy* is there a lot of history in Kosovo!

Altogether, our day looked like this:

• 3 hours driving to Prizren (with half hour stop at a service station)
• 3 hours in Prizren (1.5 hours guided, 1.5 hours free time)
• 1.5 hours driving to Pristina
• 1.5 hours in Pristina (1 hour guided, 30 minutes free time)
• 3.5-4 hours driving back to Tirana (1 short toilet stop just past the border)

As you can see, it’s a lot of driving. They pick up from Durres and Tirana, so if you’re in Durres, the pick-up time is suuuuper early. I was the last to be picked up in Tirana along with one other girl, around 7.10am. We were dropped off again about 7.30pm, which means other people most likely didn’t get back until 8pm with a 6.30am start.

However, it’s much better now than it was. Until the main A1 motorway was built in the mid-late 2000’s, it took 6-7 hours to get to Kosovo, and even now you can only enter from Albania or North Macedonia. The new road from Tirana cost a whopping $1.5 billion to build. “Why?” our guide asked. “First reason is corruption” – of course.

And so we were on our way, winding through the Albanian mountains and musing over how much more beautiful it was than any of us had expected. It was truly sensational. Our guide told us stories of the mountain tribes who refused to participate in modern society – and they were so remote and so difficult to get to that the government couldn’t do anything about it.

“It’s why you can’t really ski in Albania despite the mountains,” our guide told us. The mountains here are so inaccessible that very few people have the skills to traverse them. That probably also contributed to the cost of building the road, to be honest.

The scenery calmed down once we entered Kosovo, but by the time we were through passport control, it wasn’t long before we arrived in Prizren.

Read more: Chisinau & The Least Visited Country In Europe: Moldova

Prizren is a lovely historic city with elements of its past peppered everywhere, from the Turkish bazaar-style streets to the iconic mosque dominating the skyline. It’s full of character and very reminiscent of the rest of the Balkans, particularly towns in Bosnia.

However, that the history remains here at all is another chapter of its past. It’s because Serbia holds a lot of its own history in Prizren, and therefore was one of the few places they didn’t destroy.

We spent the next hour with our guide, weaving through the cobblestone streets and seeing the main sights, all with a local dog called Max in tow. Armela says she sees him most days and he often joins her tour!

We had the chance to go into Sinan Pasha mosque, where scarves are on display at the entrance for visitor use, but you’re actually not expected to wear them if you don’t usually. We left shoes outside as the floor is carpeted.

The interior of the mosque is beautiful, the ceiling painted with floral patterns and verses from the Qur’an.

This mosque is one of few mosques with a donation box – where people historically would leave money for others in need to take, NOT for the imam to fund the mosque. Basically, anyone could leave money or take money.

After the mosque, we were left to our own devices for an hour and a half, which was perfect. We’d already seen most of the main streets in the historic part of town, so I whizzed back to a souvenir shop we’d passed to get a postcard (unfortunately the nicest one was actually bloody AI, would you believe?!), took some photos of the iconic bridge, and then found somewhere for lunch.

I loved the vibe in Prizren, especially on a sunny day. The river is lined with outdoor seating for bistros and cafés, and they were all packed with people enjoying the sunshine. I decided to go down a side street where it was less busy, and grabbed a fantastic lunch at Nook95.

I would happily have spent the whole day in Prizren. I bumped into a guy from my tour back at the bridge, and he had just been up to the fortress overlooking the town. I would have done that after lunch if there had been time, as the views are meant to be great. There’s even a bar to break up the climb with a drink; perfect if you go up for sunset.

Instead, we were off to Pristina. The capital of Kosovo was heavily damaged in the war, so I feel a pang of guilt saying that it’s not very exciting. So much of it is new but it doesn’t feel modern, if that makes sense, and it didn’t help that we didn’t have a lot of time to explore it.

Read more: Mostar: The Gem Of Bosnia

In fact, we only really saw a handful of things in Pristina: a cathedral, a library, a sign, and a horrifically poignant memorial.

Our first stop was Katedralja Nënë Tereza (or Mother Theresa Cathedral), which was only opened in 2010. After some funding issues in which Rugova, the president of Kosovo at the time of proposing the construction of the cathedral, had died with only 20% raised, we learned that the remaining 80% was funded by Sunni Muslims, and today many Muslims attend Christmas mass at the cathedral.

This is one of my big takeaways from the Balkans in general: despite their violent and volatile political history, different religions live in harmony with no problems. It’s how it should be!

Despite laying the first foundation stone, Rugova never even got to see the start of construction before he died of cancer in 2006, let alone the completion of his project. The cathedral style is fairly simple, but there are a couple of unusual features, like the eagle pews and the stained glass which features modern church leaders.

From there, we walked a short way to one of the “ugliest buildings in the world” – the Kosovan National Library! We were asked to guess how many domes are on the top of it. 99, apparently.

I didn’t actually get good pictures of the domes, but I DID go back after the tour to spend our spare half hour taking more photos of it up close!

And finally, we reached the Newborn sign for some more in-depth history of Kosovo and what had happened during the war. The Newborn sign changes in design every year to represent something different about Kosovo.

This year, it says “Nationhood, Endurance, Work, Bravery, Obligation, Resilience and New Beginnings”. The side said “Kosova 18, USA 250”, so I assume it’s an anniversary celebration.

We were taken across the road to the Heroines monument, a sobering memorial for all the women who had been raped during the war. This was made especially horrifying by the fact each pin, all 20,000 of them, represented someone… and every pin had the face of the main monument on it.

After this, we were given a whopping half hour of free time, in which we could either wander over to Skanderbeg Square, run to the Bill Clinton statue if you thought you’d be quick enough, or join our guide for a coffee. Me? I was tempted by the coffee because it would have been great to have some time to chat to Armela. She had so many interesting stories and a lot of knowledge.

(For what it’s worth, coffee culture is a huge part of Kosovo in a similar way to Bosnia, and I’ve read about a fantastic coffee shop called Soma Book Station, which is just off Skanderbeg Square!)

But then I decided: this is probably my only visit to Pristina. I’m going back to photograph the library!!!

I hadn’t really thought about going inside, but I’m fairly sure it was closed anyway – apparently it doesn’t open on Sundays. However, the interior does look very cool – check out this blog post for some excellent photos!

Next to the library, there’s also a church which has been abandoned during construction due to the Kosovo War.

All of these sights are within a ten minute walk of each other, so in all honesty you don’t need a whole lot of time in Pristina. Even the Bill Clinton statue, which I was under the impression was too far to see, was only ten minutes in the opposite direction from the cathedral. I settled for a photo of the Bill Clinton Boulevard sign!

Read more: Adventures In Albania: Two Hours In Tirana Is Not Enough

Unsurprisingly though, an hour and a half is nowhere near enough time to soak up the vibes of a city. I took a brief walk along some of Mother Theresa Boulevard before making that decision to backtrack and focus on the library. Families were out enjoying the sun; friends catching up on their lives on the benches that line the street; kids playing football and almost annihilating passers-by…

I was also quite fascinated by the affiliation of the USA. As well as the Bill Clinton statue, there were some really random things like a food stall with American flags and Garfield, and a souvenir stand selling American merch.

It also seems quite politically driven, which is understandable given its past. Our guide gave us a brief backstory of this “Liberators Bring Them Home” sign and some locals nearby joined in with a bit of passionate aggression!

The downside of such a long tour, for me, is that I ended up feeling sick on the long journey back to Tirana. I don’t fare great on long journeys anyway, so I knew that was a risk on such a long day. That said, it was totally worth it for seeing as much as we feasibly could in Kosovo!

A day is rarely enough to see a country (unless it’s San Marino or Monaco), but it’s just about doable for Kosovo, and there wasn’t much that I felt I’d missed altogether. The time spent in Prizren was excellent, and Pristina was an important visit for the history and monuments. So yes, I highly recommend the tour if you only have a day to visit Kosovo!

I travelled with Dream Tours Albania, and our guide Armela was great. As a former journalist, she has tons of political knowledge and her information gave us a foundation of the complex history of Kosovo. I would love to have chatted to her more.

Ideally, I think I’d spend most of a day in Prizren, stay overnight, and have a few hours in Pristina the next day – but where from there? Skopje, probably, which isn’t easy to get home from. The Balkans are far more easily explored as a larger trip, which meant a longer trip to Kosovo wouldn’t be practical for my timeframe.

This tour ended up being the best way to see Kosovo with enough context to gain an insight into it that I wouldn’t have got by myself, and that for me made it more valuable than spending more time there independently. It’s not often I actually think a tour is better, but I think to do Kosovo justice, it’s totally worth it.

Read more about my previous Balkans trip:
⭐ Mostar: The Gem Of Bosnia
⭐ Sorrow In Sarajevo: A Heartbreaking Tale Of The Bosnian Capital
⭐ Sunshine, Lakes & Statues In North Macedonia
⭐ Surviving Dubrovnik – And Falling In Love With It
⭐ Sofia: A City Of Colour And Contrast
And some other Eastern Europe:
⭐ Chisinau & The Least Visited Country In Europe: Moldova
⭐ Bucharest, Where Eastern & Western European Cultures Meet