Kosovo: Happy New Year

The end of December witnesses the return of Kosovo’s diaspora with their huge packages and their latest BMWs and Mercedes’.

They all are overjoyed to celebrate New Year in Kosovo, all while keep complaining about the lack of electricity and how difficult it is to live in the newborn state.

For all of the emigrants who arrive at Pristina airport, the lights and Santa Claus’ decorations adorning the capital have yet to be seen. This far what they can see though are just the toxic fumes pumping out of Kosovo’s power plant.

For all those who choose to come with their flashy new cars, they keep telling you how scary/challenging/interesting/problematic their trip through Serbia was. They leave behind the blinding lights of New Year’s decorations in Berne, Stuttgart, London or Vienna and crash out in Kosovo, to celebrate with families.

“I missed Kosovo, I missed my family and friends”, are the standard statements of our emigrants. Yet, most of them keep complaining about frequent electricity and water cuts, about the mud and garbage in the streets and how backward Kosovo is compared to the countries they live and work in.

If Kosovo’s Energy Corporation is feeling kind enough, on December 31st they will have the opportunity to feel warm at home and spend the evening being entertained by Kosovo’s three national TV channels.

We keep being told there will be no power cuts for New Year; the promise was kept in previous years. The celebration will undoubtedly be associated with large amounts of fireworks for which Kosovo is the unquestioned champion in the region.
 
After receiving a warm welcome from family and cousins, they gather in their big cement houses and enjoy the New Year with traditional food and, of course, drink. January 1st will then find most of them celebrating with equally traditional and so called “traditional” turbo folk music in Kosovo’s hotels and restaurants.

For all “good and kind” young men who left for the West at an early age, the New Year holiday is also an opportunity to snare a “good, honourable and kind” Albanian girl to marry. In fact, for many of them, the hunt for that girl becomes an ever more pressing subject of every trip home.

Others complain that fear they won’t be able to come back this summer as the companies they work for have been badly hit by the global financial crisis. As they pack their bags to leave bitter sweet Kosovo, life in the newborn country starts to show its grim side. The decorations in the street are gradually removed or falling to bits leaving on show only the reality of life in a poor country.