What can a tourist know about a post war society, when the dust has set, but the traumas drive a lot of people in a busted land?

Wiped out serbian names on bilingual road signs give an idea, what it was about. It has been a struggle of Serbians and Albanians. There were fight, violence and crimes. How to stand between those who suffered? How to talk with those who were enemies?

I have not met "The Serbians" or "The Albanians", just persons, who had their own story and background in very different ways. In 2008, when I first spend time with some of those guys [link], there were some lessons to learn, that it is something completely different for me and for them, when serbian and albanian people meet. I had not to give advice, I had to listen ...

There is a lot of confidence, but the crisis has not vanished, as guards show; not only on that bridge in Mitrovica. Sometimes a strange kind of humor tells about the things, that happened. In Prizren I took this foto, fascinated by that technique:

It was in my childhood, when I last saw workers climbing up poles with that kind of clamps at their feet. (I think, today we got a lot of cars with lifts, to do jobs like that.) As I watched that guy, his colleague asked me: "Do you know, why he likes to climb up somewhere all the time?" I shook my head. "He was UCK sniper. Boom, boom!"

In Suva Reka I watched a young man with a little girl on his hand, visiting a cemetary ("parku i deshmoreve"). Who wants moments like that, visiting friends or relatives that way? We had a debate about. I asked, how to go to battle, cause in fact I cannot imagine, what one feels, if war starts.

So this is the omnipresent background, but suffering cant be a long term base of identity. Maybe we can cope with some steps for a cultural project, that expresses the "southern confidence" I also found.