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essays | places
Kosovo
Europe's youngest
I wonder if there are countries that are love children. All the ones I can think of were born from conflict, and the internet is lazy and unhelpful today. Europe’s latest baby, Kosovo, was conceived by fighting parents too – Albanians and Serb – and half the world still doesn’t recognize the child as though it wasn’t already there in the flesh. But when you go to Kosovo, it is plenty there and plenty flesh, young, healthy, and strong.
passages YOUNGEST | Kosovo is Europe’s youngest in every sense of the word: the population’s age averages at a tender 29 years and the country has only been recognized as such since 2008. And what’s youth if not a fast lane in which we fishtail towards raw horizons, driven by challenges and potentials? Such is the promising quandary of Kosovo too, where unemployment was at 27.5 % in 2016, but had considerably fallen from 57 % in 2001.
I don’t know why it was so surprising or amusing to see a Bill Clinton Statue, but it was that. Kudos, brass man, somewhere unlikely you’re remembered as a hero.
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Pristina / Kosovo · 2017 brass Bill
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places / stories
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Prizren / Old Youngster
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Europe’s youngest on paper, Kosovo has existed in the flesh for as long as any place in Europe. But it is hard to find any one identity at the crossroads of empires.
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Prizren / Kosovo · 2017 the past across the bridge
With the sun gone, the sky tucked in the mountains as the air whistled a lullaby for all those diurnal creatures. Only the humans stayed up a little longer because they had made mini-suns to choose their own bedtime.
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Prizren / Kosovo · 2017 human mini-suns
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Pristina / What and How and Why?
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Pristina / Kosovo · 2017 buff library
Pristina / Kosovo · 2017 fishnet skin
Pristina, I didn’t really get you. What exactly are you and how and why? No, don’t tell me. I like it better like this.
Pristina / Kosovo · 2017 unfinished
Pristina / Kosovo · 2017 stegosaurus
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elsewhere
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