Pristina
From Wikitravel
Prishtina (Albanian: Prishtina; Bosnian: Priština; Serbian: Приштина) is the capital city of Kosovo (Albanian: Kosova), an autonomous province of Serbia and Montenegro, formerly part of Yugoslavia.
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Get in
Get around
Minibus is the preferred method of local travel.
The roads in Pristina (and in general throughout Kosovo) are pretty bad. This is a result of a combination of things. They weren't too good to begin with during the 90's. Yugoslav tank tread travelling over them didn't help. The KLA firing mortars at those tanks added some holes. NATO finished the roads off with stealth fighters and the subsequent non-stop NATO tank traffic in the first six months after the departure of the Yugoslav army.
Two or three of the main roads that make up the major road 'network' have been repaved, but for many of the smaller roads, they haven't been touched and make for an awful ride. Frequently they have disintegrated so bad that they are pretty much just dirt and gravel.
See
There is virtually nothing of a tourist nature in Pristina. Pristina is primarily a cement city with a lot of mud when it rains.
It may be interesting to see the Headquarters of the major international organizations in Kosovo. The UN and OSCE buildings are all located in once central area.
There is also (or at least was) a display near the UN building in Pristina of most of the munitions using during the war. The display was for informational purposes for the local population so they would know what to be careful of when hoeing their fields but it is interesting for the casual tourist as well. Lately Pristina is rebuilding, allmost all the city roads now are new!
The museum is free, and even better than its collection is the building itself. Also, the large park just outside of the city centre is often popular on warmer days.
Do
If you are a tourist and like chilling out while drinking great coffee, than Prishtina is the right city for you. In the city you can count thousands of coffee bars that during the day are almost full. This tells you that many albanians are jobless. Lately some coffee bars have installed WIFI zones and access to internet, so more or less they are being modernized
Buy
The outdoor bookstalls outside the Grand Hotel are a good place to pick up your copy of the Code of Lek Dukagjini. Also on the streets you can find CDs that are cheap and most possibly illegal copies.
Eat
Don't expect anything gourmet, but there are a variety of restaurants and a taste for almost everybody.
Drink
Apart from the coffee shops, there are a lot of bars, pubs and clubs that are almost packed every night, but are especially crowded on Fridays and Saturdays. Zanzibar and Stip Depot, located near the ABC cinema are both popular, as are the places around the OSCE like the Little Cafe and Outback.
Sleep
Accommodation can be very expensive in Pristina as everything is tailored for international development workers. If you look around you should be able to find fliers selling accommodation. If you can find the place(s) go there as the cost is usually 10 - 15 EUR per night.
Staying at the Grand Hotel in the center is going to cost you about
the same as what you would pay to stay in a luxury hotel in a cosmopolitan
European city. Even though The Grand Hotel in Prishtina is rated as
a 5 star hotel, at the moment it is in very poor condition which could
meet only 3 stars...but you have to pay as for a luxury hotel! However,
there are a few newly built luxury hotels, that are also fairly expensive
and they include Hotel Victory, Hotel Princi i Arberit and Hotel Baci.
Get out
The are direct flights from Prishtina International Airport to London, Zurich, Geneva, Gothenburg, Copenhagen, Vienna, Hamburg, Hannover, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Bremen, Rome, Verona, Ljubljana, Budapest, Tirana, Istanbul and Antalya. Soon, there will be direct flights to Sarajevo and other destinations.
There are direct bus links to most cities in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Albania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia.