Spring is (nearly) here

The snow is melting and the hills are beginning to look greener, but the nights are still pretty cold. Last week we spent an hour basking in the sun on our balcony before the sun went behind the mountains, but a couple of days later there was four inches of snow at the top of the Rugova Gorge - though by Monday this week there was not enough left for skiing, according to friends who hoped to do so. And it has rained a good deal. Rather like an English winter in fact.

The big event of course has been the declaration of Independence by Kosova on 17 February. The photographs included this time were taken by a friend, as we mistakenly took the official advice and stayed indoors. In fact, in Peje the celebrations were pretty muted compared with those in Prishtina. A stage was erected in a central square and there was music and a good deal of dancing but it was all over by the Sunday night, and the public holiday on the Monday saw the city almost deserted.

But of course everyone is very pleased, and there are signs and flags everywhere still, even if most of them are Albanian flags - the double headed eagle on a red ground. The new Kosova flag with a map and six stars on a blue ground does not seem to arouse much enthusiasm.

Otherwise little has changed. There have been no food shortages and the post, internet and telephones still work. It is thought that bread will get more expensive but this is more because of high world flour prices than a specific shortage in Kosova.

In fact since we have been here we have noticed that many prices have crept up. Bread doubled in price last summer but many other staple foods are also more expensive, though compared with the UK meat is not at all expensive even if there is not much variety.

The strongest sign of spring, in fact, is the large number of cars with foreign number plates which are appearing. In the summer the city is always full of big cars, but independence seems to have brought them early this year. And that's before any European peacekeepers arrive to take over from the UN forces.

Anyway, here are some pictures.

Last night was windy

Sorry it's been so long since we posted. Once the snow came, the mountains looked much the same from day to day - when we could see them at all - so we took fewer photos. However, the snow in the town has come and, for the present, gone, and the weather has been milder, even sunny. The days are definitely getting longer.

And it has been windy.

About two weeks ago there were high winds in the night, but no damage that we could see except a few panes of glass blown out or in. However, last night it really blew. Our building is pretty well OK but the block next door is a different matter. Much of its roof blew off and either hit the block of apartments behind or landed on cars below.

As you can see, one car was very badly damaged and at least three others will need some expensive repairs. There are chunks out of the building where the roof sheets and beams hit it. And as well as the tin and timber there are bricks and tiles everywhere. In addition, the building which shed its roof also lost several large windows, some of which had only just been replaced after the previous storm.

We should explain that the building which was damaged most is not yet complete. They have been working on it slowly ever since we have been here but there is no tenant yet so no incentive to finish the job. Probably if they had finished the roof would have stayed on. As it was it lifted off in in large pieces.

Of course, with all the excitement there were plenty of onlookers. Also in attendance was the fire brigade (not much they could do, no-one to rescue), the police and the local newspaper photographer.

Other buildings have also lost panes of glass, but nothing like this. The building the other side of us lost a few panes in each storm but they had been cleared away by the time we went out.

The only thing which happened to us was that we gained a 6 ft (2 m) length of aluminium angle on one balcony. We didn't lose any of the window boxes and we didn't even lose power or broadband for long.

They have been very quick to clean up, and were removing debris by mid morning.

Mind you we can't complain that nothing ever happens here. Only last Saturday we found we coudn't get near the post office to check our mail box because the President of Albania was visiting the city.

Autumn has arrived!

The autumn colours have been spectacular on the mountains, with the trees turning from green to oraneg and yellow. We went for a walk in the woods at the foot of the gorge and the woods across the river were brilliant colours.

We get some beautiful cloud effects in the mountains. Often the tops of the far mountains are visible but the lower slopes are wreathed in cloud.

The shadows are also often beautiful, changing from minute to minute and best in the early morning.

The first snow arrived late in October, but only on the higher mountains. It gradually disappeared, and for a few days the river ran very high.

This morning we awoke to find snow on the nearest hills and flakes gently drifting down. Autumn has not been very long.

Is there anyone there?

We are suffering with a lack of contact with the outside world because we have discovered that no-one with a Hotmail address appears to get the e-mails we send. Orange, our e-mail provider, cannot do anything about it, so we shall have to find a workaround, unless Hotmail relents of its policy. The same problem seems to happen with some other Internet service providers, as well.
Meanwhile, we are still awaiting our personal effects, which were originally predicted to arrive last Wednesday and we are now told should arrive sometime next week. It is not clear whether we shall have to pay import duties or not, as personal effects are exempt from import duties and VAT, but the shipping agent has mentioned the subject.
No more photos this time as the weather has been too wet and dull until today. But at least we have had two days without power cuts.
As part of the celebrations to mark the end of Ramadan, we have had groups of children calling during the last two days hoping to be given sweets - very much like "trick or treat" in the UK.

Thirty hour power cut

We arrived safely in Kosova, on Wednesday 3rd, being met at the airport by a friend despite his own very busy programme. Since then we have been slightly hampered by the power being off for 30 hours - unusual even by Kosova standards. We seem to have spent a lot of our time sleeping.
We finished counting our possessions in time for the removal men to collect them, and they took just four hours to parcel everything up and take it away. It is due to arrive on the 10th. We also managed to complete the decorating, in the nick of time (some paint went on the day before we left) and to get the garden in reasonable order. This was largely thanks to Gabriel, one of our gap year students, who spent six hours working on the front garden assisted for a while by Haydn, another friend. There is now room to park two cars and the flower bed is tidier than for years.
Finally, the day before we left Andy and Rachel came round and helped us clean and clear up - as well as helping us to keep sane. And we were offered a bed for the night by friends so that we could put our mattress in our second skip the day before, rather than at 6 am the day we left!
In the meantime we had taken time out for the weekend to visit our son, Tim, and his wife, in Chesterfield. It was Tim's 32nd birthday on the Sunday. Saturday was enjoyable. After a long debate we decided to spend the day at the Yorkshire Mining Museum - and then went instead to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Exhausting but very interesting, especially the Anthony Gormley exhibits. But on Sunday evening things went a bit awry when Tim and his wife went down with food poisoning. Fortunately we missed it, just as well as we had to return to Harpenden on the Monday morning for our final injections.
Back in Kosov a, we now have broadband access, thanks to the very efficient internet company - despite our twice having to put them off because we had no electricity. The woman in the office apologised that they would not be able to do the installation until the next day "this is Kosova". British companies please note.

Counting socks!

Things are now progressing.
We have had a skip (and eventually, after much nagging, persuaded the company to collect it again). We were very good and did not fill it above the mark, and wonder of wonders none of the neighbours put anything in or took anything out.
We have a firm quotation from a removal company. The challenge now is that they have sent us a questionnaire to complete for insurance purposes listing everying they are moving, down to the numbers of pairs of socks and underwear. We have asked for an extension of time as we are still counting!
The partition in the garage is nearly complete. This could not really be worked on until the skip was removed and we could get out of the garage some secondary glazing which we were given by a neighbour about a decade ago and which we have now in turn given to another neighbour. And we cannot fit the last piece of plasterboard until we have replaced the garage door lock - which is on order.
Painting inside is complete except for touching up damaged paintwork after most things have been moved out. Painting outside is continuing, though working up a ladder is not Jonathan's favourite activity.
And of course we have started trying to sort out the garden. It has always been low maintenance, in the sense that we have not done much, but we are trying to make it as easy as possibly for tenants to keep tidy. The soil is very heavy and there is orange clay only a few inches down, where there are not rockery stones and tree roots. It is rife with ground elder and ground ivy, both of which are being removed steadily. We were very grateful to Rachel Caiger who spent a whole day here working in the garden, and made a great deal of difference.
Meanwhile we keep filling boxes with possessions, either to store or to take, and have some long deliberations about into which category to put things - or even whether we really need to keep them at all.
Eventually. someone collected the parquet flooring from the hall after we offered it on Freecycle. Let's hope they enjoy jigsaws as seven square metres of flooring is a lot of pieces of wood. Some other things have also been disposed on via Freecycle, but not everything we offered. We are still awaiting collection of the sofa this weekend. We initially tried the St Albans site, but have found the Luton site much more successful, probably because of all the students in Luton.
No pictures this time. Perhaps we will show the garden next time, once it is looking better than at any time since we moved in.

Back from San Francisco

Jonathan's trip to San Francisco for the conference of the International Federation of Standards Users was useful and without incident. Much to his surprise and embarrassment he was presented there with an IFAN award for services to standards users.
Since then we have had Bronwen and the three grandchildren to stay for a week, and have just about recovered! Very enjoyable but exhausting. The house (including the new carpets) did not sustain significant damage!
In the meantime, we now have a tenant for our house in Chesterfield, although already a few problems have needed sorting out - at a cost of course.
Decoration of the interior of 3 Haddon Court is just about complete, though the letting agent has suggested that we repaint the walls of one room a more neutral colour. There is still some work to do outside, though the two new window framess have been fitted, the plumbing in the kitchen is sorted out and the carpet is all laid. And we have started offering surplus furniture on Freecycle, with mixed success - we could have got rid of a dozen wallpaper steamers and acres of parquet flooring.
Now we have to sort out the back garden, which has always been a disaster area. The Council gave us permission, so we have removed two trees, which makes it a bit lighter and more open, but we are now looking for ways of making it low maintenance.
On Tuesday we are hoping to have a skip delivered, so we can start getting rid of things. At present everywhere is cluttered with boxes and furniture which we no longer need but have had to be moved so the carpet could be laid.
Another achievement is finding a firm which will ship our things to Kosova. We approached several via their websites without receiving any responses. Those that say they cover Europe mostly seem to think it ends at Italy!
Finally, a few more photos of Kosova. The first was taken out of a bedroom window one morning. Well worth waking up for. The second is a view from the surrounding hills. I couldn't resist the final one, taken during a power cut when we were in Kosova, listening to music on the laptop.