Pristina turned out better than I expected and showed me that Kosovo today is about more than war and bombs. I visited on a day trip from Skopje, which is roughly an hour and a half to two hours away by car. If you have more time, the place my readers recommended most was Prizren, a town in the south of the country.
- How I got there
- A day trip by bus from Skopje; the two cities are less than 80 km apart and buses run often during the day
- Time needed
- About two hours is enough for Pristina itself
- Language
- I got by in English everywhere without any problems, even in grocery shops
- Food
- Dit’ e Nat’, a vegan restaurant; I love meat, but I ate really well there, and cheaply. It’s now permanently closed
- My tip
- Sit on a bench on Mother Teresa Boulevard and watch life in the centre go by
- Worth visiting
- Kosovo left me with neutral feelings; I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap country that isn’t overrun with tourists
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I wrote this article in 2018. Prices, opening hours and connections may have changed since then, so check them before you travel.
What to see in Pristina? Good question, I thought. Like 98% of Slovaks, I had Kosovo filed in my head under bombs and war. Sadly. After all, the bombing and the war weren’t all that long ago. So what is Kosovo like today? Pristina is the only part of it I’ve seen so far, but I have to say: wow.
Tip from Milan I’d recommend booking your accommodation as early as you can, because rooms in a good location at a fair price go first. Here you’ll find accommodation offers in the area valid today.
Pristina day trip from Skopje: what surprised me
I saw Pristina on a full-day trip from Skopje in North Macedonia. The two cities are less than 80 kilometres apart and buses between them run often during the day, so it was easy to fit in. When I asked my readers on Facebook which parts of Kosovo they’d recommend, I was pleasantly surprised. Many of them had travelled widely around Kosovo, which reassured me that I had nothing to worry about. If I wanted to shake off my prejudices about Kosovo, I had to come and see it for myself.
Three things I never expected from Kosovo
- You can pay in euros, even though Kosovo is nowhere near EU membership.
- In Pristina I got by in English without any problems, even in grocery shops. Everywhere.
- Unlike Serbia, Kosovo uses the Latin alphabet rather than Cyrillic (the script that looks like Russian). That made travelling a lot easier for me.
Why was there a war in Kosovo?
The Kosovo war in a nutshell, and how Kosovars see it today: Just google pictures of what Kosovo looked like in 1998. It was a conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army, made up of Kosovo Albanians, and Serbian forces. Serbia wanted to take control of the territory. Most of the population were Kosovo Albanians, and Serbian forces carried out ethnic cleansing against them. Hundreds of thousands of people had to flee. After the war it was the other way round: many Serbs left Kosovo because of attacks by Albanians.
In the end NATO stepped in and bombed Yugoslavia until Serbia pulled out of Kosovo. In 2008 Kosovo declared independence, and it has been independent of Serbia ever since. People just don’t talk about the war today, and Serbia simply doesn’t recognise Kosovo as an independent state. More than 90% of Kosovo’s population are Albanians. The official languages are Albanian and Serbian.
Today, fortunately, Kosovo is different. It’s a relatively calm country, and I happened to visit on the tenth anniversary of its declaration of independence from Serbia. I read somewhere recently that one of the conditions for Serbia joining the EU is that it normalises relations with Kosovo. I’m curious to see how that plays out.
What to see in Pristina in one day
But enough about history and conflicts. That’s not why you’re here. So, what is there to see in Pristina? Many readers told me there isn’t much in Pristina itself and that I’d be better off heading out into the Kosovo countryside. Since I only had one day, I decided on the following plan: take some good photos of Pristina, see all the ‘sights’ and have a good meal somewhere. Did I pull it off? You bet.
The places I visited in Pristina
- The famous Newborn monument, which commemorates Kosovo breaking away from Serbia in 2008.
- Mother Teresa Boulevard.
- The Pjetër Bogdani National Library of Kosovo.
- Dit’ e Nat’ restaurant.
The Newborn monument
Pristina is all cathedrals, churches and mosques. Wedged in between are socialist-era tower blocks in all sorts of colours, aka Petržalka, Bratislava’s huge housing estate. It’s quite an interesting mix, and it photographs well. The famous Newborn sign is (probably the only) tourist stop in Pristina that’s actually quite interesting. It has stood here since 17 February 2008, when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, although Serbia has never recognised it. Plenty of countries don’t recognise Kosovo as an independent state. Roughly half the world, in fact, including Slovakia and Spain.
Interestingly, when I visited, exactly ten years after the declaration, the letter ‘B’ had been replaced by the number 10. At first I couldn’t work out why, until I googled it and realised it had been ten years.
Mother Teresa Boulevard
Mother Teresa Boulevard is the very heart of Pristina, ‘where it all happens’. I’d recommend doing what I did: sit on a bench and watch the world go by. What really got me were all the people selling Nokia 3310s and similar phones. There’s a brisk trade here in phone cases, phone straps, old mobiles, sunglasses and flowers. It all has a certain charm. Then again, I can’t work out who buys these old phones, because every young person had an iPhone in their hand.
The whole promenade is pleasantly busy, with everyone hurrying somewhere while children play in the fountain jets. I sat down on a bench, found free Wi-Fi and typed ‘Pristina 1999’ into Google Images. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Only a few years ago tanks rolled through this city and the buildings all around were bombed out. Today it’s buzzing with cafés, restaurants and sweetcorn stalls (I highly recommend the corn). No trip to the Balkans is complete without sweetcorn.
The National Library of Kosovo
The Pjetër Bogdani National Library of Kosovo was another stop that turned up on every single list of what to see in Pristina. I didn’t much like the look of it in photos, so I decided to skip it. But honestly, two hours is enough for Pristina, and I still had about three hours before my bus back to Skopje, so I wandered over after all.
The whole building looks as if some architect on drugs designed it. It’s pretty in its own way, but it’s not for me. Maybe that’s because I studied landscape architecture and like to think I have taste in these things. Still, if you have time to spare, stop by. It’s about a 15-minute walk from the centre, towards the bus station.
Where I ate in Pristina: Dit’ e Nat’
Browsing Instagram for places my readers had been to in Pristina, I came across a restaurant called Dit’ e Nat’. Although it was vegan and I love meat, I had a brilliant meal there. And the prices were ridiculously low. In that heat, the vegan burger and a cold lemonade really hit the spot. Other people were drinking iced coffees, eating all kinds of sandwiches and paying by card. There was a great terrace too, but I couldn’t get a seat on it because the place was absolutely packed. This restaurant showed me that Kosovo is trying.
Young people don’t want to be associated with the war. They want to drink lattes, eat good food, have Wi-Fi and smile. That’s exactly what they were doing at Dit’ e Nat’. Thanks to the reader who gave me this great tip. According to Google Maps, though, Dit’ e Nat’ is now permanently closed.
Is Kosovo worth visiting?
My visit to Kosovo left me with no strong feelings at all. I thought I’d leave impressed by how much Kosovo had developed just 20 years after the war. Or, at the other extreme, that I’d be shocked to see people here worn down and broken by the war. The reality was somewhere in between.
Kosovo is trying, and I believe there’s plenty more to see here besides Pristina. It left me with fairly neutral feelings: I didn’t feel I was in a country where bombs had been falling only recently, and that’s a good thing. I have no reason to come back, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone looking for a country that’s cheap, not overrun with tourists and exotic in its own way.
When you’re in Kosovo, stick to these two rules:
- Don’t talk about Serbia or the war. Most people here are Albanians anyway.
- Stick to rule number one.
Travelling between Kosovo and Serbia
Milan’s advice: Travelling between Serbia and Kosovo can be a problem. If you enter Kosovo from North Macedonia (as I did), you’ll get a Kosovo stamp in your passport. If you then cross from Kosovo into Serbia and later want to leave Serbia, you may run into trouble. Serbia probably won’t recognise your entry via Kosovo and will treat it as illegal.
I don’t recommend entering Serbia from Kosovo. Worse still, Serbia may refuse to let you in from Kosovo at all if you have a Kosovo stamp. In the past, people in that situation were even detained, though that happens less often today. So my advice is to visit Kosovo on a separate trip and save Serbia for another time. Both countries are worth visiting, so read my guide to what to see in Belgrade.
Tip from Milan Among the places in Kosovo you really shouldn’t miss, my readers named the town of Prizren in the south of the country. They all agreed it’s genuinely beautiful. I haven’t been, but this photo looks phenomenal, majestic even, so here’s some inspiration:
You can also read my article Travelling from Kosovo to Serbia and the problems you might run into.
A Slovak travel blogger who has been getting Slovaks out of their office chairs since 2013. Author of the book Influencer and founder of the Bez Mapy blog. "Bez Mapy" is Slovak for "without a map".
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