Chapter closed - new one started.

I'm closing this chapter now that I have left Kosovo and have started life as a Fraussie.

If you like, you can follow along here "My Life as a Fraussie".

shihemi!

Kala.

Today is my last day of being pregnant and hungry in Kosovo.  I am 28 weeks, which is the nominal cut-off for international flights, so tomorrow we fly out.

So from now on, until sometime in late December or early January I will be pregnant and hungry in France.

I am sitting in the middle of packing chaos.  Because I'll be gone for nearly 5 months, this feels pretty much like adios Kos.  Nearly everything I brought here is coming back with me.

It is a strange feeling because it doesn't feel that long ago since I was unpacking everything and trying to settle myself into this two-donkey town.

But I'm looking forward to the next chapter in France - exciting times ahead!  All going well, we pick up the keys to our new house on Friday and begin the craziness of turning an old stone house into a home with nothing much to begin with but a stack of books and a couple of boxes of dress-up clothes (these were pretty much the only things we took with us from Vanuatu).  Although there are a lot of mysterious boxes with our names on them lurking in the shadows of Romain's parents garage so hopefully once we crack them open we'll discover that we were a bit more practically minded than we thought and actually have a few basics to help us get started.

I imagine we'll be spending a lot of time at brocantes (cross between op-shops, antique dealers and flea-markets) scrounging around like a pair of bower birds trying to find stuff to pretty up our nest.

But! before all that begins, one last afternoon/evening in Kosovo.

I had a last farewell lunch with a friend at the notorious Hotel Kristal in downtown Gjilan, where they make a pretty decent spinach and cheese lasagne.

This afternoon, I made my last shop for 2013 at the local supermarket Viva Fresh - for supplies for my sloe gin.  I'm determined to get that batched up before I head off to bed tomorrow, so that when I'm back here and can finally drink again, I'll be able to enjoy the fruits of my labour.

I found some wild sloe berries growing near our walking track on the weekend.  Exciting!  Sort of.

Tonight a last meal with the crew at Cuco's!  A great restaurant here in Gjilan run by a family of Kosovo Turks, that serves the best steaks I've ever tasted.  And that's from a girl who grew up in the beef capital of Australia!

Time to leave Kosovo and time to leave this blog. Please come find me on my new one ;)

28 weeks

 

Veggo in Kosovo

Sometimes I really need to escape from the meat.

And my favourite refuge by far is a little vegetarian restaurant in Pristina called Babaganoush.

The food is AMAZING.  For about $6 you get this enormous platter of delicious vego treats - all homemade.  Hummus, babaganoush, olives, fetta, felafel balls, chickpea patties, capsicum dip and the yummiest carrot dip.  Served with bread fresh from the oven.  Total bliss!

In warmer weather they have little tables set up in a courtyard.

Summertime at Babaganoush - me at about 8 weeks pregnant looking so skinny!

A trip to Babaganoush is always on the agenda when we have visitors - here we are with Kelly during her stay in June.

And then in the colder months we retreat inside, where the decor is all 50s and 60s and the atmosphere is super cosy.  The waiter has to be the nicest person in Kosovo too.  I like it when he wears his bow tie.

During my last week in Kosovo - a final Babaganoush meal.  Yum!

Mish!

Mish means meat, and meat means business in these parts.  No meal is complete without a sizeable chunk of flesh on your plate.  In fact, quite often, that's all you get.

Scenes from our local butcher.

Hmmmm, how do you say we'd like our steaks cut medium thick please in Albanian?

No idea what this is, but it looks terrifying.

No pork in these parts - so these are dried beef sausages.

We managed to sort out steak sizes in the end.  The butcher is a friendly bloke.

Honey

How sweet life is!

Honey is a big deal in Kosovo.  In the Balkans in general actually.  I read that 'the Balkans' means the land of blood and honey, which is pretty apt.  Didn't Angelina Jolie make a movie about it?

While I don't think her movie had much to do with bee-keeping, a lot more of that goes on here these days than blood and warfare.  Thankfully!

It seems nearly every property has a handful of hives.  And you can pick up fresh honey at little road stands along nearly every route.

haggling for honey on the way to Lake Ohrid

The variety of honey in the supermarkets is also incredible.

Vendor at 'Honey Week' in Gjilan

This is great for me because I am totally fascinated by bees.  I would have loved to have tried my hand at some serious apiculture, but I was a bit reluctant being pregnant, so I'll leave that adventure for another day.

Hives in Rugova Valley

Hives kept by the nuns at the monastery in Gracanica

For now, I am just enjoying honey by the big goopy spoonful whenever I can.

New Bakery

I did go to the new bakery in town.

shiny new bakery run by Turks from Prizren in south Kosovo

And there weren't any finger buns or vanilla slices.  But there were these enormous croissants.  Which weren't too bad actually.

I polished one off while I was listening to my lecture recording (needed a sugar hit to get through) and washed it down with a cup of decaf coffee - gifted to me by Kelly when she was visiting.

Actually, that single jar of coffee - organic and brought back from Kelly's trip to Greece - is probably the best gift that anyone has given me during this pregnancy.  I'm not a huge coffee drinker, but I started really fanging for a cup in the second trimester, probably mostly because I knew I wasn't supposed to have it.  And although it doesn't deliver a caffeine hit, and in fact after drinking a cup I usually feel like having a nap because it is so warm and comforting, it does well to stave off coffee cravings when they do pop up.

Kinder Surprise - behind the scenes

Camille trying on bras at the local supermarket.

Kinder Surprise!

It is my last week in Kosovo this week, before I head back to France to begin my 'period of confinement'.  I'll be 28 weeks on Wednesday and this is the cut off for most airlines for flying internationally.  While you can get special exemptions, I still don't fancy finding myself stuck here because some check-in chick at Austrian Airlines have decided they don't want to let me and my belly on board.

Anyway - so I'm off.   Plus, aside from a baby, we've got a wedding and a house purchase to organise, so it's time we returned to the land of frogs legs and stinky cheese.

And as excited as I am about everything that lies ahead, I am going to miss this place, especially our  lovely friends here.  So I was a bit disappointed when I discovered that for my last weekend everyone was going to be out of town.  Maryse had a trip to Tirana in Albania planned, Camille was going to be in Skopje, Julie was off to a wedding in Macedonia, Cailean would be visiting friends in Pristina and Azur was working in Serbia.

Unlucky!  I thought.

But the tricksters weren't going anywhere - in fact they had planned a surprise farewell/baby shower!

It was awesome.  Especially because I had absolutely no idea and everyone had done a very good job of telling me fibs to cover it up.  Romain most of all, which is a bit disturbing.  Although when I looked back it was glaringly obvious that something was brewing this week - everyone disappearing after work one evening mysteriously, people borrowing all sorts of kitchen equipment from us for the weekend even though they were all apparently going away, and then the charade on Friday as Romain tried to get me out of the house and over to Julie's for a quick farewell drink for just the three of us before she took off for the weekend.  

But still, I was clueless, so when we arrived at Julie's door and heard a chorus of crying babies, I was still so oblivious that I thought she must have been talking to someone on skype.  

Until I opened the door and laughed so hard I was grateful I'd been doing my kegel exercises.

Screaming triplets and "Camilla" their poor pregnant mother.  She was holding herself together pretty well.

Even though one of her babies looked like this:

Although I couldn't be too smug, given I might be about to give birth to a baby that looks a bit like this:

The clever babies and their mum had prepared a delicious homemade dinner - all based around baby food. We had capsicum puree soup, hachee puree with mashed potatoes and apple compote for dessert. 

And this potty risotto, which despite being absolutely delicious was a bit hard to enjoy as we scooped it out of the "poooty chair".

It was all going pretty well, until the babies got stuck into their bottles.

And I don't know what mama Camilla had put in those bottles, but things quickly got messy.

Mama Camilla trying to breastfeed one of her triplets.

Then giving up, giving her the bottle instead and putting her feet up.  

She has apparently been having a lot of trouble with circulation and is worried that varicose veins might ruin her 'screen' career.  She told us her husband Rocco was at work that night, filming.  

To cope with triplets under 1, and with another on the way, she had turned to the other kind of bottle.  

We suggested she might want to go a bit easy.  The hard living was really starting to take its toll.

Then Russell Brand showed up, and things got really really untidy.

But still a good night was had by all and I got some good practice dealing with incoherent, uncoordinated, drooling, super-sized babies.

27 Weeks

When life deals you dubious berries - make sloe gin!

So I was coming back from the supermarket today and passed by the Serbian fruit and veg market, which sets up shop on our street each Tuesday and Thursday.  It is mostly made up of people from the surrounding Serbian enclaves selling bits and pieces from their gardens.  One guy might be selling 6 pumpkins, while another is selling garlic cloves from a bucket.

A snaggle-toothed lady selling fruit caught my eye – because the fruit looked like blueberries.  I ventured closer and yep!  They were blueberries alright.  A massive bucket of them! 

Yippeeee!!  I thought.  Because I really love them.

I whipped out the bit of Serbo-Croat I knew (hi, how are you?) and asked how much for 1 kilo.  5 euros, she told me.  Bargain!  I thought!  And gave her a nod to go ahead and fill the plastic bag.

As the berries tumbled into the bag I was happily planning what I would do with my massive horde.  I’d eat handfuls of them fresh, then I might freeze a few to snack on later.  I could make a blueberry and apple pie, blueberry jam…

I handed her the 5 euros and she looked at me with confusion.  I showed her 5 fingers.  “Five?”  I confirmed, hoping she’d remember the deal I thought we’d agreed upon 2 minutes ago.  So she smiled and started tipping more berries into the bag.  “No no!  Not 5 kilos, 5 euros!”  I said, in English, of course, with no hope of her understanding what the hell I was saying.  By this stage we had about 6 vendors interested in what was going on.  Collectively they figured out that I was happy with 1 kilo, and that I just wanted to pay.  So she started rummaging around in her coin bag for change.  Which was strange, because I thought I’d given her the right amount.  There was a lot of discussion about how much change she should give me and she finally handed me 2 euros, and started digging around for more.  “That’s dobro!”  I said “3 euros for one kilo is dobro” (dobro meaning good, and the only word I could remember at that point).  “Dobro, dobro!”  I said to emphasise the point.  We were all happy.  I had a kilo of blueberries for around $4 and she had more money than she expected to get for her wares.

I gleefully took my bag of blueberries home gave a few a good rinse and popped them in my mouth.  

But oh the vileness!  Oh the horror!  They were bitter and made my mouth pucker.  And they had a pit in them.  I spat them out in the sink in disgust.

But what were they?  And more importantly, were they safe to eat??

So I began googling.  And I googled every blueberry look alike there was.  I learned what a huckleberry, crowberry, bilberry and hackberry was.  My fruit was none of these.  For a bit I thought it was a choke berry, then a choke cherry then a bird cherry, but finally decided it wasn’t any of these.  Then I came across an article about belladonna berries, which look like blueberries, and how a woman ate six of them and died. 

And I started to freak out.

So I took some photos of the berries and frantically emailed them off to Romain so he could ask his colleagues to identify them for me. 

These are the photos I took.  See how much they look like blueberries!

While I waited for a response, I monitored my vital signs.

He came back a few minutes later saying that his colleagues did know what they were – they were called kolonja in Albanian and good for diabetes.  But I couldn’t find anything on the internet that matched up.  So I was still a bit stressed.

Then about 10 minutes later another email came through with this link:  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_spinosa

And I had found my berry.

Why, it was a sloe berry, of course!

I’ve never heard of it, and that’s because they are apparently quite rare, or at least rarely cultivated and sold commercially because they taste gross. 

Yep, that’s my berry!

Apparently the done thing with sloe berries (which aren’t a berry but a drupe, which I learned all about during my googling adventure) is to make sloe gin!  In fact it seems to be the only thing worth doing with these nasty little things.

So I have found a recipe – devised by these two likely lads:

http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/sloe-gin

And tomorrow I am off to the store to by some glass jars a bag of sugar and some gin, so that in 6 months time, when I can drink again, I might enjoy a cheeky little sloe gin fizz.

“The Brits have been making sloe gin for hundreds of years by infusing the berries in high-proof gin, along with a little bit of sugar. The result is a liqueur that's tart, but with a delicious richness and depth of flavor.

Sloe gin was traditionally drunk in the depths of winter, as a warming drink, until the Americans got a hold of it and summer-ified it with citrus and soda water. Thus was born the Sloe Gin Fizz, arguably the most famous sloe gin cocktail out there”