When was the last time you actually crossed a border?
By the time I was old enough to travel on my own, the European Union was already in place for years, and erased most of the border checks I would have had to go through, if this entire idea of letting people go wherever they wanted didn’t exist. And just to be clear: I’m very aware of the privilege that comes with holding a French passport, and how it has influenced my perspective on what it means to travel around the world.
I can’t remember the last time I actually had to go through a land border check. Most of them now happen in airports, and most of them have been streamlined enough to become an almost invisible part of our collective travel routine. To me, a land border check kind of belongs to the past, like something that would feel right at home in a movie set before the nineties.
In my mind, it would look like a small queue of cars starting to form as we get closer to the border station. Our vehicle being controlled and stopped twice (once before leaving a country, and another time before entering a new one, therefore staying in a technical void for a short period of time). Border agents getting into the vehicle and asking for all the passengers’ identification papers. Border agents being suspicious and questionning a few passengers. Border agents asking said passengers to take their belongings and follow them somewhere.
All of this happened at the border between Serbia and Kosovo, and it may be one of the strangest crossings I’ve ever witnessed.
I took a bus from Belgrade and I was convinced that it would take us to Kosovo through North Macedonia, instead of going directly to Kosovo (try it yourself). My non-extensive research and the planned arrival time set by the bus company (6 hours to reach a city approximately 250km away?) confirmed that we would likely take the long route, instead of the most direct one. However, the bus didn’t turn east as it approached the border, and kept going south, directly into Kosovo.
The staff at the “first” check (leaving Serbia) asked for everybody’s identity cards. I was ready to hand over my passport but he just brushed me off, and moved on to the person behind me. He got off the bus with a stack of cards, disappeared for a few minutes, and came back to redistribute everybody’s cards.
At the “second” check (entering Kosovo), another agent entered the bus and asked for everybody’s identification, again. I can tell he was not expecting me to hand over a French passport, and to my surprise, gave it back to me without any further questions (to which I was mentally prepared to answer). On the other hand, the teenager sitting behind me was visibly stressed, and had a few other documents ready, in addition to his identity card. After a brief exchange, he was asked to gather his belongings and follow other agents to the building on our left. After what felt like a really long time, he was brought back into the bus, where everybody was silently waiting. We were able to resume our journey and reached Pristina only a few minutes behind schedule.
The bus company didn’t get the travel time wrong. It actually accounted for the time it takes to clear this border.
This morning, I stumbled upon this distinction awarded in 1996 to Ibrahim Rugova (former president, national hero and “architect” of Kosovo’s independence) by the Paris Univesrity, in the Kosovo Museum.
Écrivain, critique littéraire entré en politique “par nécessité et par choix”, Ibrahim Rugova est l’un des grands apôtres de la non-violence de notre époque.
Son œuvre, marquée par l’influence de Roland Barthes dont il fut l’élève, mais aussi par celle de Jean-Paul Sartre et des existentialistes, constituait déjà le manifeste de son actuelle action politique.
Aujourd’hui, Ibrahim Rugova porte sur ses épaules le destin de son peuple: il est parvenu à mettre ses capacités intellectuelles et morales au service d’un combat sans armes pour l’existence.
Modeste, timide, très menacé, Ibrahim Rugova n’en est pas moins un colosse. Un frêle colosse du Kosovo.
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[EN] Writer, literary critic who entered politics “by necessity and by choice”, Ibrahim Rugova is one of the great apostles of non-violence of our time.
His work, marked by the influence of Roland Barthes, whose student he was, but also by that of Jean-Paul Sartre and the existentialists, already constituted the manifesto of his current political action.
Today, Ibrahim Rugova carries on his shoulders the destiny of his people: he has managed to put his intellectual and moral capacities at the service of an unarmed fight for existence.
Modest, shy, very threatened, Ibrahim Rugova is nonetheless a colossus. A frail colossus of Kosovo.
I can’t pretend to know much about Ibrahim Rugova beyond what’s on his wikipedia page and what a tour guide quickly told us about him yesterday, but finding out he and I went to the same university decades apart, and that he got to learn directly from one of my all-time favorite scholars helps me understand the character just a little better, in a way nothing else really can. Like a shortcut I would accidentaly find, out of pure luck, without ever looking for it.
I’m not a history nerd, and here is not the place to write a complete piece on the region’s geopolitical past, present and future, but everything I learned about Kosovo’s history brought new elements to the some of the questions on identity I’ve been writing about, since last year.
My views didn’t fundamentally change, and I’m not discarding everything I’ve already written, but I gained a new perspective on a few things I used to take for granted. My vision and definition of travel and Europe are very subjective, and definitely not the same as those from someone who could tell me in person the struggle they went through over the past decades. Like the manager of the hostel where I’m staying.
What he wanted me to remember is that I’ll hear and read as many versions of the story as the number of entities who took part in it. He said he was only able to tell me the story from the point of view from someone who was born and raised in Pristina, and who survived a confict I barely remember seeing in the news, when I was still a kid. He insisted on the fact that this was “only his story”.
This exchange alone validates once again why I think it’s important to travel. And to share your story.
Read more: Kosovo-Serbia relations [wikipedia]