As mentioned in our previous post under “Destinations”, Viktor welcomed us in his house in Prapashticë, a 40 minute drive outside of Pristina. A house he had built around 10 years ago, which is nowadays also the main place of residence for his lovely parents, Sulltane and Sadik. On the evening of the 10th of August, we collectively drove out to Prapashticë, making a stop at a supermarket in Pristina, as the house is fairly remote with no major shopping opportunities nearby. Since we already appreciated the switch between cities and more remote locations, this perfectly fitted our previous ways of travelling.

As explained previously, the concept of this form of travelling was to provide a helping hand in return for free or cheap accommodation and so far, we had only enjoyed the incredible hospitality of Viktor’s family. This meant that now was the time to get to work. The house in Prapashticë is surrounded by spacious land with lots of plum, apple and pear trees and parts of the garden needed some attention. Viktor explained that in previous years, they had external help on various parts of their land, but also in Kosovo it’s increasingly difficult to find people to help out with farm work. Obviously, the 4 of us couldn’t even remotely achieve what paid workers would have , but we were eager to help and pay back some of the generosity we encountered.

On our first full day, Viktor and Linda gave us a tour of their “property”, which was fairly incredible, as they own a lot of land in the area. It took us a good two hours to be shown the various plots, and “Oh, this is also our land”, became a fairly often used phrase, but said in the most humble way possible. Afterwards, we started with cleaning the equipment. The tractor needed a good washing, so did the ride-on lawn mower and other pieces of work equipment that came to use during the next few days. The brushcutter became my friend over the next few days and so did the various petrol canisters stored in the garage. On the same evening, I took a first ride on the mower, helping Viktor on a field nearby. Honestly, a great experience! I’ve always been jealously looking at the gardeners in our office mowing the lawn… My colleagues can vouch for that :D.  Just being overtaken by a 40-ton-truck on the way to the field, sitting on a lawn mower, was a little scary!

We continued to spend time helping out over the next few days, but also spent time with Viktor’s lovely parents, helping them with various activities. There’s a great new eco-friendly resort around the area with lots of animals and a great restaurant (https://kasolletezanave.com). We went there for lunch with Viktor’s parents, while the kids played with the many cats that are living there. They do have a great variety of animals and you can just sense that a lot of love went into this place. We actually went back there the next day for dinner and were served some great lamb. There also is a reservoir lake in the area that we visited and where the kids took a bath. Since it hasn’t been raining here in almost 2 months, and temperatures are regularly exceeding the 35 degrees, the water levels were visibly low.

Since the summer holidays in Leipzig had ended in the meantime, we also started with some school activities for the kids. They researched our next stop (Skopje, North Macedonia) and did some other activities, in order to not lose touch with what they’ve learned in the last years in school. This topic probably deserves a dedicated blog post, which I’ll write once we manage to establish some routines. 

We stayed 5 nights in Prapashticë, the longest stay we had on our journey thus far. We will miss the place, this incredibly hospitable family, the great views and also the work outside. When you normally work in an office, spending hours outside is a great change and it also shows you how tough, but rewarding it can be. I am fairly certain that this wasn’t our last encounter with Viktor’s family. Sulltane, Sadik, Viktor, Linda… we can’t thank you enough! Till next time!

As I am finishing these lines, we are once more packing our bags. Off to country #9 this afternoon: North Macedonia!