In Reggae Routes: The Story of Jamaican Music, Kevin Chang and Wayne Chen note
It's often said, though no definite date is ever cited, that Selassie himself denied his divinity. Former senator and Gleaner editor, Hector Wynter, tells of asking him, during his visit to Jamaica in 1966, when he was going to tell Rastafarians he was not God. "Who am I to disturb their belief?" replied the emperor.
hmnn.. Well I won't be going straight from Kosovo into Serbia.
The plan is to go from Skopje to Prishtine back to Skopje, then Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia before heading to Serbia.
I then have a flight from Belgrade but not sure if I should switch that now?
Would it be better to go this order..
Sofia - Belgrade-Kosovo-Macedonia-Albania-Montenegro - Bosnia? ( then I can fly out of somewhere else)
Why are you heading back to Macedonia, getting two back-to-back Macedonian stamps?
There's a new and very fast expressway running from Kosovo to Albania. Apart from the stamp issue, it's the quickest way to get to Albania. No expense seems to have been spared building that road, with long tunnels and deep cuts the entire length.
I just checked this..
http://wikitravel.org/en/Kosovo
and it confirms that you should enter Serbia first
(not that it's the best source) but what I'm worried about is having my passport handed down en masse and not being able to avoid the "Don't stamp my passport please!"
Thanks for all the info Zircon.
So, just to be sure, there is no problem with leaving Kosovo, it's just Serbia that doesn't want to see it.
The reason why I would be going back to Macedonia is because I am flying into Sofia, then Skopje, then Kosovo, but wanted to head to Lake Ohrid before heading to Albania.
Now, after reading this, and knowing that I want to go do Kosovo I'm thinking
Sofia - night train to Belgrade, down to Kosovo, go go Macedonia, enter Albania, go to Montenegro, then Sarajevo- Mostar and I have found a cheap-ish flight out of Split.
Is there going to be a problem with that route?
Where are you going in Kosovo? Pristina doesn't merit a visit, in my view. Prizren certainly does, but it leads right to that nice superhighway straight to Albania.
Another possibility is to head Bulgaria > Macedonia > Albania, then go up to Prizren from Albania and come right back down to Albania before heading to Montenegro.
(After you've been on some roads in the Balkans you'll understand why I keep raving about that superhighway!)
For those of you who aren't familiar into daily/weekly/monthly updates on Balkans issues, let's say that today, 14th of June 2013, there are 14 days left until 28th of June when various EU commissions will have their yearly/half-yearly whatever they do, bringing important decisions regarding European Union integrations of countries mentioned here that are in the process of joining EU.
Lets say that Serbia is hoping that EU will set the date (within 2013) when final acceptance talks will start (with opening of some 30something chapters of final EU - Serbia contract). Kosovo hopes there will be green light for special kind of document that reflects some points from usual pre-candidate status where countries associate with some trading agreements and some other sorts of stuff with EU laws and standards. And so on and on.
Currently, this issues are huge political topics in both Kosovo and Serbia. Local politicians are trying their best to gather these EU statuses as they're using these things for their own political purposes. For example, in Serbia, there are rumors that elections will be held in October if Serbia starts final negotiations with the EU after 28th of June, as the strongest political party that forms the government could use this as their advantage and gather more votes, which will make them less dependent on two other significat parties in a coalition that is currently on power. Etc, etc, etc.
Therefore, political talks between Serbia and Kosovo were somehow put on steroides in recent months, and many points were agreed so far, waiting to be implemented or implemented already. In Kosovo and Serbia, this talks are refered usually as Bruxells talks between countries' delegations (in this case, prime ministers, so talks were the highest leveled) and Cathrine Eshton, who is EU high official for foreign diplomacy.
Not to list what have been negotiated there already and signed, as it's not relevant for this topic, let's say one of the very first things that was solved was the problem of double taxing of goods and resources traded between Serbian controlled bits of Kosovo and central Serbia.
For those of you forumers who aren't familiar with situation, there were huge protests on two border crossings (checkpoints) in the north of Kosovo, called Brnjak and Jarinje, since July 2012.
Not to get into more details why and what were causes, the point is that things like this are solved by so called Mutually Administred Checkpoints, implementing formula of what kind of police and customs goes to which checkpoint and what kind of goods is going to customs or not. With this, there comes the point of resolving the issue with stamp of Kosovo. So called agreement that resolves our travel problem is implemented on Brnjak, Jarinje, Merdare so far. These are three major checkpoints with Serbia proper.
I hope you got a bit more light over the issue.
