Settling In

I'm still working on the Christmas in Italy, Part 2 blog.  It will appear sometime soon but I thought you might be interested in just a few day to day things going on here.  Once I perfect getting photos onto the blog, I will do a little photo tour of Pristina so you can see what the city is like.

We live in the heart of downtown Pristina only three blocks from the Supreme Court where Charlie works (photo to follow sometime).  We live in a seven story building with no elevator so I am happy to say we live on the first floor. There is one apartment per floor. Our landlord, Fadil, lives next door in his own home with his family. Over here it is usual for extended families to live together in the same house with each family having one floor. That's what Fadil and his family are doing. I see all ages of people coming and going from every door!

The local school is right across the street. There are so many children here that they have to go to school in shifts. There is the morning crowd and the afternoon crowd so there's lots of traffic and lots of noise around here which I don't mind but which really bothers Sadie. (She is having a bit of difficulty adjusting to all the new sights, smells and sounds here. I know she misses the Frisk family, especially the dogs.)

Just a block away there is a nice grocery store. A couple of days ago I went in and just spent time strolling up and down the aisles seeing what they stock. Grocery shopping has been a real challenge living over here so this gave me a chance to become familiar with Kosovar products. Never underestimate the difficulty of not speaking or reading the local language! I discovered that they actually do have almost everything I would need I just had to look a bit. I felt pretty confident after awhile and brought home ingredients for braised beef short ribs which I prepared for dinner. (They came out great.) Charlie can shop at the US Army base about an hour from here. He stocks up on Oreos, real US bread, Old El Paso Mexican food, Campbell soup, etc there. I can't go onto the base. EULEX also has what is referred to as the "Blue PX" (don't ask me why) in town and they stock hard to find items, mostly Western European. I can't go into the Blue PX either. So Charlie does all the "special" shopping!

Things got much better for us yesterday when EULEX finally gave Charlie got a brand new car for his personal use. It's a Nissan Pathfinder - you have to have a 4-wheel drive here - roads are terrible. I'm not allowed to drive it nor can we take it out of the country but it is our car and will make life much easier. We can't park it at the apartment because EULEX requires a secure parking lot. That means a 24 hour guard and/or a locked gate neither of which we have here. So we will have to find a lot. There is one about 3 blocks away which will hopefully have space for us. We are looking to buy a car but haven't found the right deal yet. Then I would be able to drive and we could travel around in it.

Last weekend we went to Lake Ohrid, Macedonia (story and photos to follow) so this weekend we are going to stick around here. There is a beautiful park on the outskirts of the city - up in the mountains where the air is clean - where we will take Sadie for some exercise. She stays in a boarding kennel when we are gone and I know she misses us. She did have an infected foot last week and we found a really nice vet here. He took great care of her and her foot is healed.

So I am beginning to settle in here. We have what we need: a roof over our heads (no earthquake yet), electricity (that goes out only occasionally), water (that is shut off from midnight to six in the morning), food (I have mastered the Kosovo market!),  a car (I can't drive), and each other (me, Charlie and Sadie).  Now if I can only get the Christmas, Part 2 and the Lake Ohrid posts done...

Christmas in Italy

Our good friends, Piero and Renata Smaniotto, invited us to spend the Christmas holidays with them at their home in Lucca, Italy. It had been eight years since we were last in Lucca and six years since we had seen the Smaniotto's so we were so happy to get the invitation and delighted to be going to Lucca again, especially for Christmas.

Casa Bianca is incredibly beautiful. It was originally a farm house in the hills above Lucca. Piero and Renata have restored and improved it so that today it is worthy of it's own issue of House Beautiful. Not only is the house beautiful but the surrounding land is also gorgeous. Piero has his own vineyard and olive groves and Renata has a multitude of beautiful flowers and plants in the gardens surrounding the house.

Here the drive in front of the house. The vineyard is down the hill to the left and the olive trees are everywhere.
A welcoming door.
The mountains in the distance were snow capped. Lucca is in the valley below.

The side yard. There are all sorts of flowers in this garden...everything from gardenias and roses to oranges and figs. Renata is wonderful gardener and it shows. We hope to go back in the spring to see it all in bloom.

The woodpile and view.
The terrace.
Piero's wine storage.

A jug they dug out of the ground. It was probably used for some sort of storage.
Hoops from an old barrel. The green netting you see in the background hanging from the olive trees is used during the olive harvest.
Everywhere you look there is something beautiful. This is just a small sample of the beauty outdoors.

Here are some photos of the inside of Casa Bianca.
The living room.
Going upstairs.
Pelo, the cat, at the fireplace.A warm fire, a toscanno and a glass of Casa Bianca wine. This is the life.The upstairs room. This room previously was used to store hay for the animals who were housed below in what is now the kitchen. The family shared living quarters with their livestock at that time.
Upstairs window.Renata's father had made wine at Casa Bianca for years but Piero is now working to improve the grapes and their wine. He has planted new varieties of grapes and is working to create just the right taste. It certainly met with our approval!

Piero also produces olive oil and I have never tasted any oil so delicious. Even though we have different types of olive oil in the states, I assure you nothing can compare to olive oil from Casa Bianca. It is just so good!

Now that I have set the stage I must tell you about our wonderful Christmas. But that will have to be another blog. I have a new Mac and am learning how to get this blog all up and running so it is taking forever to get anything posted! I am going to leave off here and post all about Christmas within a day or two. Believe me, it is worth the wait!

Hello Friends and Family.

Little did I know at my last post in March that it would be December 5 before I saw Kosovo again! We have a beautiful new grandson, Leo Aaron Ludwick, who was born on May 11 as healthy as could be. Charlie came home in June to see little Leo and to take me back but unfortunately our Kat contracted a very serious type of staph infection from the hospital and was deathly ill. She was in the hospital almost two weeks and then on very heavy duty intravenous antibiotics for 45 days. Thank goodness the antibiotics worked and she is now much better. Of course, I stayed to take care of little Leo and his mommy. I was so glad to be there! I feel so very fortunate that this ended well. I also have a new appreciation for life and living it. Don't ever take it for granted.

So we are back in Kosovo. We returned on December 5. There have been quite a few changes here. Charlie signed up for another year here and has a new job as the Vice-President of the Assembly of EULEX Judges and as such sits on the Kosovo Supreme Court. He moved to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, in October so I am learning a new city and meeting lots of new people. And we also decided to bring our dog, Sadie, with us. She is adjusting but the noise, smells, and new environment have been a bit stressful for her. We did find a very nice pet store and vet so that was good.

It has only been four weeks since we got here but we have been very busy. The first couple of weeks I think we ate out with someone practically every night. I enjoyed meeting Charlie's co-workers and friends and they do have some very good restaurants here. We took a quick trip up to Mitrovica (our first home here) for a holiday party with old friends from there. It was so much fun and I really enjoyed seeing all the familiar faces. The new mayor of Mitorvica has an ambitious new plan to "beautify" the city, especially along the riverfront. It was nice to see that they are trying to improve their city.

We spent Christmas with our good friends Piero and Renatta Smaniotto in Lucca, Italy. We were there a week and it was a week in heaven. I'll write an entire post about it later - with photos. Piero and Renatta are not only lovely, warm, kind, fun people but also the best host and hostess ever! We had a wonderful time. Poor Charlie did come down with the flu Christmas night and was sick the rest of the time but what a place to be sick! He laid on the couch reading and enjoying the Italian hospitality.

So now we are back and settling in. We are planning on traveling - Charlie has found some beautiful places in the area to visit - and we are looking into trips to Istanbul and Egypt during the winter. We are going to Dublin in March for Maggie's birthday.

Welcome back to the blog! I hope I have some interesting and fun stories for you all.

Happy New Year!