Janjevo (c) Gail Warrander
Some of my favourites are those taken by Gail Warrander, one of the authors of the excellent Bradt guidebook to Kosovo (on Amazon.com - and also available in Kosovo). The page offers a dizzying array of mountains, ancient monasteries, cityscapes, a donkey in Dragash, a young boy dressed for sunet, Rugova's funeral, filigree at the ethnographic museum, sharr cheese, kullas, and goose-bump-inducing independence day images.
Yet what are the most viewed photos from this cornucopia? Janjevo.
Have you heard of it? Have you been there? Do you know why 458 people have recently looked at one Flickr image of it?
Janjevo is only 20 km from Pristina, and even closer to the well-known and well-visited town and monastery of Gracanica. But it's rare to find someone in Kosovo who has been there. Why is there such online interest in it?
I am intrigued. Doing further research, I discover that now only a third of the homes in Janjevo are occupied. Is it the former inhabitants (mainly Croats and Roma) who are sitting in internet cafes around the world feasting their eyes on the Flickr images of the town's faded elegance?
There is plenty to feast on - Catholic church, kulla, home of nineteenth century ethnologist Stefan Gjecovi Kryeziu, mosque, and, most of all, the repeated surprises of beautiful old, now crumbling, houses.
In Pristina and most of Kosovo's cities, homes like these have been destroyed - by poverty which let them fall down, or by new wealth which knocked them down and put up whimsies of concrete in their place. Janjevo has not yet succumbed to either, though it may not be long.
Brad Pitt can wait - catch Janjevo while you can.
The author can be contacted on elizabethgowing@hotmail.com; enquiries about the Bradt guide in Kosovo should be directed to sabri_maloku@hotmail.com
Have you heard of it? Have you been there? Do you know why 458 people have recently looked at one Flickr image of it?
Janjevo is only 20 km from Pristina, and even closer to the well-known and well-visited town and monastery of Gracanica. But it's rare to find someone in Kosovo who has been there. Why is there such online interest in it?
I am intrigued. Doing further research, I discover that now only a third of the homes in Janjevo are occupied. Is it the former inhabitants (mainly Croats and Roma) who are sitting in internet cafes around the world feasting their eyes on the Flickr images of the town's faded elegance?
There is plenty to feast on - Catholic church, kulla, home of nineteenth century ethnologist Stefan Gjecovi Kryeziu, mosque, and, most of all, the repeated surprises of beautiful old, now crumbling, houses.
In Pristina and most of Kosovo's cities, homes like these have been destroyed - by poverty which let them fall down, or by new wealth which knocked them down and put up whimsies of concrete in their place. Janjevo has not yet succumbed to either, though it may not be long.
Brad Pitt can wait - catch Janjevo while you can.
The author can be contacted on elizabethgowing@hotmail.com; enquiries about the Bradt guide in Kosovo should be directed to sabri_maloku@hotmail.com
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