The Region
“The Balkans, which in Turkish means “mountains,” run roughly from the Danube to the Dardanelles, from Istria to Istanbul, and is a term for the little lands of Hungary, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and part of Turkey, although neither Hungarian nor Greek welcomes inclusion in the label. It is, or was, a gay peninsula filled with sprightly people who ate peppered foods, drank strong liquors, wore flamboyant clothes, loved and murdered easily and had a splendid talent for starting wars. Less imaginative westerners looked down on them with secret envy, sniffing at their royalty, scoffing at their pretensions, and fearing their savage terrorists. Karl Marx called them “ethnic trash.” I, as a footloose youngster in my twenties, adored them.”
C.L. Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles, 1969.
Modern-day Kosovo lies at the center of the Balkans, precipitously poised between several of the worlds major religions, including Islam, Christian Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism, as well as between many great cultures, including Albanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Hellenic, Serbian, Turkish, and Western European. The region is rich in history, beauty, majesty, conflict, and tragedy. The Croatian, Bosnian, and Kosovo conflicts of the late 20th century are part of a broader complex historical tapestry – the most recent manifestations of Sulzberger’s characterization of the region’s ‘splendid talent for starting wars.’ What Journalist Robert Kaplan (Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History) said of Macedonia applies to the entire region: “The landscape needs to be read, not just looked at.”