On my last evening in Kosovo, I finally got to meet Isa Qosja, the director of “Kukumi.” My friend Blerim Gjoci, whose wife Anisa Ismaili is in the film, drove me out to his house, which is in the Sunny Hill neighborhood of Pristina – a sprawling section east of the center that boasts dozens of apartment complexes.

Qosja met us at the door of his house, a stone-enhanced single suburban dwelling that has a great-room living/dining/kitchen area. On the screen of the flat-screen TV, which Qosja and his wife had been watching, was “Prime,” the 2005 Meryl Streep/Uma Thurman film.

We sat and talked about a variety of topics. About filmmaking in Kosovo (“very hard to raise money”), how his film “Kukumi” had been censored for showing in Pristina (it offended KFOR, the NATO armed force that protects Kosovo), how the moneymen behind the film hadn’t done enough to promote it (“they just let it sit”), about the work of Stanley Kubrick (“genius, genius”) and his plans for a film titled something like “The Dog Killer,” in which Blerim hopes to star.

Mostly it was simply an honor to sit in his presence, to eat baklava and drink the best coffee I had been given in Pristina (made and served by Qosja’s wife). Qosja is an intelligent, dignified man, and “Kukumi” is a film that has been unfairly relegated to DVD status.

Not that it hasn’t earned recognition for its obvious quality. It won awards at both the Venice and Sarajevo Film Festivals. But that’s not enough. It should have had a wide-spread international release, even if only on the film-festival circuit. The film is not just a metaphor for the emergence of Kosovo (and for all areas torn by ethnic/religious conflict) but also for the innate fear that society has of the mentally and/or emotionally ill and for the inherent need we all have to connect.

Plus it’s well acted (not just by Ismaili but also by Luan Jaha and Donat Qosja – the director’s son), artistically shot (by Menduh Nushi) and, in Qosja’s cut at least, uncompromising in its ultimate message that prejudice of any kind is as much self-hatred as hatred of others. Any film festival in the U.S. would benefit by showing it.

Including Spokane’s. Or Sandpoint’s. Maybe if either of these festivals decided to screen “Kukumi” they could bring Qosja along, too. Making a film of such uncommon beauty is tough anywhere. But in Kosovo? It’s more like a miracle, and such miracles deserve to be noticed. And honored.

Programs of short films are always problematic. Even film festivals with decent reputations, such as Sundance or Seattle, typically boast shorts programs that are more uneven in quality than Steve Buscemi’s teeth.

Which is why I was so pleased with today’s offerings during day six of Skena Up, an international student film and theatre festival that was showing at the ABC Kino. I ended up seeing nine films, eight of which were in English (the ninth was in Rumanian, but had English subtitles).

The range of themes was wide. “The Intimacy of Strangers” was a documentary in which the director, Eva Weber, edtied together a bunch of public cell-phone conversation held in the streets of London to make a larger statement about 21st century communication and romance. Gemma Burditt’s “Night Shift” is a blend of animation and real-life cinematography that explores what happens when lovers’ lives take divergent paths.

“Friday Street,” by Joseph Knowles, is a strange concoction of musical comedy and romance. “Synchronoff,” an animated effort by Catia Peres, is a “Triplets of Belleville”-type story of clock characters playing out their relationship to an audience of … ball bearings?

Romanian filmmaker Patricia Radol’s “At Nic’s” tells the story of a young woman seeking out the man who once had a relationship with her mother. And, following that theme, “Souvenir” (the director’s name wasn’t listed) tells the story of a young man trying to help his father clean out the apartment following mom’s death – only to be given a keepsake by “dad.”

These were the highlights. The best ones portray just how difficult it is to connect with those who, ultimately, will meet your needs and help you find the best chance at happiness. Overall, there wasn’t a loser in the bunch.

The festival continues tomorrow and Friday, with films from France, Albania, Germany and Kosovo. Truth is, despite how advance we like to think we are in the U.S., Spokane could use regular programming such as this.

My friend John Brennan, a romantic who all too often poses as an acerbic jokester, sent me the following quote. It seems to rule this part of the world, meaning the Balkans, but it’s been fairly prevalent in the U.S. over the past decade or so, too.

The quote comes from Aristotle: “A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.”

We like to think of California as spot susceptible to earthquakes. And, of course, it is.

But for 20 seconds, beginning at the stroke of 5:17 a.m. on July 26, 1963, a quake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale shook Skopje, Macedonia, like a tourist throwing craps at the Coeur d’Alene Casino. More than 1,100 people died in the crush of stone and brick, plus another 120,000 were left homeless.

Considering that Skopje at the time boasted a population of only about 200,000, it’s clear that the damage affected most of the city’s residents – though obviously it could have been far worse.

The train station in the city center was halfway smashed, and to this day the half that held up still stands. In fact, the clock that is attached to the building front never moves from the exact moment that the quake first began its deadly dance.

Below: As a testament to the 1963 earthquake, the clock on the front what remains of the old Skopje train station (now a museum) registers the exact moment that the quake hit.

Photo by Dan Webster

It was in Skopje, Macedonia, that we had one of the best Italian meals that we’ve ever eaten. It was at Taverna Toscana, which is located at Ivo Lola Ribar 72 (as if that’ll help you any; one cab driver we attempted to help couldn’t even read a map much less an address).

One of the great things on the menu – in addition to the grilled meats, the four kinds of pasts, salads that were fresh and filled with fresh mozzarella and shaved chunks of fresh parmesan, and desserts that included everything from chocolate and nut tarts to crème caramel – we were served a kind of poppy-seed-encrusted potato beignet atop a gorgonzola sauce.

The chef called it bignè al papavero. As an Italian would say, delizioso.

Today we hit a couple of museums. One was the city museum, which is located in the old train station. It sits below a clock that marks the exact time that the 1963 earthquake leveled the city: 5:17 a.m. Inside we found a variety of exhibits, none of which was particularly interesting – though I did like the fact that it was free.

Also free was the art museum at the former Daud Pasa Baths. This one had a six- or seven-room collection of Modern Macedonian art, all exhibited under domed ceilings that let in natural light (from an overcast, but bright, day). We were the only visitors present, and we were left undisturbed because the lone guard on duty stayed in his office watching football.

We spent some time trying to track down a European film festival that is supposed to be taking place in Skopje, though once we were told we would have to take a cab there, our interest waned. The one cinema that we did find, in the gigantic Ramstore Mall (which is reminiscent of the Spokane Valley Mall) is playing the Clive Owen film “Children of Men,” has a showing at 8 p.m.

I smell a movie in our immediate future. For now, we’re in our hotel room watching “Another 48HRS.” Storm and ports and all that shinola, you know.

The first thing we noticed about Skopje (see the post immediately below) was the huge Catholic Church near the hotel where we are staying. We could hardly miss it what with its two neon-blue crosses casting out luminescence over the neighboring streets.

We arrived after dark on Friday, which comes in the Balkans these days before 5 p.m., so we couldn’t get a look at much of the city. We’d driven over from Pristina in a hired car with two of the ABA-CEELI employees, David and Melissa.

But after having dinner at More Love, a little eatery that’s partly owned by a friend of Melissa’s, we found a cab driver who spoke nearly accentless English.

In answer to my question of whether he could understand me, the cabbie said, “Yes, of course. I’m American.” We thought: Huh?

Turns out, he’s a Macedonian who lived for six years in the U.S. driving truck. He’s back here, waiting for his girlfriend/soon-to-be-wife to get her papers so that they can return to Tampa to live.

Anyway, he drove us back to our hotel, telling us tales of having driven through all of the 48 contiguous states. He couldn’t drive us all the way to the hotel door, though, because, just like in Pristina, the back streets of Skopje are as beat up as Donald Rumsfeld’s reputation.

But we found our way. In the end, we were aided in our sojourn by the glow coming off those crosses. Even I, the Unitarian Buddhist-in-training, found solace in that.

Below: The only Catholic Church in Skopje, Macedonia, has not one but two neon-blue crosses that mark its location just outside the city center.

Photo by Dan Webster

The one thing I didn’t bring to Kosovo was a video camera. I won’t make that mistake again. Static photos are OK, even when an amateur such as myself is taking them. But video is always better.

You can find some decent films on YouTube, though. I posted one below. It’s French, so you’ll forgive me for that, but it does capture both a bit of the look of Kosovo and a feel for the ethnic problems that still simmer just below the surface here.

One problem: The music played doesn’t capture what you year walking down the street, in cafes or restaurants. Strictly American-style pop is the music of choice here.

The mid-term American elections are all over the news here in Kosovo. It’s hard to gauge the exact nature of the Kosovar sentiments since the region as a whole is so inveterately pro-American. But remember: Pristina is the city that features a three-story-tall photo of Bill Clinton fronting one of its main streets – which is called Bil Klinton Bulevardi.

So I guess that is one indicator.

Meanwhile, heard another Albanian joke tonight, which was told by my Kosovar friend Jetish Jashari. An Albanian minister meets an Italian minister at a conference in Italy. Afterward, the Albanian joins the Italian at his house for dinner and is astounded at how big and beautiful the house is.

“Wow,” the Albanian says. “How did you afford such a house on a minister’s salary?”

The Italian points out his window at a distant river.

“See the bridge that crosses the river?” he asks.

“Yes,” says the Albanian.

“Notice the part that bends just a bit?”

“Yeah,” says the Albanian. “Not a lot, but I do see it.”

“Well,” says the Italian. “There was supposed to be another girder there. I eliminated the girder, pocketed the money and that’s how I got this house.”

The Albanian nodded admiringly.

The next year, a conference is held in Albania, and the two ministers meet again. Afterward, the Italian joins the Albanian at his house and is astounded to see that it’s twice as big as his own.

“How did you afford to build such a house on a minister’s salary?” the Italian asks.

The Albanian points out the window. “See that river over there?” he asks.

“Yeah,” the Italian answers.

“See the bridge that crosses it?”

“No,” says the Italian. “I don’t see any bridge.”

“Exactly,” the Albanian answers.

All day Saturday the Internet connection in our apartment was down. The weather outside was below 0 Celsius, which meant that whatever moisture hit the ground turned immediately into ice. So we weren’t anxious to go out.

Around noon we tried the Internet shop that lurks in the basement, but that walk down three flights of stairs earned us a big surprise. The door was open but the place had been cleaned out. The same has happened to at least three other businesses (one CD shop, a clothing store) in the past few weeks.

Looks as if you can’t make a profit if all you do is sit around all day and let your friends Instant Message their girlfriends, play Halo or surf porn sites. Life just isn’t fair sometimes.

Then in the late afternoon, our friend David called and invited us out to listen to some jazz. His partner Stephanie and he had bought some tickets to that night’s edition of the 2006 Pristina Jazz Festival, which began on Thursday and will run through next Saturday. Last night featured three groups performing under the label “JAZZMIK,” or Jazz mission in Kosovo.

The first group, which called itself the Blue Ridge Band, was garage-band status. What they lacked in talent they tried to make up for in energy, but it didn’t really work. As the lead singer admitted in a revealing American accent, “As you can tell, we really aren’t a jazz band. But we wanted to be part of this wonderful event.”

The second group, whose name I never did catch (the announcer spoke almost nothing but Albanian), is a big improvement. It consisted of a keyboard player, a six-string bassist, two percussionists and an electric guitarist, and they played a smooth short set that balanced them performing as a group and giving room for each musician to try out a solo or two. One of the percussionists, a tall guy in a rugby shirt, even did some effective scat singing.

The final group featured the same bassist, plus a flautist, a drummer and another guitarist. They were almost as good, but they tended too much toward solos – and one drum solo a set is good enough for me.

What I found most interesting is that people in the audience talked all through the concert, as if we were sitting in some smoky club. The worst offenders were the young women who had taken our tickets. Even during quiet moments you could hear them jabbering away.

The killer, though, was when a guy standing next to the stage stood up, waved to a friend, then lit up a cigarette – right below the no-smoking sign.

That’s Kosovo.

I just spent the last two hours helping two 19-year-old Kosovar law students practice their English. Students of the legal methodology class that Mary Pat is helping to implement at the University of Pristina Law School, Arbenita Mjekiql and Agron Krasniqi are filled with the kind of hunger than you tend to find in the very young of cultures boasting far fewer advantages than those of the U.S.

Those young foreign students are hungry for knowledge, hungry for possibilities, hungry for a future that promises to be bright as the United Nations gets closer to resolving the status of Kosovo as its own independent state.

We started out talking about the law, something that they know much more about than I. And it was fascinating to hear them try to work through their thoughts about a hypothetical case that Mary Pat had invented involving a new society on a distant world that was in the beginning stages of setting up a system of law.

But we gradually switched themes from the law to, among other topics, their individual post-graduation plans, Albania history and famous personages (John Belushi came from Albanian stock), the 36-letter Albanian alphabet, the differences between Albanian and romance languages such as Italian and Spanish, the cold weather that this morning made Pristina’s streets slicker than oil on glass, the Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti (Skenderbeg), the beauty of the Albanian capital of Tirana, how similar the various Slavic languages are … and, of course, we talked about movies.

All three of us agree that we want to see the film “Anatema,” which is playing here in Pristina with – we’re assured – English subtitles. One of the film’s stars is Blerim Gjoci, whom I’ve already seen in the Teatri Oda production of David Mamet’s play “American Buffalo.”

In the end, we agreed to meet again on Monday after class. And they both thanked me for agreeing to spend the time with them. To which I replied, with all sincerity, the pleasure had been mine.

Gonzaga University law professor Mary Pat Treuthart takes a break after trekking 259 steps up Pristina’s Dragodan Hill.

Two young Kosovar children dress in traditional Albanian clothing for a special family photograph.

Besides filling the air with poison, the two power plants located just outside Pristina – this is just one – can’t provide the city with enough electricity to avoid the occasional outage.

No, bombs didn’t twist the bridge on the River Ibar, which separates the Serbian and Albanian sections of the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica. It’s just part of the bridge’s unique design.

Wherever you go in Europe, you’re bound to find art telling the story of the Annunciation. This portrait hangs in the Serbian Orthodox monastery of Visoki Decani, which is located in western Kosovo.

It rained most of the night, and this morning snow was falling on Pristina. Not even Thanksgiving and already it’s snowing. Even Spokane seldom sees that kind of early winter weather.

The TV’s on behind me, and both CNN Europe and Sky News (Britain) can’t get enough of the coming American elections. They’re particularly fascinated with the furor over Sen. John Kerry’s remarks. Fascinated, I mean, as in how it’s impossible not to snicker when someone passes gas in church.

Which is what the whole furor amounts to. Kerry was saying only what all parents in the country say when they want their children to buckle down and study. It’s called the Bogeyman Threat. Settle down and get to sleep or the Bogeyman’s gonna get you. Study hard or you’ll end up stuck in Iraq.

Kerry’s remarks were stupid for a couple of reasons. One, it’s a Vietnam-era comment. There’s no draft anymore, John, so students don’t have to worry about losing their 2S deferments and face two years in the Army. Two, the Republicans were begging for an excuse to argue emotion instead of issues, and it just happened that Kerry was the guy who fell into the trap.

But the problem illustrates a larger two-fold problem concerning the U.S. One, the American media are giving the remarks far more importance than they deserve. It’s easy journalism to emphasize infighting rather than explore actual news – the economy, for example, or this war that seems to have no end.

Two, the audience is just as worthy of blame. Journalists in this modern era seek out the easy answers not because they’re stupid but because they perceive that’s what their readers/viewers/listeners want.

Is it? Are we so shallow that we can’t see that we’re being manipulated? “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” the disembodied voice drones. “I am the great and powerful Oz.”

One thing’s for sure: Oz isn’t serving in Iraq. Come to think of it, he didn’t serve in Vietnam either.

Before the 1999 war, Halloween – at least this is what I’m told – was not a big Kosovar holiday. You wouldn’t have known that from what I saw tonight.

I had a date with my friend Fatmir to watch the Barcelona-Chelsea football match, a grudge pairing if ever that term applied, at one of Pristina’s most popular bars, Papillon. The place is one of those smoke-filled spots with a smallish-size big-screen TV placed high on the wall so that everyone can see (even if you can’t hear over the obligatory pop tunes).

A Texas license plate adorns one wall, and on another a sign says, “In God we trust – all others pay cash.” And as we sat there, I drinking Peja beer, Fatmir downing Heinekens, Fatmir’s team, Chelsea, tied the match in the fourth minute of extra time, 2-2, thereby knocking Barcelona out of contention.

High fives all around.

But the real surprise of the evening involved the crowds of children of all ages whom I ran into on the way to Papillon. They were running all through the center of Pristina, their faces painted, acting rowdy, throwing fire crackers and trick-of-treating the way we used to in America before parents started getting careful, etc., etc.

I saw witches, werewolves, every kind of monster you can imagine, zombies, ghosts and superheroes. One kid even was wearing a Spiderman outfit. The cutest were the very small ones, wearing pumpkin masks as proud as if they were sporting medals, walking hand in hand with their parents, having fun just being a part of the festivities.

Seems not everything that America has exported has spoiled the world. But then we already knew that. Especially in Kosovo, America can do no wrong.

Below: The kids in Pristina, Kosovo, trick-or-treated on Halloween just like any kids across America.

It got cold yesterday in Pristina. The sunny, unseasonably warm weather that we enjoyed over the weekend came to a wet, windy end. Looks like winter has decided to arrive.

The news from the weekend’s referendum on Serbia’s new constitution was good and bad. The good news, from the Serbian point of view, was that the referendum passed. The bad news, yet good from the Albanian perspective, is that it barely passed.

At the end of the day Saturday, the issue looked to be in doubt. Voting was down all across Serbia, and news stories were quoting some Serb voters in Belgrade and elsewhere as saying that they were boycotting the vote because they were sick of the Kosovo issue.

The constitution states that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, a position that the mostly Albanian Kosovars reject. They want full independence, not just autonomous rule under the auspices of greater Serbia. As such, most Albanians – who make up roughly 90 percent of Kosovo’s estimated population of 2 million – refused to take part.

The surprise wasn’t that the referendum passed. As the past two American presidential elections have proven, voting chicanery happens everywhere. There was simply no way that this constitution was going to fail. Too many Serbian politicians had too much to lose, if you catch my drift.

The surprise was that it was so close a call. That in itself is a sign that the Kosovo issue just doesn’t have the compelling quality that Serbia’s leaders have been insisting runs deep throughout today’s Serb culture. Or, worse, that the constitution itself didn’t strike Serb voters as the wave they saw for their country’s future.

Like all politicians, even here among the Albanians in Kosovo, Serb leaders like to play upon nationalistic fervor to get what they want. Sometimes, though, the voters end up thinking for themselves.

That happens even in the U.S., though less so since the events of 9/11.

Lazy Sunday. No Internet connection, so we’re sitting in a basement Internet biz (not even a cafe) amid a half dozen young Kosovars, all of whom seem to be smoking Marlboros and IMing each other (with cameras). I’ll smell like an ashtray before I get out of here.

I wrote up a report of our trip on Saturday to the southern city of Prizren, but it’s loaded on my MacBook upstairs. I’ll post it tomorrow along with a bunch of photos that I’ve taken over the past week.

As for now, I’m enjoying the second-hand smoke – and a keyboard that, unlike other spots in Europe, has all the right keys in the right spot. Only problem is that they’re mismarked (y in the place of z, = in the place of ‘, etc.

Only another of the many things about Kosovo that doesn’t seem to make sense.

One of the aspects of modern life that some of my younger colleagues got me hooked on was YouTube. I can spend hours on the site, moving from one topic to the next. In the past, I’ve posted videos that spoof movie trailers.

But since I’ve been in Kosovo, I’ve been curious about what’s been done by dedicated YouTubers about, or in, this area. That’s how I stumbled over the music short that I’ve embedded below. It was made by some Norwegian KFOR soldiers to the Beach Boys tune “Kokomo.”

My only regret is that there was no such thing as YouTube in 1969 when I was in Vietnam. Imagine the spoof my MP buddies and I could have made about Vung Ro Bay.

The big news in Kosovo this weekend is the referendum that Serbia will be holding over the weekend on its new constitution. The contentious part here in Pristina, of course, is the section in the proposed document that describes Kosovo as a Serbian province.

Technically speaking, even though the United Nations is running Kosovo – and has been since 1999 – the Kosovars, 90 percent of whom are ethnically Albanian, are eligible to vote in the election. At least that’s how the Serbs see it.

But few Albanian Kosovars are interested in casting a vote on what they see as purely a Serbian issue. The only vote they’re interested in casting is one that ensures their independence, which they hope to see by the end of the year.

In any event, KFOR – the NATO armed forces that are providing security around Kosovo – likely will be visible throughout the area. They’ll be especially present in those places (the northern city of Mitrovica and a few other isolated spots) where the estimated 100,000 Kosovo Serbs still live.

Their mission is to protect the Kosovar Serbs from the Kosovar Albanians every bit as much as to protect Kosovo as a whole from Serbia itself.

There might even be some demonstrations, both by the Albanians here in Kosovo and by the Serbs in Belgrade. Both sides consider that a lot is at stake. Identity as a people, for one. A link with the past, for another.

I can’t be sure how long the Internet connection will last. So Illhavetotypefast.

Our trek through the Hungarian National Gallery on Monday made me wish that my colleague Julianne Crane had been with us. I was bored with it, mostly, until we reached the section featuring the 19th-century artists. That was where I found three artists whom I ended up liking as much as I do any of the French Impressionists.

The three are Károly Ferenczy (1862-1917), Paál László (1846-1879) and Mihály Munkácsy (1844-1900).

Ferenczy achieved fame later than the other two. But paintings such as “Bathing Boys” (1902), “Beech Woods” (1908), “Morning Sunshine” (1905), “Evening Mood With Horses” (1899) and “Sermon on the Mount” (1896) show both a range of subject matter from the realistic to the allegorical. The lattermost painting puts Jesus on the mountain, preaching to a crowd of people, including children, attired in what must have been typical 19th-century dress – except for the guy sitting next to him, clothed in a full set of armor. One of the draws of the collection is Ferenczy’s “October,” his 1903 still life of a man standing in the shadow of a parasol, reading a newspaper – a testament to the artist’s ability to work with shade.

Laszlo was a pupil of Munkácsy’s whose work was primarily landscape, including “October Wind” (1875) and Landscape with Cows” (1872).

Munkácsy was the master, though, and the walls of the gallery boast dozens of his works. The ones I jotted down in my notebook include “Dark Stairs” (1871), “Sleeping Highwayman with a Candle” (1869) and “In Front of the House” (1869). But the work of his that you’re most likely to remember is “Churning Woman” (1872-73), a realistic work that captures the resignation of an aging woman who has spent a lifetime doing mundane, menial labor.

What I like most about all three of these artists is their ability, each in his own distinctive way, to capture the essence of life in just a few daubs of paint that, seen up close, look like mere splotches thrown on the canvas. But stand back a few feet, and the whole thing comes together in a way that suggests life without being a photographic representation of it.

But, then, I’m no art critic. Which is why I wish Julianne had been there. She could have told me what was what.

Meanwhile, back in Kosovo, the situation isn’t getting any clearer. It looks as if the Serbs are going to go to the wall to keep control of Kosovo, which is something that the overwhelming majority of Kosovars – most ethnic Albanians – won’t begin to accept. The latest reports have the Serb prime minister either talking tough for real – or merely in an effort to cover his butt if Kosovo independence does come.

Today will be our second full day in Budapest. We’re transferring hotels, from the Hilton that sits in the Castle District overlooking both Buda and Pest, to the Hotel Gellert.

We don’t usually stay in four-star hotels. But, hey, I don’t know if I’ll ever return to Budapest, and I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to swim in a pool that looks exactly like the one in which Juliette Binoche splashed laps in Philip Kaufman’s 1988 film adaptation of Milan Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”

The Gellert was opened in 1918. That’s old-world Europe, which even given all the bloody history of the next 70-odd years, still had its charms.

By the way, the great thing about being in Europe is the chance it affords you to read writers whose work you can hardly ever find in the U.S. I’ve already written about the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare. Now I’m reading the Czech novelist Ivan Klima, whose 1994 novel “Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light,” takes place just before, during and after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t come in a waterproof edition.

It’s cool riding in an armored Jeep. Especially when no one is taking shots at you.

That’s how we traveled to dinner last night, courtesy of Col. Jim Playford, a Spokane resident who is working here in Pristina as – I’ll quote his card – Defense & Air Attaché of the U.S. Defense Attaché Office. I’d explain what his job is but we never got around to talking specifics, probably for good reason.

Instead, we talked about his family – wife Lin who lives in the Spokane Valley, his three children (all grown, one of whom lives near her mother) – and the fact that he is excited about reuniting with his wife during an upcoming vacation in Rome.

We ate at another fine Pristina restaurant, in this case Pëllumbi, where we were served traditional Kosovar dishes – none of which, of course, I can remember the name of. I was too busy sipping red wine and swapping military-brat stories with our host (he Air Force, I Navy).

Afterward, he took us on a drive up Dragodan Hill, the exclusive neighborhood that overlooks the city from the western hills. How exclusive is Dragodan? One of the Kosovars I have gotten to know says that when he was growing up during the Communist regime, he and his friends would dream about dating the girls who lived there – though a dream is all it ever became.

We even drove past the U.S. embassy, which sits like a fortress behind fences that bear pictures of cameras with slashes through them. I took that to mean that I shouldn’t pull out my Canon and start taking snapshots.

If you’ve ever spent any time with career military types, especially those officers who reach the rank of colonel and above, you know they’re a special breed. Sometimes, that means arrogance. In Playford’s case, it means a kind of decency and friendliness that is all too rare in today’s world.

With him as one face representing the U.S. here in Kosovo, our reputation – already good – can get only better.

The power just went out. That makes the second time since midnight. The good thing is that the apartment we’re living in here in Pristina opens in the back on a sunny, if not particularly charming, courtyard (it’s actually little more than a dusty parking lot with another apartment building across the way). So there’s lots of sun coming into the kitchen/living room.

Meanwhile, the hum of a generator out back blocks out all other noise. The bad news is that unlike at the Hotel Afa, the generator isn’t ours. A battery the size of a suitcase sits in the corner, but it isn’t charged, even though the attached charger is plugged into the outlet. The only thing I can see that might be wrong is a broken fuse, but where the hell would I find a replacement in Pristina? I can’t even find a film with English subtitles.

That’s not exactly true. We did manage to see “Kukumi” yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon during the repeat showing of Monday’s premiere of the 2006 Albanian Film Festival that is visiting here from Tirana. And unlike the documentaries I had seen earlier in the day, there they were at the bottom of the screen, those beautiful words in English that gave meaning to the jabberings of the characters above.

But when we came back for the 10 p.m. showing of a film titled “Night Without Moon,” they were missing. We stayed for about 20 minutes because it was a pleasure to see the Albanian countryside. But we finally left, vowing to find a subtitled copy sometime when the film was available in the U.S. on DVD.

In between the two films, MP and I split up. She had to do some work, and I took off with one of my Kosovar acquaintances, Fatmir Kutlovci, one of the ABA-CEELI staff attorneys. He’d planned on taking me to a theatrical performance of “American Buffalo,” the David Mamet play, which he assured me was in English.

The theater is located in a sub-basement of the sports center that sits in the city center. We walked through a series of dark parking lots, our way lit only by the handy little flashlight on Fatmir’s telephone, past one United Nations vehicle after the next. We arrived at a side of the sports complex where a doorway opening was marked by the flickering of candlelight. Bad sign.

The steps down into the catacombs of the building were lit by more candles. And when we got to the bottom, our eyes had to adjust even further to the gloom. But pretty soon I saw an arrangement of chairs and tables that signaled café. Or in the case nightclub. They were set net to a large set of black double doors that led, presumably, to the theater.

We found Fatmir’s friend, and star of the show, Blerim Gjoci, an actor in film and theater and, by day, general manager of Prishtina (the Albanian spelling, and pronunciation, of Pristina) Film, a company that is doing some film work for ABA-CEELI. Blerim apologized and told us that someone, no one knows exactly who, turned off the building’s electricity and so the 8 p.m. performance had been pushed back to 9 p.m.

Did we mind? No problem. It gave me a chance to listen to sip on a Kosovar beer and listen to Fatmir recite lines from American films and talk about his admiration for Edward Norton (especially his performance in Spike Lee’s “25th Hour”).

Finally, though, came word: The electricity wasn’t going to come on until 10 p.m., and so the performance has been cancelled. So goes life in the Balkans. Instead, Fatmir and I joined Blerim at a nearby café and listened to him talk about making a movie in France, in French, though he didn’t at the time speak the language. He learned the lines by rote, he said, and that fooled the director and producer enough to give him the job – and by the time they discovered his lack of language skills, he’d proven himself.

Shortly before 10, I joined MP at the theater. No one could tell us whether the film had English subtitles, so they suggested we stay for the first few minutes and, if the words in English were there, we could come out and pay for the tickets. I decided just to buy them anyway as the 2 euro (about $2.50) per-ticket price was cheap enough and, in any event, it went toward supporting the festival.

You know the rest of the story. That’s how I ended up in bed, reading “The File on H” by Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare until midnight.

Hey, the power just came back on. Think I’ll make some coffee. Nope, it just went out again. Guess I’ll pick up the Kadare.

As I’m typing this, “Farewell My Lovely” (in the U.S., the 1944 film was titled “Murder, My Sweet”) is playing on the television behind me. Funny, I just watched that noir based on the Raymond Chandler novel for the first time a couple of months ago. It was part of the CenterStage summer film series. What’re the chances?

I’m sitting in the downtown Pristina apartment that we moved into on Sunday. In many ways, it’s the perfect spot: convenient to the ABA-CEELI office where Mary Pat works, near a decent grocery, boasting two rooms instead of the hotel single we’d been in since we arrived two weeks ago. The mattress is softer than a wrestling mat, the TV gets CNN, BBC and Movies 4 Men (a British Satellite TV channel that is playing in the background).

The only problem: The Internet connection doesn’t work worth a thimble full of spit. It functioned last night long enough for me to answer an e-mail from another former Spokanite who has been doing work here in Pristina. But I can’t check to see if it went through.

It’s not as if I don’t have choices. I can wait and see if the Web comes back on (seems doubtful). I can go down the Internet business located in the building’s basement and suck in more cigarette fumes than if I’d smoked a carton or two of unfiltered Camels. Or I can walk down to the office.

To do the latter, though, I’ll have to wait for the washing to finish. Yeah, that’s another benefit to this apartment: It has a washing machine. There’s no dryer, a concept still considered a novelty in Europe, but there’s an actual working washer.

That’s OK, though. That’ll give me time to finish watching Dick Powell try to fill the shoes of Philip Marlowe. For the former song-and-dance boy, it’s hardly a tight fit.

I’ll just have to post this later.

By now it’s common knowledge thatJess Walter, the Edgar Award-winning author of “Citizen Vince,” has been nominated for another, even more prestigious national honor. His novel “The Zero” has been named as a finalist for the National Book Award.

(Note: That makes two authors with Spokane ties to earn 2006 NBA finalist nominations. Gongaga Prep grad Tim Egan is a nonfiction finalist for his book “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.”)

One reader, an old friend of mine, just finished “The Zero.” And while she said that she enjoyed it, she said the ending confused her. She wanted me to explain it to her.

That’s problematic for a couple of reasons. One, it’s hard to explain the ending of anything without giving away specifics that will ruin the read for anyone who hasn’t yet picked up the book.

But even more important, well, I can’t be absolutely sure that I understand the novel’s ending either. Here’s the gist of what I told her:

“I think he wants to take us to a place that is pure Kafka, which is to say that ALL of what is going on in today’s post-9/11 world is beyond comprehension That existence as we know it has a patina of meaning, colored by various jingoistic or religious or emotional attitudes, but underneath everything we’re all Gregor Samsa, waking up one morning as a cockroach and wondering how the world got so crazy. And wondering why no one around you seems even to notice. I THINK that’s what he means. But, really, your guess is as good as mine.”

I should add that I don’t pretend to understand the ending to Camus’ “The Stranger,” to Charles Frazier’s “Cold Mountain,” to anything by Faulkner or Pynchon or Beckett or … the list goes on.

That’s probably not something that a so-called critic should admit. But, then, I think part of being a critic is admitting that you have only your understanding of what the author means, not THE understanding. I may have an interpretation, but that’s hardly the final word

Besides, at the moment I’m on an extended stay in the Balkans. Life here is hard to understand, period.

If ever there was a sign that professional conferences are the same all over the world, I saw one Wednesday. I’d been turned onto something called the “Conference on Transparency, Accountability and Anticorruption,” which was being held at the Grand Hotel here in Pristina.

Sponsored by Transparency International, a private organization formed in 1993 to fight corruption on a global scale, the conference brought together various factions of Kosovar society with representatives of the United National Development Programme – journalists, lawyers, prosecutors, members of the Kosovo Assembly, Kosovo Police Service and various other groups – to talk about corruption in Kosovo.

The panel discussions that I should have attended, which focused on print and broadcast journalism, had been held the day before. But I didn’t even find out about the conference until late Tuesday, so I figured better a day late than never. I showed up Wednesday morning, Spokesman-Review press card in hand, for what was to be a panel discussion titled “Roles of Justice in the Context of Transparency, Accountability and Anti-corruption Activities.”

Here’s a useful Albanian phrase: “flisni anglisht?” Do you speak English? I had to ask that question a half-dozen times before I was able even to find the room in which the conference was being held. When I finally got there, everything was already in session. I thought I was late, but I quickly discovered that one program just kind of evolved into the next.

I was confronted by a rectangular room that had at its center a u-shaped arrangement of tables, maybe 40 by 10 feet, with microphones installed at various points along both sides and at the head. Thirty-odd men and woman sat at the table, while those of us observing sat in chairs lined against the adjoining walls.

I found an empty seat and then sat there feeling as if I were out of my depth. Almost everyone was speaking in Albanian, and about the only word I could understand was the one that each speaker after the next pronounced almost as if he/she were speaking Italian: “Co-roop-zee-oh-nee.”

I knew translator headphones were available, because a pair was set in front of each panelist. But it wasn’t until a guy sitting near me left and I reached for his headphones that someone tapped me on the shoulder and offered me a set of my own.

And guess what? The speeches that had sounded so exotic in Albanian turned into the same old boring kinds of speeches that I’d heard as a young reporter covering school board, city council and planning commission meetings in Creswell, Ore. For all its importance, this conference sounded pretty much like every law, library and journalism conference I have ever attended. Complete with PowerPoint.

There were, though, some highlights:

One English-speaking panelist, Anton Nokaj, president of the district court of Pristina, stressed the need to battle corruption. “This is a noble task. Fighting corruption is fighting for Kosovo. … Turning a blind eye to corruption is fighting against Kosovo.”

Ibrahim Makoli, of something called the Council for Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms, said that to see corruption all one had to do is look. “Look at the streets, at the wealth, this is obvious,” he said. “And no one asks how the wealth appears overnight.”

Haki Leci, a Pristina lawyer, talked openly about bribery, referring at one point directly to the three uniformed panelists, one of whom spoke for the Kosovo Customs Bureau. Another panelist, wearing the kind of flak jacket vest popular with war correspondents, also targeted the customs bureau, asking the officer why the bureau recently burnt 700,000 euro (about $875,000) worth of smuggled cigarettes. “These could have been sold and the money given to charities,” he said.

The customs officer explained, in terms of the cigarettes, that the bureau had no idea what kind of “harmful” materials might have been in the tobacco. Thus they were burned, he said, for “health” reasons.

Then, out of seemingly nowhere, one of the panelists wearing a suit, talked about Tom Cruise and “Top Gun.” He said that the character that Cruise plays in the film is based on the real-life character of former San Diego Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham. He said that Cunningham’s lavish lifestyle led to his downfall when an investigative reporter wondered how he could live so high on his government salary and kept asking questions.

“And Tom Cruise has just signed to make ‘Top Gun 2,’ ” the panelist said. “But now Cunningham will be behind bars.” Anyone who doesn’t believe this, he added, “can check out the information on the Internet.”

It may have been my imagination, or lack of language skills, but most everyone in the room seemed to take a moment to think, “OK, that was more than a little weird.”

At which point the conference moderator, journalist and communications professor Evliana Berani, after letting one or two others express final thoughts, broke for lunch.

She did so fairly quickly. Like the others, she must have felt the need – for speed.

Dealing with a movie addiction may not rank high on any list of supposed emotional illnesses. But I don’t like to undergo the pain of withdrawal. That’s why I brought to Kosovo a dozen DVDs, including some shorts that I hadn’t yet seen. I figured that if my movie jones got too tough to endure, I could just pop a DVD into my MacBook and get my fix.

Which is what I just did. Not feeling at my tiptop, I slept in today. Then, after cruising the Pristina TV stations – it’s cable television so we get stations in Spanish, German, Italian, certainly Albanian and probably other languages that I can’t understand. I even caught the last half of “Cutthroat Island,” the Geena Davis-Matthew Modine pirate movie (directed by Renny Harlin, Davis’ then-husband).

It wasn’t any better than it was the first time I saw it.

So I plugged in the MacBook, pulled out a little neo-noir that I’d missed the 10 minutes it played in Spokane – at least I think it played Spokane – and inserted “Running Scared.”

I can’t believe this movie did more business. It stars Paul Walker as Johnny Gazelle, a low-level hood who, following a bloody shootout, is told by his boss, Tommy (Johnny Messner), to hide a revolver that could be traced back to him. But instead of getting rid of it, Johnny hides the weapon away in his basement, figuring that one day it will be good insurance.

Only thing is, his kid (Alex Neuberger) and the next-door neighbor, Oleg, (Cameron Bright) see him stash the distinctive chrome revolver. And the next thing you know, the kid is using it to shoot his abusive, John Wayne-loving Russian stepfather (Karel Roden). Uh-oh.

This starts a big chase. Johnny has to find the kid before anyone else does, especially Tommy, who suspects that Johnny might not have followed instructions. But then the cops, led by a particularly crooked one (Chazz Palminteri), join the hunt. As does the Russian mob, which thinks that the kid was put up to shooting his stepfather by Tommy’s crew.

Then there’s the part where Johnny’ wife (Vera Farmiga) gets a call from Oleg who says he has been kidnapped by a couple of weird people … and the less said about that sequence the better.

Written and directed by Wayne Kramer, “Running Scared” is a clever little film that begins with a cleverly shot bloody shootout and ends in a bucolic country setting. To get from one point to the other, Kramer uses every trick you can imagine – from digitally enhanced shots where you follow a bullet in slow motion to mechanically assisted shots where a cameraman is pulled up in the air to shoot a particularly impressive 360 sequence.

But Kramer displays more than just style. There’s a story here that, while hardly in “The Godfather” territory, holds together every bit as well as “Training Day,” which won Denzel Washington his Best Actor Oscar. It’s a throwback to the noirs of the 1940s, melded with a bit of ’70s splash and ’90s renivention of the whole genre.

Pretty-boy Walker is no Denzel Washington, so there’s no chance he’s going to earn an Oscar anytime soon. But grizzled and grim, seldom flashing his famous smile, Walker shows here that he can play more than just the pretty boy as he has in everything from “The Fast and the Furious” to “Into the Blue.”

“Running Straight” is a good Friday-night rental. All watching it lacked, for me, was popcorn. Ketchup-flavored potato chips, one of the vilest food nightmares ever dreamed up but which fill the grocery-store shelves in this part of Europe, just don’t make a decent substitute.

Look for it and you’ll find humor anywhere. Even, maybe even especially, in Pristina, Kosovo. Though this United Nations protectorate, working to obtain independence from Serbia, is 90 percent Albanian, that doesn’t mean that it feels an automatic kinship with Albania proper.

The Kosovars, despite their problems, at least were part of the changes that occurred during the majority of the 20th century. The Albanians, on the other hand, were for half the century mired in an isolationist, Maoist-type Communist society.

On the other hand, Kosovo is a landlocked pocket of the Balkans, unlike Albania, which has a long western coastline that fronts the Adriatic Sea – just across from Italy. The Albanian beaches, it is said, are unbelievably beautiful

So the Kosovars see the Albanians as less educated, while the Albanians see their cousins as country folk – and, of course, I’m being polite.

Here, then, is a joke as told by one Kosovar Albanian:

Q. Why are there no swimming pools in Albania?
A. Because all the Albanians who know how to swim are in Italy.

One look at the photos that I take (look below and forgive the occasional typo) will tell you that I’m no pro. Like all amateur photographers, I can take a good photo now and then. But I just don’t have the expertise, nor do I have the equipment, to make up for the crappy lighting conditions that permeate all of Pristina at the moment.

(By the way, Pristina is pronounced “Prishtina” by the Kosovars.)

For the past few days, the sun has been hiding behind the kind of cloud cover that makes the entire sky look like a field of cotton. Dark, gray, dirty cotton. And so unlike the photo of the Hotel Afa, which I took our first day here a week ago, there is no blue sky to use as a backdrop.

Which makes everything look washed out. But, then, that’s the reality. This is now jacket weather, it rained most of the weekend, and as we commence on this Monday morning, it’s hard not to feel just the tiniest bit depressed.

Then I remember: I’m 5,400-odd miles from home (look just above Greece, in the extreme southern part of what is called Serbia and Montenegro), living in a foreign city, documenting life as I see it in an area that is so far below the radar of regular America that it might as well be Burkina Faso. Or Paraguay. Or one of the Stans not prefixed with Afghani.

If someone were to ask me, “Si jeni?” (“How are you?”), I’d have to reply, “Mire, mire” (“Good, good”). And I would merely be telling the truth.

We awoke – and, for maybe the first time, I actually did sleep – this morning to the sound of steady rainfall.

I’m not sure this is a permanent change from late summer to early fall, but for the moment it’s an invitation to sit in the hotel, catch up on correspondence, do a little reading, nap, munch on the occasional snack, practice our language tapes (Italian and Spanish) and watch a bit of television.

Unlike in, say Italy, where the TV channels are filled with game shows, talk shows, sports shows, game-talk sports shows, sports-talk game shows, sports-game talk shows, not to mention soccer games and highlights, plus the various American sitcoms and TV dramas with the dialogue dubbed into Italian, we actually have access to CNN.

And one station runs uncut American movies with no commercial breaks, which over the past few nights has allowed us to watch all or part of “You’ve Got Mail,” “The Godfather, Part I” and “A Perfect Murder”).

Which is an offer than no one can refuse.

We went on a long walk through Pristina yesterday. Part of our intent was to check out an apartment that we may sublet for three weeks (it ended up seeming perfect, being centrally located and at least three times the size of our hotel room, and so could be a real possibility).

But just as important, we wanted to check out more of the city. We ended up walking down from our hotel in the southeastern hills toward the center, then north-northeast along Nene Tereze Bulevardi (yes, the good Mother Teresa was an ethnic Albanian, born in what is now the Macedonian city of Skopje, which is an hour and a half by car from Pristina).

We walked past the National Theater, checked out the National Museum of Kosovo, a three-story building that had a smallish exhibit – only the building’s ground floor was open – of pottery shards and photos of various archaeological digs around Kosovo.

Though we passed by several mosques, we were again struck by how little religion – strict religion, at least – seems to rule life in modern Pristina. At one point we walked behind a trio of teenage girls whose tight jeans, bare midriffs, jewelry and makeup attracted the eyes of any men, young and old, whom they passed. And these girls are hardly the exception.

Once again, I’m struck with how one-dimensional we tend to see Islam in the U.S. As Colin Turner wrote in his book “Islam: the Basics” (Routledge, 231 pages, $17.95 paper), “(O)ne only has to scratch the surface to reveal that Islam is no monolith: It is a vast, multifaceted entity with as many different forms of expression as there are people to express them.”