If I’m being honest, I never would have chosen to visit any country in eastern Europe if I hadn’t been assigned to Peace Corps Albania. Like most Americans, when I used to think of eastern Europe my mind conjured up black-and-white images of communist soldiers marching with eerie precision, graffiti scribbled on the walls of crumbling buildings, and–as a friend put it–“poverty and tears.” Never would I ever have expected to find so much BEAUTY in this part of the world, from the nature to the history to the culture. So now that I’m here, I’ve made it a goal to visit as many of the Balkan countries as I can: Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, as well as Greece, because there truly is some amazing stuff to be seen.

I’ve been to Kosovo only once, on a hitch-hiking journey with a friend up to the Tropojë region of…