Me and my cabbie were still in Serbia. We had driven from Novi Pazar, a Muslim town in Serbia, to Raška and were now approaching the border into Kosovo. It was here that I noticed a weird info sign for four orthodox churches.

Now, you need to know that Serbia has a) plenty of orthodox churches and b) plenty of signs advertising these churches along the roads. But this sign was different, as it didn't advertise the local village church or a nearby monastery. Instead, it was promoting churches more than 100km away, i.e. not in Serbia proper. It took me a little while to process: They were referring to the churches included in this inscription. Turns out, these are the holiest of holy churches for Serbians and they are deeply tied into the founding myth of Serbia.

The Serbian Empire's core in medieval times was Kosovo. If you travel in Southern Serbia you quickly understand why: Southern Serbia is quite hilly (not great for agriculture) while Kosovo is flat and way better suited for large scale agriculture. The German historic name for Kosovo is Amselfeld (field of blackbirds) gives you an idea. It was also in Kosovo that the Battle of Kosovo took place against the rising Ottoman Empire in 1389.

Eventually, though, the Ottomans conquered Kosovo. Over the centuries a migration of Serbs (Christians) North and Muslims South took place. For roughly 200-300 years Kosovo has been majority Kosovo Albanian. In 1991, 80% of the population were Albanians and 10% Serbs. Today, after the Kosovo War, it's 95% Albanian with small hamlets of Serbians near the border.

At the border the weirdness continued. First, the Serbians did not give me a departure stamp. For them, I wasn't leaving Serbia. Just across the border, my cabbie had to tape his Serbian license plate. On the road to Mitrovica through a majority Serbian hamlet in Kosovo the streets were lined with Serbian flags. And in Mitrovica, where my driver dropped me off, he pointed to this street being Serbian while that street being Muslim. A bit I felt like being in Belfast.

An additional bus ride to Pristina and a cab ride to Gračanica took me to the Gračanica Monastery. The area has a high wall with barbed wire. The visit itself was rather quick and uneventful. It's a small Orthodox church, intimate, but not spectacular. Personally, I enjoyed the churches in and around Novi Pazar more.

The underlying problem with this inscription is that these are national and nationalistic symbols for Serbs. They contribute to the ongoing and in the past violent tensions between Kosovo Albanians and Serbs. I am not convinced that these churches should have been inscribed on the list as is.

Getting There

You can take a cab or bus from Pristina to Gračanica. The other sites seem more remote and I didn't investigate the connections.

Pristina is well connected with Skopje. Crossing the border to/from Serbia, meanwhile, is challenging. From a Serbian point of view, you are in Serbia when you visit Kosovo. Unless you entered officially via a Serbian border post, you are an illegal immigrant and cannot enter Serbia proper. When you depart Serbia, you also don't get a departure stamp. If you make plans to visit both Kosovo and Serbia, you should always visit Serbia first.

In my case, I wanted to go from Novi Pazar to Pristina. Online I found plenty of bus connections. In reality there were none. The direct road to Pristina was closed and you had to go to Raška first, change buses and cross the border there. Serbian buses will take you to the Serbian parts of Mitrovica on the edge of a Serbian hamlet in Kosovo. From there, you can take a bus to Pristina, but probably at a different bus station. As stated, running late and growing a bit frustrated, I took a cab.