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This Issue 03/20/2008

Also in this issue

• Word on the Street
• 'N' Is For Nollywood
• Calendar
• Street Beats
• Cooking Club Dresses Up Student Dining

The birthplace of history. The wet nurse of Western culture. While we'll never know for sure, it's safe to say that early religious leaders probably meant the Balkans when they talked about the "promised land."

Who doesn't harbor some instinctual urge to travel to the Balkans - to swim upstream, to stand where our ancestors stood, to roll in the grasses that they once rolled in?

The Balkans starts a lot of wars, but they also start a lot of parties; to many, it is "the peninsula that never sleeps."

In the past, Low Brow and company have flirted, foreplayed and fingered our chins with the idea of a Balkans Spring Break. And this year we got our excuse: as of February 17th, Kosovo got its independence! You may be thinking, "Yeah, yeah, repeat 1990" (that year Kosovo first declared her independence, but everyone except Albania - Kosovo's robotic yes-man - just kept looking straight). Not this time! Twenty-seven states have pledged Kosovo-fidelity, including democracy's favorite gigolo, the U.S. It's legit! Could they have a bigger excuse to party? We had to take part, and really it's a win-win situation: we get to go to Kosovo, they get publicity from a reputable news source. We present. our 2008 Spring Break.

Let's get to know Kosovo. If you look at the Kosovo flag you will notice that the large symbol in the center of it looks like the Brooks Brothers logo (the one with the hanging pig). It places Kosovars in a moral dilemma - should they buy from Brooks Brothers and proudly wear Kosovo's logo on their shirts, or should they buy local and support their own industry?

Kosovo is 92% Albanian and 6% Serbian; in Kosovo, you are either Muslim or Orthodox Christian. There are exactly two registered Jewish families in Kosovo, as recently depicted in the moving documentary No Country for Yarmulkah Salesmen. Not to speculate, but this low Jewish-population statistic could be the reason why there are so few Kosovars at Penn.

Kosovo is 4,200 square miles with a population of about 2 million or about that of San Antonio; however only four countries recognize San Antonio's independence.

To get from Vienna to Pristina, Kosovo's capital, we had to take Air Austria. I liked it. The service was better than Continental, especially since they didn't waste your time with a dumb safety video that showcases their CEO, who himself resembles a flotation device. Also, Continental chose High School Musical as their in-cabin movie. We were excited to think that, due to the scarcity of TVs in Kosovo, the souls of Kosovar tweens have not yet been polluted by girl-power icons Zac Efron and Hannah Montana; Kosovo and Disney usually fail to see eye-to-eye. Except for maybe the medieval "theme," Kosovo is quite unlike the Magic Kingdom.