“What I knew about Albania, it was a communist state,” Qassim says. “I was saying to myself, ‘Albania, that’s a communist state, we already left a communist state.’”

Qassim says he fled China in 2001 to escape persecution of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group.

Qassim was among 22 Uighurs captured near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2001, not long after the US began the war in Afghanistan.

Many facts in the case remain murky, including where exactly they were captured. Or why they spent time at camp in Tora Bora, Afghanistan. By some accounts, they were being trained as militants to fight for Uighur independence in China.

But years of court cases and an evolving position of the US government on the men, generally came to the same conclusion: They weren’t the enemies of the US or US forces.

Still, they remained locked up for years because they had nowhere to go. China considers the men terrorists and seeks to prosecute them. Few countries wanted to take them. Albania, a staunch US ally, agreed to take five Uighurs in 2006.

Qassim actually knew something about Albania, growing up in western China. Chairman Mao and Albania’s communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, forged close ties in the 1970s.

The result was that people in China heard a lot of Albania and its culture, especially through Albanian movies that were dubbed into Chinese.

“I had this idea that Albania would be a huge country because when I was young, I would see many [Albanian] movies on Chinese TV because of the strong relationship at the time,” Qassim says.

But when he arrived, Qassim says he had trouble believing he was in Albania, in part, because Tirana seemed too small to be the capital of a country.

“I looked at a map to find Albania. And I couldn’t find it. I asked people, “Can you point at Albania on the map?” and what they showed me was a tiny dot.”

The Albania that Qassim encountered had a changed a lot since the 1970s. The country had become a democracy, and it was also no longer an officially atheist state. In fact, the majority of Albanians are Muslim.

Another thing Qassim didn’t know was that Tirana is teeming with pizza parlors. He’d never even heard of pizza before he arrived, but he wandered into a pizzeria and somehow managed to order a pie — without speaking Albanian.

“It was delicious, and the owner didn’t charge me for it as a sign of respect,” Qassim says.

That first taste eventually inspired Qassim to become a pizza-maker. He now works part-time at a Halal pizzeria in Tirana.

“This isn’t a hard job, but it gives you pleasure when people enjoy the pizza you make, when they give you a tip,” Qassim says as he makes his speciality, the Mix Pizza, which is basically the works with a few regional touches: Albanian smoked beef and Bosnian sausage.

His newfound culinary craft also helped him adjust to life in Albania. For the first two years, he struggled with the notoriously difficult language despite taking classes. Once he started working at the pizzeria, Qassim says his Albanian improved considerably.

“At first it was a learning by trial. Sometimes I made mistakes. And guys would make fun of me. It was definitely a learning process,” he says in relatively fluent Albanian.

And when Qassim talks to customers, he makes a point of telling them about the history of Uighurs.

But it was the story of the Uighur ex-Guantanamo detainees that resonated with Ahmet Dursun, a friend of Bakker’s who owns another Tirana restaurant.

Dursun met the Uighurs by chance in 2007, when one of Bakker’s friend’s showed up at his Turkish restaurant to ask for directions.

Dursun invited the Uighurs in for a meal. They were able to communicate because the Uighur language is related to Turkish, And they told him their story.

“I had one of the most difficult meals of my life. When they were telling me of their experiences, it was very tragic to hear what they had gone through,” Dursun says.

Dursun decided he needed to do more than just offer hospitality. He wanted to show Albanians that the Uighurs deserved to be part of their society.

Dursun figured the best way to do that was through their tastebuds. His restaurant had a rotating special in which non-Albanians would come and cook dishes from home to raise money for a charity.

Dursan invited the Uighurs to cook, and Qassim’s veal pilaf was a hit.

“He used so many carrots, that rabbits probably went hungry that day,” Dursun recalls. “It was very tasty – delicious. It also had grilled onions. It was a mixture that I’d never seen before. Everyone enjoyed it a lot.”

Dursan also invited a TV reporter to interview Qassim and the others.

Qassim says that interview marked a turning point. Until then, he says some people were nasty to him, treating him as if he was a terrorist.

“People got to understand our plight, and from that moment on it got better,” Qassim says.

The Uighurs’ lives have improved considerably since. They no longer live in a refugee camp and lead relatively normal lives. Qassim has Albanian friends. He also has a wife here, another Uighur, and an infant daughter.

Qassim’s biggest concern now is making ends meet. He only works part-time, and the state aid he receives isn’t enough to support his new family. Qassim says it’s hard to find work — between the high unemployment and his background.

“It’s difficult when you go and apply for a job. They ask me where I’m from, and I tell them I’m an Uighur. So right away they make a connection with Guantanamo,” Qassim says.

His experience at Guantanamo continues to weigh heavily on Qassim. Three of his friends remain locked up there. “No country is willing to take them,” he says.

It’s a situation Qassim knows all too well from his four-and-a-half years at Guantanamo.

Surprisingly, Qassim doesn’t voice any resentment toward the US or the guards for his plight. He blames Pakistani forces, whom he says turned him and the other Uighurs over to the Americans for a bounty in 2007.

The Pakistanis, Qassim says, duped the Americans into thinking the Uighurs were terrorists.

“When we told the Americans we were Uighurs, the situation improved. They didn’t have any problem with us. They actually treated us quite nice. Some of our jailers would give us chocolate bars,” Qassim recalls.

Still Qassim says the conditions at Guantanamo were terrible. But he also avoids blaming anyone for the fact that he wasn’t released sooner.

“I don’t know what took so long,” Qassim says, “Maybe there were political reasons.”

Qassim, though, might be wise to avoid sounding critical of the US in Albania — an overwhelmingly pro-American country that’s hosting the Uighurs at the request of the US.

Qassim also can’t leave Albania because he’s not a citizen and doesn’t have a passport. And if he were to return to China, he would almost certainly be arrested.

It isn’t just because the central European country is landlocked.

Hungarians also aren’t known as optimists. A European Union survey once found they were Europe’s most pessimistic people.

The Hungarian song “Szomoru Vasarnap” was famously covered by Billie Holiday in the 1940s as “Gloomy Sunday.” And it was banned from BBC airwaves for years for being too morose.

Zofi Nemeth, the lead singer of Hungarian surf-pop trio, the Summer Schatzies, admits that there are plenty of reasons to be down in Hungary.

“If you’re really thinking radical, you can say that Hungary is cheap, people are idiots, you have no future,” Nemeth says.

The Summer Schatzies formed this past summer and claim to be the country’s first surf-pop band.

Nemeth, the group’s lead singer and main songwriter, says California represents something that eludes Hungary.

“We see California from here as like … [a] perfect place. No one has problems. Only we have problems,” she says.

Nemeth says she was especially inspired by the Los Angeles surf-pop group Best Coast. “It’s so silly but it’s good,” she says.

The Summer Schatzies also includes bass player Adam Lang and drummer Zoltan Horvath. They all have bands that player moodier music. The lighter surf-pop music offers an escape.

“It’s like going on a spiritual holiday,” Nemeth says. “Whenever I’m tired and frustrated, I go into rehearsal room with the guys, I always come out cheerful. All my sadness is gone.”

Romance plays an important role in their songs. But it has a Hungarian twist: it’s romance of the tortured variety. Nemeth says most of the songs are about her on-again, off-again boyfriend.

“We get apart and get back together because we cannot really get out of this circle. We always need each other. We are, like, hopeless,” she says.

It may help explain why the band’s songs seem to be both fun and a little dark at the same time.

“Hula Hoop” seems like an inherently fun song, since it’s about a hula hoop. But there’s also frustration in the lyrics, with lines like, “I’ve never seen a beach before — I want my hula hoop.”

Hungary does actually have a few beaches along its rivers and lakes, though they sometimes freeze in the winter.

The Summer Schatzies so far have put out three EPs without the benefit of a real beach. They’re planning to release their first album later this year.

Meanwhile, by last check, Nemeth and her boyfriend were still together.

“Lets hope we stay together until we die,” Nemeth says.

“Mostly, I came back because I lost everything here,” he says.

The upcoming mayoral election on October 7th, Spilic says, is about sending a message to those who killed and drove out thousands of his fellow Bosniaks 17 years ago, when Bosnian Serb forces under the command of Ratko Mladic massacred some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys.

“We want to show them that they have not accomplished their goal of ethnic cleansing here,” Spilic says.

Srebrenica lies deep inside Bosnia’s Serb-controlled entity, Republika Srpska. But Bosniaks — who are also known as Bosnian Muslims — have controlled local politics here since after the war largely because people who lived in Srebrenica before the war were, up until this election, able to continue voting easily without living in the town. But changes in election rules have made that more difficult, and because Srebrenica is now around 70 percent Serb, there’s a good chance the next mayor will be Serb.

“To Muslims, it’d be so, so so hard to live here, to stay in your own house,” says Sale Salihovic, a town sanitation worker, drinking beer with friends in an alley. “I’m really really worried.”

Salihovic was born in a nearby village. He says he escaped execution three times during the war. Then someone tried to kill him when he returned 10 years ago.

Despite the painful history and divisive election, he says relations between Bosniaks and Serbs are relatively good these days. But the economy is a big problem.

“The situation is not good about the business and work,” he says. “It is so difficult, like anywhere in the world.”

Just walking through this tiny town of 7,000, the divisions between Serbs and Bosniaks seem subtle. It’s difficult to tell who’s a Bosniak and who’s a Serb. They speak the same language — among many other indistinguishable characteristics. What is clear is that Srebrenica has seen better days.

Many shops are boarded up or vacant. Before the war, Srebrenica was a prosperous mining town with more than 30,000 people. Despite millions of dollars in aid after Bosnia’s civil war, industry is a fraction of what it once was, and jobs are scarce.

Chatting a small betting shop, Dragan Cvetinovic says times are tough.

“This is the only place you can get money — but I just don’t have luck,” Cvetinovic says, after losing another bet.

Cvetinovic used to be a mechanic, but he hasn’t had a job in six years. He’s a Serb, but he isn’t sure a Serb mayor would be best for Srebrenica’s economy.

“Even though I’m a Serb and would like a Serb to be elected, I know it means that instantly there would be fewer donations for Srebrenica,” Cvetinovic says, speculating that a Serbian mayor might have a harder time continuing to attract the millions of dollars in aid that’s come in from West over the years.

If a Serb is elected, it would likely be Vesna Kocevic, a soft-spoken accountant, and a newcomer to politics. She’s campaigning on an economic platform, calling for more investment and job creation. She says Srebrenica’s past has held it prisoner.

“I always say, it’s bad what happened. It’s pitiful. But we can’t do anything about it anymore. Don’t we have a right to create a new life?” Kocevic asks.

That new life, Kocevic says, should reflect the will of the people who currently live in Srebrenica, most of whom are Serbs.

“It’s a big punishment for those of who stayed here, that Srebrenica is always mentioned in this wartime context,” Kocevic says. “It’s hard to live with this burden. We’re always supposed to bear the guilt.”

Other Bosnian Serb leaders — including members of her own party — have made statements denying or minimizing the killings at Srebrenica. But Kocevic insists that she wants to represent all residents of Srebrenica, just not that ones who haven’t lived in Srebrenica since the war. She says that Bosniaks who do live in the town should have nothing to fear if she’s elected because Srebrenica’s has changed and is now a place where everyone’s rights are respected.

Her main opponent, acting mayor Camil Durakovic, doesn’t buy it.

“It’s all fake and fiction,” Durakovic says, adding that even if Kocevic means what she says, political bosses aren’t looking out for Bosniaks.

Durakovic survived the killings in Srebrenica and says the election of a Serb mayor would be an extension of the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s.

“We are not accepting that somebody can destroy our country, kill people, commit genocide, and legalize that. It’s not acceptable concept,” he says.

He says that an election based on Srebrenica’s current population of 70-percent Serbs wouldn’t be legitimate because thousands of Bosniaks left the town against their will. Durakovic’s supporters spent much of the summer re-registering Bosniak voters, including those who no longer live here. “You cannot forbid a victim of genocide who survived here who now lives in Sarajevo due to Genocide, coming here to be part of a political life,” he says.

During peak hours, the Bleri parking lot in downtown Pristina resembles a cross between a can of sardines and a carousel. To accommodate overflow, a small staff of young men keep about a half-dozen cars going in a slow loop in and out of the lot.

It reflects the gridlock of Kosovo’s capital each summer, when many of the 800,000-strong diaspora come home, along with their cars. In the Bleri lot, about half the cars have foreign plates. On this day, there are cars from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Great Britain, and Virginia.

Parking lot owner Blerim Shabani said around seven or eight American cars come each day, and they stand out. Not just for their license plates.

“Most of the American cars run on gasoline, not diesel. And they’re bigger,” Shabani said in Albanian.

Across town, on Bob Dole Street — right near Bill Clinton Boulevard — Albert Nehbiu runs a one-man car wash, where he washes 20-30 American-plated vehicles a week.

Many are Chryslers, Mercedes and Audis, which Nehbiu said mostly belong to Kosovo Albanians who live in the US.

“They’re probably here on vacation, “ Nehbiu said in Albanian. “Albanians are used to bringing their cars with them.”

It’s difficult to say exactly how many people bring cars over from the US. I did an unscientific survey of downtown Pristina over the course of 24 hours. I spotted 13 cars with American plates, from Florida to Alaska.

Valdrin Jonuzi, moved to the US as a boy, said his large, gas-guzzling Dodge is a away to show his love for America thousands of miles away. (Photo: Nate Tabak)

“It’s a totally American muscle. That’s all I drive. Grew up in America. I’m proud of it, and I like to represent the cars, too, worldwide,” Jonuzi said. “I drove this car all over Germany, I drove this car in Canada, Switzerland, France, Italy, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, and we’re waiting to go to Dubai.”

Jonuzi moved from Kosovo to the United States as a boy. He joined the US Army and was wounded in Afghanistan. After his discharge in 2008, he took his savings, headed to Detroit and bought his prized Charger. And it seems that where he goes, so goes the Charger — even if it’s across the Atlantic.

“It sounds pretty crazy, but I wanted to bring it because it represents our country. And you see, I have American flags everywhere on this car. I’m proud of it proud of serving. Proud of our nation, and I didn’t mind,” Januzi said, referring to the $1,200 dollars it cost each way for the car’s boat ride from New Jersey to Germany, and a host of other expenses, like insurance and gas.

“I didn’t want to rent a car. I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to bring my own car there. I’m going to bring my Dodge Charger Hemi 5.7,’ a real American muscle car — with $12-a-gallon-gas here.”

Actually, thanks to the weak euro, fuel is at a more gas-guzzler friendly $6 per gallon in Kosovo. And Jonuzi can use all help he can get since his Charger is rated at a maximum 15-miles-per-gallon in the city.

In Kosovo, brash displays of Americanness are bound to go over well. The US is revered for leading the NATO bombing campaign in 1999 and backing Kosovo’s independence.

“Our country supports everybody and helps people, you know,” Jonuzi said. “I think America stands for democracy, you know, everybody equal treated, That’s [what] we stand for. And if there’s a problem, we’re going to solve it.”

Many American cars make one-way trips to Kosovo.

Nineteen-year-old Joey Muriqi was having coffee with friends. Parked in front of the cafe, on the sidewalk, was a new Volkswagen Passat with New York plates. Muriqi’s brother in the Bronx sent it over a few months ago, and Muriqi plans to sell it.

“If you buy it for like $5,000 over there, you sell it for 5,000 euros, you make a good profit because euro is better than dollar, so you get more dollars,” Muriqi said.

But in the mean time there’s another perk of driving a car with American plates: “Girls like it more,” Muriqi said.

There may be some truth to that. A few minutes after I spoke with Jonuzi, the US Army veteran, two young women joined him in his Dodge Charger before it vroomed away.

Don’t ask Taulant Ramabaja for one of his passwords.

“Nobody who’s technical would ever ask anybody for their passwords,” the 21-year-old startup CEO told me at recent tech community gathering he organized in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. “I know technical people who broke up with their girlfriends because they asked for their Facebook passwords.”

I was chatting with Ramabaja about passwords because I was about to reveal one of my own in a very public way — which anyone who cares about internet security should never do. Not long after, I accessed the Slovenian website Trust Me, It’s Art and submitted an old password of mine, one I haven’t used in ages. It instantly appeared on an online gallery of 600 submissions.

Now, you might be wondering, why on earth would anyone do this? It’s a question I posed to the website creators.

It’s “the rush that you get when you enter your password. You find it in the gallery. It’s always staring at you. You feel vulnerable,” said Jure Martinec, who created the Trust Me It’s Art site with fellow graphic design students Klemen Ilovar and Nejc Prah in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana.

The site launched in June, born out of the students’ curiosity about what kinds of things people would submit. For now, there’s clearly a Slovenian bias, with entries like klobasa, which means “sausage.” Eventually, they hope to turn the passwords into a physical installation.

Ilovar said the idea is to make users aware that their private information isn’t all that private.

“Like Facebook and other applications, you give some information about yourself, and this is like, basically, you’re giving much more than you know,” he said. “We’re just more honest. We don’t want to use it. But this is the biggest information you can give to some other person on the internet.”

The three insist they’re not doing anything nefarious with the information, and they warn that users should not feel secure about anything submitted to the site. When I spoke them over Skype recently, they all laughed, declaring over one another, that “It’s not really safe — that was not the point. Maybe not it’s not so smart to tell that.”

All submissions are anonymous, and they’re continuously shuffled. But there aren’t any special security precautions. Ilovar says he wouldn’t mind if a hacker did exploit the passwords.

“That would be a positive reaction for us, for the page, for the project, so if anybody does that, well, we don’t support it but it would be positive thing for the project,” he said, because it would underscore just how insecure the internet is.

In fact, the website creators say wouldn’t shut down Trust Me It’s Art if a hacker were to find a way to use the passwords.

Dan Goodin, the security editor of the US tech website Ars Technica, the approach of Trust Me It’s Art’s creators is wrong-headed.

“It reminds me of somebody saying that to demonstrate and raise awareness about street crime you should take a taxi, (have it) drop you off in the middle of the most dangerous neighborhood at 3 a.m. in the morning and see if you can leave. And, you know, if you get beat up, it’ll show you how dangerous street crime can be,” Goodin said.

Any password that’s submitted to the site can be exploited by hackers easily, Goodin said.

“Hackers will cut and paste every single password that is displayed by these artists in this project and they will be trying those passwords in the future.”

In other words, submitting a real password to Trust Me It’s Art is offering hackers another tool in their arsenal for future raids.

Ramabaja, who runs the startup in Pristina, said submitting a fake password is also risky.

“Even if it’s not your password, it’s still probably, mentally, psychologically connected to what you do or to your actual password or something,” Ramabaja said. “So if someone really wanted to get your password. They could probably use that as a starting point.

This probably wouldn’t fly while, say, trying to enter the US or the European Union, but in the Balkans there’s an overarching philosophy that if an object, situation or person is broken, you should just muddle through. It’ll work out in the end. And it did. We made it across and the car eventually started. But we were in the situation to begin with because of Kosovo’s disputed status.

My friend and I were doing what’s known in Kosovo as a “stamp run.” It’s a real term used to describe a trip that starts in Kosovo, heading south into Macedonia, east and north to Serbia and then west, back to Kosovo. The sole purpose of the theoretically five-hour-trip is to get a Serbian entry stamp on a passport, which allows travel to or through Serbia directly from Kosovo, cutting down on travel time significantly. Our trip took 10 hours, probably negating the time we’ll save in our future travels.

We needed this Serbian entry stamp in the first place because Serbia still considers Kosovo its sovereign territory. It views any entry into Kosovo via its international borders or airport as an illegal entry into Serbia. So if you try to enter Serbia from one of its “administrative boundaries” (what Serbia calls its borders with Kosovo), you’ll likely be turned away.

The stamp issue dates back to when Kosovo came under UN administration after the war ended in 1999. Its among countless problems that have cropped up — especially since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 — that come back to the central issue of Kosovo existing in a purgatory of sorts.

Serbia lost Kosovo in 1999, a situation ensured by a ongoing NATO troop presence. Kosovo’s independence has the backing of the US and most of the EU. By last count, 91 of 193 UN member states recognize it.

Among those who don’t are Serbia and its ally Russia, which holds veto power on the Security Council, thus making Kosovo’s UN membership a pipe dream.

This situation is the foundation of why Majlinda Kelmendi can’t compete in the Summer Olympics as a Kosovar. Absent a UN membership, Kosovo has no solid footing for entrance into key international entities. But thanks to continued resistance from Russian-backed Serbia, Kosovo can’t partake of most of the trappings of statehood.

Phones here use one of three dialing codes — from Monaco, Slovenia or Serbia — because Kosovo can’t get a code of its own from the International Telecommunication Union. Flights to or from Pristina International Airport are pricier because they can’t fly over Serbia. And the only sure way to get international mail is to have the address include a “via Albania,” because mail often gets sent via Serbia, which just sends it back.

All of these problems could be remedied in short order if Serbia were to just recognize Kosovo’s statehood. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

There are plenty of precedents for partially recognized states to participate internationally as sovereign entities. The Palestinian Territories, whose independence is recognized by 130 UN member states, has its own, fully recognized Olympic Committee, which is sending three athletes to London under the Palestinian flag.

Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia’s national and spiritual mythos, and any Serbian leader intent on a successful career wouldn’t suggest otherwise. But Serbia’s previous government, under Boris Tadic, started removing — albeit very slowly — some of the barriers to Kosovo existing with a degree of normalcy, such as agreeing to allow Kosovo to represent itself in some international bodies with an asterisk next to its name to indicate its disputed status. But Tadic is gone, and Serbia’s new government is being led by nationalists who aren’t likely to make life easier for the like of Majlinda Kelmendi and other Kosovars.

So even as the international community’s oversight over Kosovo is slated to end in September, its pains over sovereignty aren’t likely to follow suit.

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See a slideshow of Majlinda Kelmendi training here.

Even while grappling with her sparring partner, Majlinda Kelmendi, 21, cracks a hint of a smile. But her blows are relentless as she knocks 19-year-old Nora Gjakova to the mat at their training center in Peja, western Kosovo.

“She might look calm but she’s very aggressive in the competition,” Gjakova said of Kelmendi. “And, she’s very good. So I don’t think the opponents will like to fight with her.”

Kelmendi is one of the best judo fighters in the world. She’s ranked No. 7 in her under-115-pound weight class. Her Judo skills are taking her to compete in the Summer Olympics in London later this month.

When I caught up with Kelmendi after practice, she was relaxing on a terrace at her training complex. Gone was her blue judogi uniform, replaced by a t-shirt and shorts.

The young judoka — or judo fighter — has been training here since she was 8.

“When I started judo, I saw another side of me,” Kelmendi said. “Because normally I am really quiet — I don’t talk so much — everybody who doesn’t know me, they say, “How is this possible, you are so, so, feminine, you know, so quiet, but in Judo I am just myself.”

Kelmendi plans to represent something much bigger than herself during the Summer Games in London. She’ll be the first Kosovar Olympian since her country declared independence in 2008.

“Everybody from Kosovo will watch me in the Olympics, so it’s a big responsibility, but I’m also happy for this because I will just prove that Kosovo also has good athletes,” Kelmendi said.

But Kelmendi won’t be there for Kosovo. She’s representing neighboring Albania.

“We wanted so much to go for Kosovo just because Kosovo, it’s a new country,” Kelmendi said. “We thought this is a good chance to represent Kosovo to show that we are a new country and small country, but we can do big things.”

The International Olympic Committee doesn’t recognize Kosovo because it isn’t a UN member state. In May, the IOC rejected Kelmendi’s request to compete as an independent athlete.

It said Kelmendi must represent Albania because she’s also a citizen there. Kelmendi is an ethnic Albanian and she became an Albanian citizen in order to compete in more matches. But Kosovo is home.

“We’re originally from Kosovo, we live in Kosovo, Majlinda is made in Kosovo, in this sports center. Everything was made in here,” said Driton Kuka, who’s been Kelmendi’s coach from the start. “In the end, they decided not very good solution for us, but I hope this will be extra motivation for us to achieve a good result in London.”

Kelmendi’s Olympic conundrum is all too familiar for her coach. He had hoped to qualify as a judo fighter for Yugoslavia in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. But in the early 90s, thousands of Kosovo Albanians were forced from their jobs under the policies of Slobodan Milosevic.

And Kuka was kicked off the Yugoslav Olympic team. Yugoslavia was ultimately banned from the Olympics due to UN sanctions over the war in Bosnia. Athletes from the former Yugoslavia were allowed to compete independently, but for Kuka, it was too late.

“In that case, I lose my Olympics and I lose my career,” Kuka said And I think, after 20 years, my athlete, which is Majlinda, she will continue when I stopped.”

And Kelmendi has high ambitions for her Olympic debut.

“I mean, ‘gold,’ it’s a really big word, but yeah, I’m going there for a medal because I have worked too much,” Kelmendi said. “I have sacrificed too much. Not just me. Our coach, our federation. We have worked too hard.”

If Kelmendi does win a medal it will also be a very big deal for Albania because it would be the country’s first since it began participating in the Olympics 40 years ago.

Kelmendi said as Albanian from Kosovo, she’s proud to represent Albania the state. But she’s still frustrated that the question of her country’s political status is looming over the story of her own athletic compromise.

“I just want to be from Kosovo,” Kelmendi said. “I don’t want more of these questions when I go into a competition: ‘What’s this? Sometimes you’re Albania sometimes you’re Kosovo,’ and then all the time you have to explain the same thing. This is really not good.”

*A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that athlete Majlinda Kelmendi was 12-years-old. Kelmendi is 21. We regret the error.

Twenty years after the beginning of the Bosnian war, Ratko Mladic went on trial Wednesday at The Hague. The former Bosnian Serb general was arrested last year in Northern Serbia after years as a fugitive. He’s accused of genocide, and crimes against humanity, including the massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995.

Yet some in Serbia’s far-right consider Mladic a hero, and they continue to pay him tribute.

When Mladic turned 70 this past March, the ultranationalist group Nasi, which means “ours” in Serbian, celebrated in Novi Sad. There was a birthday cake with candles, a toast and a new graffiti campaign called “Generalizacija.” It’s a play on the word, “Kalifornikacija,” the Serbian name for the American TV series “Californication.”

“We put up a lot of graffiti with his face and the word ‘Generalizacija’ to show that after the arresting of General Mladic, we still think he’s a Serbian hero,” said Igor Marinkovic, one of Nasi’s leaders.

“When we support General Mladic, we don’t support some kind of monster man who ordered killings. We believe he’s innocent and we hope that he’s going to show in The Hague tribunal that he isn’t responsible for any crimes in Bosnia.”

But some in Novi Sad don’t agree. Novi Sad is the largest city in Vojvodina, Serbia’s most ethnically diverse province. Andrea Jerinic was troubled when Nasi created an elaborate mural devoted to Mladic on the side of an apartment building.

“That’s not graffiti art,” she said. “That’s something that calls for hatred, intolerance, and for killing people.”

Jerinic is a youth leader in the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, and her party decided to paint over the Nasi mural.

“We didn’t want to allow that kind of organization to spread their ideas. Actually, we believe that Ratko Mladic is a sign of something really bad and evil because of his not heroic deeds.”

The Social Democrats and Nasi have been engaging in a paint tug-of-war over the mural for months, with the Social Democrats covering it up, and Nasi repainting it.

After the last cover-up, Nasi burned a provincial flag and delivered it to the party headquarters. Jerinic was targeted personally.

“They threatened me,” she said. “They threatened that they will kill me, they will rape me, and I don’t know, set me on fire.”

Jerinic said that just made her more determined. And for the moment, the Social Democrats have prevailed. You don’t see Mladic on the wall, though there are a few nationalist slogans.

Nasi seems to be focusing on smaller Mladic tributes, though one on a nearby building was defaced. Someone added an expletive to cover part of some graffiti that read “Ratko Mladic, General.”

Still, Jerinic said she’s frustrated that many people don’t seem to care one way or the other.

Mihailo Eror, a student at the University of Novi Sad, said he doesn’t think the Nasi graffiti is a big deal.

“Those guys have a right to their own opinion, so, I don’t want to get involved.”

But Eror added that Mladic is a thing of the past.

“I think Ratko Mladic was arrested one year ago, and many people in Serbia forgot things about Mladic very fast.”

Still, some in Serbia aren’t content to leave it at that. TKV is the pseudonym of a Belgrade street artist, Serbia’s equivalent of Banksy. Her cheeky stenciled designs seem to be just about everywhere in Serbia. They often appear on the same walls adorned with ultranationalist graffiti.

“If you look at what nationalists do, it gives them the image that there are a lot of them everywhere and it’s not like that. They are not the majority.”

TKV and others have fought back by appropriating right-wing graffiti. She added a bindi to the forehead of a Vladimir Putin graffiti done by a Nasi supporter. In Belgrade’s outskirts, another artist turned Mladic into a vampire.

“It’s like a rebellion,” according to TKV. “It’s like saying, you cannot force us to take this crap any more. It’s everywhere, you know.”

TKV’s frustration comes through in her latest work, a stencil of Peter Finch’s character from the 1976 film, “Network.”

The caption reads, “I want you to get mad.”

Irish rock music in the heart of Serbia is what the Belgrade-based band, Orthodox Celts plays.

Their tunes are all in English, but they carry a uniquely Serbian imprint.

In a packed, smoke-filled club in Nis, just about everyone is hoisting a pint as the Orthodox Celts take the stage. They’re chanting the chorus to one of the band’s most popular tunes, “The Drinking Song.”

This isn’t some Irish standard. “The Drinking Song” is straight from Belgrade. It whips the crowd of 20-somethings into what resembles a massive brawl. Though no one seems to mind.

“Maybe it’s a little bit weird, but when we say Irish music I really think of it as my music,” said lead singer Aleksandar Petrovic. On stage, he goes by the name Aca Celtic. Petrovic said Celtic and Serbian music have a lot in common. They share rhythms, and then there are the lyrics themselves.

“The themes that Irish people sing about have the same story, the same messages as our old ethno and folk songs, hard things that are interpreted in lyrics in so optimistic ways. And that’s something people in Serbia can recognize and find themselves in it. To talk about hard times but in some kind of, in a weird way, totally cheerful,” Petrovic said.

“Far Away” is just that sort of cheerful dark song. Petrovic said he wrote it imagining a man fleeing war in the former Yugoslavia. The man goes to the US in search of the American Dream. Instead he finds himself stuck and broke.

“When you think deeply about it, it’s not the story of a Serbian who went somewhere,” Petrovic said. “It’s also the story of an Irish immigrant who went to America. It’s also the story of any immigrant who went to America who never made alive his dream.”

While the Orthodox Celts draw lyrical inspiration from Serbia, Petrovic’s vocals do sound kind of Irish. Petrovic said it’s not intentional. He said a few years ago he received a letter from a professor of linguistics at the University of Illinois.

“He claimed the accent I am singing in is some kind of very rare north Dubliner accent, which I didn’t know, of course, and that was a real compliment from someone who knows what he’s talking about.”

But perhaps a bigger compliment for Petrovic is that the Orthodox Celts have inspired a few younger bands in Serbia to take up Celtic music.

Like the Irish’s Stew. The band is fronted by Bojan Petrovic, who’s 26. No relation to Aleksandar Petrovic. Tin whistle-player Bojan is also the Orthodox Celts’ newest member. When he first heard the band 10 years ago, he didn’t realize they were Serbian.

“It was really strange, and I was like, ‘Is there a possibility for someone to play that kind of music in Serbia – the music that I really like?’” Bojan Petrovic asked. “I could not believe it.”

To Aleksandar Petrovic, it’s not a huge leap. He said human experience, not nationality, is the heart of Irish music.

I don’t have to be Irish to be Irish. And of course, you don’t have to be Serbian to be Serbian. You just have to be a man, Petrovic said.

Americans won’t have to wait long to get a taste of the Orthodox Celts. The band plans to tour the US next year.

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Kosovo 2.0, the magazine I work for in Pristina, published a piece in December showing that the impoverished Balkan state has a debt problem. Getting it is too hard.

Let’s say you’re a Kosovar and want to buy a car. Assuming you don’t have the 20,000 euros in cash, you’ll probably need a loan. Luckily there are plenty of banks; plus you’re not worried. You have a steady job and good credit. No problem, right? Well, as long as you have collateral — collateral to the tune of 230 percent. Meaning that you’ll need to put up 46,000 euros worth of something like a home or a few other cars just to get that loan. It brings a whole new meaning to the world repo. And then once you get that loan, you’re looking at an interest rate in the double digits. They average around 14 to 16 percent.

The situation doesn’t exactly lend itself to fluid credit in Kosovo’s economy. Apply the same thing to mortgages and business loans, and it’s pretty easy to see how economic activity could be moving much more vigorously under different circumstances. True, Kosovo’s projected 4 percent GDP growth this year is high enough to make your average EU finance minister swoon. But when you’re coming from the bottom of Europe’s economic totem pole, just a notch above Moldova, 4 percent doesn’t seem as impressive.

Kosovo’s credit situation stems from the perceived risk. While the rate of bad loans, 4 percent, is the lowest in region, the creditors see the country as a risky place economically and politically. News like last year’s unrest in the predominately Serb north of the country creates the impression that Kosovo isn’t the safest place to be lending money, even if Pristina’s crime rate is often compared to those of Scandinavian capitals. It also doesn’t help that fewer than 100 states recognize Kosovo as an independent state, even if the US and most of the EU do.

The government, at least, has started selling bonds for the first time. It reportedly sold about 74 million euro worth of them in January.

Still, 60 percent of Pristina’s budget comes from duties levied on goods coming into Kosovo. In essence, the state largely funds its operations through the enormous trade deficit: Kosovo produces and exports very little, and imports a lot.

Tax revenues on personal incomes and businesses are picking up but still make up a relatively small piece of the pie.

While much of Kosovo’s economic future is tied to the fate of massive privatizations of the state telecom company and power grid, some homegrown businesses are moving forward in innovative ways.

The large community of techy-savvy young people has given rise to some successful IT outsourcing outfits. And the past year has seen the rise of organic homegrown artisan jams and juices that, according to my tastebuds, could compete in an international market. I just wonder how much more Kosovo could see with a more robust and accessible credit market.

If Kosovo’s economy is on the upswing, it’s news to the Krasniqis.

Ardian Krasniqi, his wife and their three small children live with his parents in a modest apartment just outside Pristina. Ardian was the breadwinner until he lost his construction job two months ago.

Now he’s part of the estimated 45 percent of Kosovars out of work. Those with jobs aren’t much better off. Wages here average about $300 to $400 per month.

Ardian used to work in Germany. He came back to Kosovo to start a family and build a life here.

“I regret it because I’m responsible for the children,” Ardian says. “They’re experiencing the consequences.”

Ardian’s mother, Azemine, pipes in from the kitchen at this point. She says Ardian’s wife makes 150 euros a month working in a kindergarten kitchen. While Azemine and her husband collect 120 euros from their pensions.

All told, seven people are living on less than 400 dollars a month in a place where milk can cost more than in the US. Ardian says the family only gets by because his sister sends them money from Austria. She’s a doctor there.

“We have it hard. If it weren’t for my sister, it would be impossible,” he says.

Each year, Kosovo’s Diaspora sends home more than $650 million, mostly from Germany and Switzerland. And that money is hugely important here, with foreign aid on the decline.

In fact, remittances and government spending are the main reasons the International Monetary Fund says Kosovo’s economy is among the fastest growing in the eurozone.

But it’s still not good enough, says Agron Demi, who runs a think tank in Prishtina. “Kosovo has more than 40 percent unemployment. In order to just have a decrease by half, the unemployment, we need economic growth by at least 10 percent a year … like China, so this growth doesn’t mean anything to Kosovo,” he says.

Subtract government spending and those remittances, and there’s not a whole lot driving economic activity in Kosovo. Still, Bernard Nikaj, a top official in the ministry of trade and industry, says the economy is moving.

“There is improvement. It’s still not at the level we want it to be, I think, but we’re working towards that goal,” Nikaj says.

The goal is being a self-sustaining economy and Nikaj insists that it is slowly starting to happen thanks to reforms aimed at making Kosovo more business friendly.

Ermal Meta manages his family’s construction company in Pristina. He says revenue grew nearly 15 percent last year. Meta is driving an old Hyundai van to a government-sponsored business park in Drenas outside the capital. His company is building new offices and a factory there.

“Well, Drenas is a very good thing for us,” Meta says. “Because our business required much more space than we had. So this will be an opportunity to expand our business.”

The business park offers uninterrupted electricity, running water, and highly subsidized rent. It’s the first of its kind since the 1999 Kosovo war, but today there’s one big problem. Snow from a recent blizzard is blocking every entrance.

“What can I say? Thanks God our business isn’t open here yet, otherwise …” Meta says.

Companies here face bigger obstacles than a mound of snow, though. Meta says the cost of doing business remains high because Kosovo produces very little.

“Aluminium we take from Greece. Plastic for windows, we take from Germany, and steel we import from Italy, Bulgaria … Serbia sometimes. That’s why we don’t have cash. This is the main problem. Every raw material is imported from outside ….” Meta says.

His construction company is building a factory to produce light steel to lower their dependence on pricey imports. But Kosovo bank loans come with steep interest rates.

“The interest rate is 11 … the lowest you can get … up to 20 percent,” Meta says.

He says he’s trying to stay positive. “I mean, do I have another choice? It’s natural law- countries … people do evolve. That will happen with Kosovo too.”

But when remains to be seen. Kosovo’s economy could hit some harder times if growth slows in Germany and Switzerland. Then remittances from Kosovo’s Diaspora could follow suit.

There’s no beachfront property on the Mediterranean but the country’s got the largest fresh water lake in central Europe, Lake Balaton.

And there’s plenty of mineral water too from all the hot springs scattered around the country.

Bubbly water’s on the menu in just about every café and restaurant.

The fizzy stuff caught on here back in the 1800s.

Ever since, the local version of a wine spritzer called a fröccs has been popular.

These drinks are cheap too!

So can you name the country where seltzer is king?

The answer the central European nation of Hungary which is famous for traditional delicacies like paprika and goulash. And to wash it all down, Hungarian prefer their water carbonated and fizzy as Nate Tabak reports from Budapest.

At Kadar Restaurant in Budapest, you can be pretty sure of two things. You’ll leave with a full belly. And you’ll fill up numerous glasses of seltzer.

Each table has one, if not two, plastic seltzer dispensers – the kind with old-fashioned nozzles. The seltzer helps wash down hearty Hungarian staples like roasted goose leg.

Sandor Orban, who owns Kadar, said regulars don’t bother to ask. As soon as they sit down, they fill themselves a glass of what Hungarians know as “szoda.”

They drink so much of the stuff, Kadar goes though nearly 500 bottles a week. At about a quarter a glass, szoda isn’t a bad deal, either.

According to Orban, foreign visitors often aren’t sure what do with the dispensers, which are staples of Hungarian life.

“At first they’re a little surprised — they don’t understand” he said. “And then they try. You know, they play with it a little bit. They figure it out.”

But Orban covers the tables in plastic just in case they don’t.

The szoda at Kadar is hardly a novelty. Seltzer dispensers are everywhere in Hungary. At restaurants, bars, and in homes, it’s hard not to find some szoda.

Orban traces it back to the early years of communist Hungary. He said the wine was so bad in the 1940s and 50s that seltzer was only way to make it drinkable.

But Seltzer actually goes back further in Hungary. In the 1800s, a priest and scientist named Anyos Jedlik pioneered a way to produce carbonated water on a commercial scale. To Hungarians, Jedlik is seltzer’s founding father.

Just outside Budapest, in Delegyhaza, the fizzy tradition is very much alive at the mom-and-pop owned Szoda Kiraly, or Soda King.

The process is very simple. A hose sends carbon dioxide into a metal chamber, and there it mixes with tap water.

The Soda King himself is Gabor Mozsolics, a former flight attendant. He’s adjusting the pressure on bottle of szoda to get it just right.

“If it’s very high pressure,” Mozsolics said, “it’s very dangerous.”

Last year, Mozsolics and his wife sold more than 100,000 liters out of their family home. Refillable plastic dispensers are the bread and butter of their business, and people here put them to good use, making froccs – or Hungarian spritzers.

Tamas Soros makes a hazmester or house master froccs at Baldaszti’s Grand in Budapest.

“Every combination’s got another name, for example, kisfroccs, nagyfroccs, little froccs, big froccs,” Soros said, rattling off a list of froccs.

There’re at least 16 kinds of frocks, each corresponding to a precise mix of seltzer and wine.

“It’s a fresh, fresh drink. The Hungarian people really like it,” Soros said.

Tamas Fricz, who’s sitting at the bar, said he drinks froccs every day in the summer.

“You can get more power from it,” Fricz said. “If you’re tired, it’s a very fresh drink.”

But Fricz, who’s 21, says plain seltzer is the drink of grandfathers. Hungarians his age don’t have much of a taste for it, though he’s not quite sure why.

“I don’t. Maybe because of the marketing?”

But Mozsolics, the Soda King, said he’s not having trouble marketing his seltzer.

“It’s not about who’s a businessman or a bachelor. Everybody drinks it,” Mozsolics said.

And as a board member of the Hungarian Sodamakers’ Association, he knows a thing or two about the seltzer market. According to association figures, 66-percent of Hungarians drink seltzer.

The Soda King says that leaves plenty of room for the seltzer business to grow.

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Pallai runs the cafe at Massolit Books. The San Diego native is the son of Hungarian immigrants. He moved to Budapest to rediscover his roots more than three years ago. It’s the complete reverse of what many of his Hungarian peers have done or now plan to do.

“They often are completely shocked by my decision to come back here and to pursue citizenship and settle back in the home country,” Pallai said. “Most Hungarians are looking abroad.”

The economy here is dreary, and many are souring on the center-right government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Critics say the new constitution and new laws are chipping away at Hungary’s democratic foundation. The result?

“The anecdotal evidence is quite overwhelming,” said Istvan Rev, professor of history and political science at Central European University. “Everybody is talking about leaving Hungary and everybody knows somebody. Whole families, groups of friends who are leaving together. It’s a real exodus.”

Rev says it hasn’t been like this since 1956, when 200,000 people fled Hungary in the wake of the failed revolution, crushed by the Soviets.

He says things aren’t as bad now. But Hungarians increasingly feel that the promise of democracy, which came in 1989, is disappearing.

“People think that the hopes that the country embraced around ’89 about a brighter, more dignified, more human future, could not be taken seriously,” Rev said.

Count Sophie Orban among them. Orban, who isn’t related to the prime minister, is moving to Portugal at the end of February. The English teacher is fed up with Hungary’s shift to the right.

Sophie Orban (Photo: Nate Tabak)

Case in point is the recent rise of a far-right ultranationalist party — Jobbik. It’s known for its anti-Roma, anti-Semitic and anti-Gay rhetoric – and it recently called for Hungary’s exit from the EU. A new poll ranked Jobbik as the third-most-popular political party in the country.

Sophie Orban says the final push for her was the treatment of her sister, who’s gay.

“It was something that even before theoretically bothered me, but when it was my own sister who was, threatened with physical violence, or you know, being spat on or whatever … these are things that happened,” Orban said. “It’s not something that sort of cannot bother you.”

Orban says it speaks to a much larger problem.

“It’s not something I tell people … like I want to leave Hungary because many people are homophobic,” Orban said. “That’s just part of this whole attitude that many people have here, I think, which is, one of intolerance.”

Nikola Draskovic (Photo: Nate Tabak)

“Hungary was at that time really, lets say, it was really going up … upside … and the economy was really good … they had money … you could see the future,” Draskovic said.

Draskovic became a Hungarian citizen, but he now says to anyone back in Serbia who’s thinking of moving here: don’t come.

Draskovic plans to go to Germany, where his mother now lives.

But the Hungarian government isn’t just standing by as young people leave. It’s launched a PR campaign to encourage them to stay put.

This slick video is called “Everything Ties Me Here.” It looks like a film trailer. A young man resists the temptation of a job in Britain and opts for a civil service fellowship in Hungary. He and his girlfriend hit some hard times. But the story has a happy ending.

As for Hungary, growing numbers here aren’t willing to stick around to see how this one ends.

Thousands of Hungarians have taken to the streets to protest, saying their government is turning its back on democracy, and the protests have a soundtrack.

One protest song has simple refrain: “I don’t like, I don’t like, I don’t like the system.” The tune hit Youtube this past fall, and it quickly became an anthem for a grassroots opposition movement. It’s directed against Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling party Fidesz, which dominates parliament.

“After the government got into power, it became clear that all the measures that they did were one by one anti-democratic and unjust,” said the singer, Dorottya Karsay, a 26-year-old activist.

Karsay and other critics say the Fidesz-led parliament has tightened controls on the courts, the media and the central bank. Fidesz maintains these measures are the final step in Hungary’s transition from communism to democracy, which began in 1989. But Karsay doesn’t see it that way.

“I was the first generation that grew up after communism, but I know how my parents grew up and I know how they lived, and how they had to silence their opinions, and I don’t want this country to be like that again,” Karsay said.

Silencing is just what the government is trying to do, according to a Hungarian gangsta rapper who goes by the name Dopeman. (His real name is Laszlo Pityinger.) In one song, Dopeman recites parts of the Hungarian national anthem, while a video shows scenes from an anti-government protest. Most of the song can’t be aired on the radio. Dopeman takes aim at Hungary’s political establishment using blunt, profane terms.

“It’s like blowing up a bomb,” he said, adding, “I’m attacking everybody, the whole political elite and everybody else in position.”

But the political establishment appears to be fighting back. Prosecutors are investigating Dopeman on suspicion of dishonoring a national symbol, Hungary’s national anthem.

So far, the attention doesn’t seem to have hurt the rapper; his video has gotten more than 600,000 views on Youtube.

But Dopeman isn’t the only one getting some government pushback.

A music video, called “Merry Christmas, Hungarian Democracy” features two reporters for the Hungarian online news site, Index, singing and dancing through empty halls of parliament. It’s light-hearted political satire, but it takes aim at some serious issues, including Hungary’s sinking currency and its economic woes. In one line, the reporters sing,

“Don’t make a sound, freedom is all around. While the forint goes up and down, and the IMF gets around.”

Government officials were not amused, said Index political correspondent Gergo Planko.

“We were banned from entering the parliament until we can provide some kind of guarantee that we will never insult the dignity of the house again.”

Planko said that’s an absurd order.

“It’s clear we don’t need to apologize for anything and we need to stress that is part of our job.”

Video: “I don’t like the system” (includes profanity)

Video: DopeMan’s BAZMEG! (includes profanity)

Video: “Merry Christmas Hungarian Democracy” (includes profanity)

The Belgrade band performed in Kosovo’s capital Pristina last week.

That may have been the first time a Serbian band performed in Pristina since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999.

Nate Tabak reports that perhaps the most remarkable thing about the show was how normal it seemed.

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