Below us apartment building walls and tin kiosks were plastered in layers of election posters. Not one of them was intact. They had all been torn, or plastered over, or defaced. I still could not remember which party was which. In the south there were new posters announcing Sunday's protest of the war veterans: this one displaying a map of greater Albania.
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The next morning elderly people closed and shook their umbrellas as they entered the university to vote. Cars decorated in ribbons and flowers were parked outside of cafes, and gunfire celebrated more weddings. A small crowd gathered at the bridge in the north, waiting and looking south. Reporters were everywhere, and KFOR had occupied the Culure Center again. French soldiers aimed enormous camera lens at both sides. It felt like the old days.
In the south about half of the protesters were dressed in their football team's green and black in preparation for the championship game that evening. About half the crowd marched towards the park, but the other half split off and walked purposefully to the bridge. They chanted “UCK” and threw stones, and we thought that KPS or KFOR had set off tear gas, but this turned out to be fireworks from the other side. Rocks were thrown from the other side too, and a short burst of automatic gunfire sent KFOR into their tanks behind the Center. Most of the crowd in the south seemed happy and eager. A lot of people brought their small children to watch. I didn't recognize a lot of people because they had come from out of town for the protest. They tried hard to avoid stepping in the new flowerbeds that had been planted to welcome attendees of last week's “Cities in Transition” conference. We might have all come for a free concert in the park, except that a free concert would never have brought as many attendees. I was surprised by how many people were smiling and pleased. Ecstatic teens drove through the streets waving green and black flags, shouting, and honking their horns. Now the security would be higher around the bridge again, and things would be a little worse than they had been a few days before.
I figured that UNICEF ambassador Alyssa Milano's scheduled photo shoot on the bridge would be canceled. I never watched that television show when I was young, but I knew people who did. The cafes did a brisk business of old men and the security personnel of every organization in Kosovo, talking about what had and hadn't happened. The sky cleared, and they sat in the sun drinking macchiatos and smoking cigarettes.
