In advance of the conference, young volunteers went out and about to interview a cross section of the community in Mitrovica:

Apostrophe Bar
Asimi (24), waiter

Asimi works part-time as a waiter. “I have had this job since I was very young. As with all other jobs, it was difficult to do in the beginning, but now I manage it very well. It’s not the kind of job that has a nice salary, but I like it. I have another part-time job in the water supply company, where I distribute bills.

“I have to work two jobs, because I also need to help my family. I live in the north part of the city, and in my neighbourhood we don’t have problems with neighbours -- we all speak to each other. The problem is that I cannot walk to other neighbourhoods, because Serbian refugees from other cities cause problems.

“In the future, of course, I hope it will be better and that we won’t need transport to travel home -- so we can walk without fear that someone will beat you up!”

Ardiana's Uncle
Faik Hajredini, Koshtova

Faik is from Koshtova. Close to this Albanian village, there is another village called Zupq, where Serbians live. He says that they never had ethnic problems with them; sometimes they even played together.

“In secondary school, I moved to Mitrovica, and there were Serbian students there, too. Sometimes we talked about different issues in both languages, Albanian and Serbian. I can say that we never had conflicts with Serbian students, but the police wanted to stop schooling [in the Albanian language]. Because of that, we were sometimes in trouble; we had to hide our books. In the last year of secondary school, Albanians had to take lessons in private houses, because of the changed regime.

“My first wish for people living here is to unite the city. The second wish would be for the economic situation to be better. And the third wish is, as a country, to join the European Union.”

Banjska Monastery

Banjska monastery was built from 1312-1316 on the Banjska River in the region of present-day Mitrovica. The monastery church, dedicated to St. Stephen, was built on the ruins of an older church that also contained the bishopric seat. The monastery’s founder, King Milutin, intended Banjska to serve as his mausoleum. This is directly testified by his biographer, Archbishop Danilo II, who was the first prior of Banjska. According to the same writer, the founder built Banjska based on the model of Studenica, the final resting place of Stephen Nemanja, founder of the Nemanjic dynasty and King Milutin’s great-grandfather. This is why Banjska’s architectural concept differs from the other works of King Milutin. To this effect, his absolute orientation towards the Byzantium spiritual world resulted architecturally in the adaption of concepts that were a type of late-Byzantium style, while the church of St. Stephen in Banjska was built in the Rashka architectural tradition.

Banjska was damaged for the first time during the Battle of Kosovo (1389) and later, at the end of XVII century, the church was transformed into a mosque, while a smaller Turkish fortified settlement was formed around it. On the eve of the Second World War, Banjska was conserved and returned to the Eastern Orthodox religion.

Catholic Church
Dan Pashk Dani

After living in Germany for twelve years, Catholic priest, Dan Pashk Dani, returned to Mitrovica two years ago.

The minority of Catholic Albanians living in Mitrovica is very small. Before the war in 1999, this minority was about 2,000 people. During and after the war, many Catholics moved away from Mitrovica, to places such as Croatia. As a result, this minority is nowadays a small group of approximately 80 people.

The current Catholic Church of Mitrovica was built in 1975.

According to Dan Pashk Dani, you cannot deny the fact that there are problems in the city of Mitrovica. Yet he is optimistic about the future:

“Mitrovica is a tough bone for all of Europe, but I see hope. Absolutely.”

Crystal Museum
Vjollca Meha, Director of Crystal Museum

"The Crystal Museum of Trepça was built in 1965. Since then, there has been no investment in its upkeeping, so now it is not in such a good condition.

"The new building for the Crystal Museum will be close to the Miner, and it will be just as modern as museums in Europe.

"The following crystals are dated from 1865, but we cannot say which crystal belongs to any specific year.

"In the museum there is a space for crystals from other countries, which were brought here in exchange for crystals from Trepça. We hope that we will continue to collect more crystals, because there are some from the Miner that we don’t have in the museum.

"I hope that very soon we will be in the new building and that it will look like a modern museum."

Milan

I have lived in Mitrovica for 50 years. In the past, Mitrovica was a nice place to live in. When Trepca worked, people in the town lived in happiness and harmony, but now the situation has changed. I can’t recognise anything anymore: people have changed, the city has changed. Everything has changed in ways that I couldn’t have even imagined. Streets are dirty, the economic situation is very bad, and the company that kept this town alive doesn’t work anymore.

I can remember the time when everyone lived together, when we didn’t care about nationalities, only that you were a good person, good neighbour, or a good colleague.

My first neighbour was Albanian, and lived normally -- our children were also friends with them and they grew up together. Even now, sometimes I go to visit my neighbour who lives on the south side.

The war didn’t bring any good to anyone, only that it brought us to fight people that we considered to be our friends.

Personally, I think the main reason that this city is divided is because of politicians, because they don’t care about the people who live in this city. If I had the power to change anything, I would make a New Trepca that would be stronger and more powerful than the old one. My opinion is that this New Trepca will unite this town again.

Miners' Hill
Ferdanja

Ferdane lives in the Miners Hill neighbourhood. When she was working, she had various Albanian, Serbian, and Bosnian colleagues. She said that never had problems with her Serbian neighbours.

Ferdane lives on the ground floor, with a Serbian family living on the second floor -- they live in the same house and they don’t have problems. She said, “I don’t have any problems with my Serbian neighbours ... we sometimes visit each other to drink coffee and talk.”

Rime Church

The church in the village Vinarce is considered to be very old -- some sources claim it to be even 600 years old. The documents about the origins of the church have disappeared, and thus the question to whom the church belonged -- to the Serbians or to the Albanians -- cannot easily be answered.

The fact that the front door is facing to the west indicates that the church was a Catholic church; Orthodox churches are built with the front door facing the east. Also, the name of the village, Vinarce, is related to wine, which suggests that the area was good for planting grapes and wine making. According to an old Catholic tradition, it was common to build a churches in such areas.

The Rime Church is located in an Albanian village, but it has been visited from Serbs for special Christian holidays, like Easter or Christmas.

School Director
Hajdar Shyti, Director

“In 1986, a school was created, on the basis of an earlier school in 1970, named ‘Meto Bajraktari’. At that time, we were working with multi-ethnic Albanians and Serbians.

“After 1999, we had some conversations with them, and invited them to come and work together, but there was not enough interest.

“Now our school is directly managed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. The name of the school is now ‘School for Persons with Disabilities Resource Center’.

“Special education provision is now better than ever before. We have achieved this with a lot of work through seminars and training programmes, etc. We also have a travelling teacher, who visits schools and returns with school requests. We discuss what we can do, to see if there are other children who can transfer to this school.

“We also have activities like painting, sports, etc., working with some NGOs.”