This steep flight of 233 steps leads up to the suburb known as Dragodan (its old, Serbian, name) or – more recently – Arbëria. Especially if you’re carrying bags, it’s not an easy feat without a rest (though the cafe, PI, is on hand half-way up just for that purpose!). At the top you have a great view of the city spread out below you.
This is the access route to Prishtina’s most affluent neighbourhood (not including the out-of-town gated communities) with some accompanying good quality restaurants. Many embassies are located here and diplomats live near their offices. When rubbish accumulated alongside the steps a few years back it made this a natural site for an expat clean-up campaign. What happened next could be a parable of international interventions of all kinds – the neatly cleared area was tagged with a sign which said ‘Area cleared up by internationals from [name of organisation]’. Misunderstanding the implications, households nearby took this as a notification that any litter in the area would continue to be cleared and the rubbish returned in even greater quantities…
