BREZOVICA, AN ABANDONED SKI CENTER
42.181612,21.032574 / Kosovo / Sharr Mountains National Park
Brezovica from "breza" (Serbian) / "mështekna" (Albanian) which means birch (Latin: Betulla alba).
I spent my childhood in this place. It's where I learned to ski in the '80s. Everything looked so sexy back then: the white or pastel pink lipsticks, the palm hairstyles, fluo lip balm, and colorful ski clothes.
I was very excited to return to Sharr in the summer, after 15 or maybe even 17 years. And I was saddened to see the state of the place. Basically, nothing has changed: the same buildings, the same ski lifts, but everything has aged, fallen into disuse, invaded by corrosion, with broken shutters and windows.
The problem with the Brezovica Ski Center is that it sits in the southeast of Kosovo, but the region belongs to Serbia. In the small village of Shtërpce (Albanian) / Štrpce (Serbian) and the surrounding areas, the Dinar (Serbian currency) is still used. Kosovars have no rights to use the center, and Serbians have neither the money nor the people to run it.
As a result, the Ministry of Trade and Industry of the Republic of Kosovo decided to sell the ski center to investors.
As I left that desolate place, I felt a profound sorrow welling up inside. It was as if a piece of me had faded away along with it. I came to realize that I might never encounter that cherished "Madeleine de Proust" again, no matter where my travels lead. I was torn between holding Proust accountable for his deceptive charm and casting blame on society for its unsettling direction of change.
Anyway, I was glad to see that there was still some life: some birds I couldn't identify, some stray dogs...
And then I also saw an Albanian shepherd with his more than 700 sheep and his beautiful Illyrian sheepdog, whose breed name is Sharr Dog (Albanian: Qeni i Sharrit) / wikipedia article / Old youtube documentary in Croatian
