First, India brought you the Hitler cafe, then Croatia brought you Hitler sugar. Now, America's Kosovo brings you Adolf Hitler himself. The text below is from a recently discovered travelblog of an adventurous young British tourist and Balkan enthusiast named Ed Alexander. He may be on the clueless side, but don't miss a single observation he cluelessly makes, all the while defaulting to the Albanian-slash-terrorist-slash-State Department misspelling of Kosovo ("Kosova"). This takes place in southern Mitrovica, a town divided by a river into a multi-ethnic North, and a violently "purified" Albanian South:
We crossed over into the Albanian part of town and decided to try to fulfill a plan we'd been talking about for the last couple of days. When I was in Belgrade earlier in my trip, my kind host Sasa had recounted a story about a man who owns a restaurant, used to be in the Kosova Liberation Army and believes he is Adolf Hitler incarnate...
As we payed up [for the taxi] we looked through our window and our glances were met b[y] the stern glare of Adolf Hitler looking through the restaurant's window as he pulled back the net curtains. This could not be real surely? Were my eyes playing tricks on me? Apparently not, and as I looked at Ray and Pascal it seemed we were all thinking the same: This was a surreal experience beyond any others we had previously lived. We were walking into a restaurant in which stood history's greatest villain. The man whose name is synonymous with the greatest sins known to man. The man who had apparently been dead for over sixty years but it now seemed had been hiding away, keeping himself to himself in Mitrovica.
It was a seedy little restaurant with dark wood panels on the wall, upon which were hung photos of the proprietor from when he served in the UCK [Kosovo Liberation Army]. They showed him with another fellow who looked like a member of the Taliban in a red jeep which had been converted to carry a gun on the back...The man shown in the photos sits at a table across the room from us, glancing untrustingly at us as we ordered our drinks from the waitress. There is another waiter and a cook who pokes his head out into the restaurant every now and again. They all seem very nervous by our presence, but this is not surprising seeing as the place is hidden in a little backstreet and is meant only for locals. We had just turned up in the back of a taxi, speaking in English and given what we were faced with we too were also acting weirdly.
Ray and myself are trying to keep straight faces as our lower jaws quiver, while Pascal seems to look scared by the place he finds himself. How can I not laugh though, this man does not just have a resemblance to Hitler, he is a replica of him, or a clone, or maybe he actually is Hitler. My mind goes off for a walk, I start to wonder whether Hitler fled Berlin in 1945 and traveled down to Kosova to hide away for some time...
The lights have gone off and the German music has slowed down and drifted out. It's a power cut. The waitress has come over to sit with us, and has started talking to us. She keeps grinning at us in a somewhat inane way. What does she want. After a while she gets up and Ray tells us that she'd been stroking his leg under the table. Then he has to cut off suddenly as she returns...She's being really blatant now with her seduction techniques towards Ray, and he just looks confused. One moment she's telling him how he's so handsome, but then the next she is saying how she hates all Serbs and hopes they all die...
The lights come back on, the tape player jumps back into action and the music begins again. The waitress brings our food over and then sits down again. She's like a crazy teenager as she flirts with Ray, while he remains the gentleman, offering polite replies which mask the unease he now feels too. As all of this is transpiring every so often Adolf Hitler looks across at us. He spotted our cameras when we took some photos and send the waiter over to tell us not to. He knows our game and is making sure we don't get an opportunity to get a picture of his face.
Some other customers enter and it's clear that they're locals to the place as their give the Nazi salutes to Hitler. Yes, it's time to go, we've seen enough so we ask for the bill. It's not a normal receipt though, that would have been too normal. Instead it's got a little Swastika just for effect.
Deciding that it would be our only chance, we asked the waitress if she would ask Hitler if we could have a photo with him, and she came back with the reply that it would cost each of us €5. Forget it Adolf, there's no way we're giving you any extra money.
Saying our farewells to the waitress, leaving her to rue what might have been with Ray, [we] left 1941 Germany to reenter modern day Mitrovica...Going past a lovely looking mosque, we got down to the market, doing some browsing and speaking to the friendly vendors. They really warmed to Ray, several of them repeating the phrase "I love America". Well, it looks like this is the one place on earth where people will willingly admit this, and even more strikingly, in the shadow of a mosque.
Yes, this is who loves America. A dubious endorsement indeed. Everywhere else, we are hated for trying to beat back jihad. In Kosovo, they love us for enabling it. As the marquis of a hotel with a Statue of Liberty replica on its roof reads: "Victory."
Meanwhile, don't be fooled by that "love" for America; it's waning fast:
In many areas young Kosovo Albanians are being converted to the Wahabist faction, and are highly visible in their telltale short haircuts, beards, and ankle-length pants. As well, many Arabs are present from the Middle East and France....Moreover, anti-Western jihadist sermons are now a regular feature at many of the new mosques. Western military intelligence officials have stated that the findings of their investigations into the jihadist terror networks is routinely ignored or blocked by NATO, UN and US officials.
In fact, here's a close-up from that "Victory Hotel":
The American flag is upside-down.
Just a relevant reminder:
Bali i Kombetar, the Albanian NAZI party insignia on Pristina wall, 2006. Bali i Kombetar was a volunteer Kosovo Albanian Nazi organization formed in 1939 and reported of by Himmler to Hitler as the most elite of Kosovo Albanian Nazis that have killed and expelled thousands of Serbs and Jews in WWII. Today, this Albanian Nazi organization is freely flourishing under the protection of NATO troops.
Photo credits: upside-down American flag and the "Bali i Kombetar" sign by Russell Gordon