Back in Time

 Back in Time 

 

It was a beautiful sunny day when me and my friend, decided to visit the Ethnographic Museum in Pristina. Firstly, I was a little bit stressed about how the experience is going to be, but when I saw a group of students from primary school entering the museum, I immediately started feeling much more excited about seeing everything that was inside the museum. 

Just when we entered the hallway, we could hear a strange silence which had conquered the whole place; I’m saying that silence was strange maybe because of the fact that it was the first time I visited that museum and I didn’t know exactly what was waiting for me there.  

As a person who was grown in a family where my parents used to tell me many interesting stories about the war in Kosovo, and the history of Albanians in general, I was super-excited to see different things that remained from the war, including soldiers’ clothes, bikes, and weapons. The most interesting fact was that I was able to even touch some of them, and it made me feel nostalgic for a period I didn’t even exist in. No matter how many stories I would hear, seeing those things with my own eyes, made me see everything from another perspective, and made me feel much more empathetic to every story I’ve heard until that moment. That’s why we decided to see our own culture’s pieces and sculptures. 

Seeing different pieces of Adem Jashari and his family members’ life, made me feel like I was living in the same era with them, made me feel very proud of how far they’ve gone just so today we would be able to breathe freely. It was amazing how while walking around the museum, everything was connected to each other, it looked like a puzzle was being completed. 

 The best part about it was that there were so many details that would make you think twice about every era in the past, even the ones when our grandparents didn’t exist. There were names I’ve never heard of, sculptures and faces I’ve never seen, and yet, they all made me curious to know more about each one of them. 

There were times when me and my friend, would stare at each other and say” Is this real?”, because we never expected that we would be this interested in history in general until we visited this place. Every piece we saw, made us look for another one, more and more. Some of the pieces made me feel sad about what those people have been through, while some other ones made me want to live in their era together with them. 

 

I was also fascinated with artifacts that remained from other cultures, as well. They were antique and very beautiful. But there is no doubt that you always feel connected more to everything you’ve heard stories about, so of course that the artifacts from my culture made me feel much more empathetic and prouder. 

At the end of the day, the whole visit made us see different worlds from different perspectives, and made us feel some things that we never knew existed inside of us. 

 

Erblina Shabani