I took a quick trip to check out this small Albanian (or rather Kosovar) enclave within Serbia. It's Preševo and the surrounding areas. The only reminder that I haven't actually left the country is the police cars constantly zooming back and forth.

Almost 90% of Preševo's residents are ethnic Albanians. It's like a parallel world, totally different from the rest of the country. There's a younger generation that speaks only Albanian. If you're lucky, they also speak English, but luck doesn't always come through. Older folks usually speak Serbian or at least learned it in school, but it's been removed from the curriculum now. For university, people go study in Kosovo or Albania. All signs and directions are in both languages. Even on Google Maps, addresses are often "rruga" instead of "ulica". Ads are usually only in Albanian.

After Yugoslavia fell apart, there were attempts to break away from Serbia. They held a referendum in 1992, but Belgrade declared it illegal. Then in 1999, a rebel group with the grandiose name "Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac" became active, but by summer 2001 the conflict was stopped. Today there's a monument to the rebels in the city center. Serbian activists tried to demolish it with bulldozers, but police shut that down. It didn't stop Albanian protests, but things didn't escalate beyond that.

Outsiders don't visit Preševo very often. I clearly don't look like I'm from around there, so I caught plenty of curious stares. A couple of times locals started conversations right on the street, and it was all super friendly. In those chats, a few people told me pretty directly that they'd be better off with Kosovo—their people have lived on this land for centuries, and they have their own there.