Off the charts

What is Kosovo? General consensus has it, diplomatically, that it has not yet been recognised by enough countries around the world to be acknowledged as a sovereign state. Almost all of the EU and Western States recognise Kosovo, and the International Court of Justice has ruled that it's declaration of independence in itself wasn't illegal. But this is not enough internationally for Kosovo to achieve UN membership, which is probably the ultimate arbiter of statehood. So, it's independently administered; has it's own government, judiciary and police force; even its own registration plates (RKS). Technically - unless and until South Sudan officially declares independence, as is currently expected next July - Kosovo is the newest state in the world. But it's not actually a "state". Legally. Yet. I think.

So when you arrive in Pristina, you have the tiniest of little experiences that you don't have when you arrive in fully-recognised countries.

For instance, you have to worry about passport stamps. Apparently no one (even Serbia) really holds it against you if you have a Kosovan stamp in your passport. On the other hand, Serbia will not allow entry from Kosovo unless you already have a Serbian entry stamp from a previous occasion: as Serbia doesn't recognise Kosovo's borders, it essentially considers that you have entered Serbia illegally if you've entered through Kosovo. So I couldn't help a little anxiety, no matter how illogical, as I handed over my passport at Pristina airport last night, receiving a stamp for entering a country which is not really a "country". Then again, there's something about the way it proudly says "Republic of Kosovo" which makes me smile.

You might think the lack of officially recognised statehood would be a problem, but the next thing I noticed was that Kosovo doesn't seem to have it's own version of Google. Priorities, right? Usually when you travel to a new country and hit search, your computer automatically redirects you to the local version. This used to sometimes drive me crazy in Bosnia because it meant that search results kept coming up in Bosnian rather than English. But here, my poor laptop has no idea what to do and every search result has told me that Google can't find the page I am looking for! It tries to connect to www.google.ba (Bosnia) and fails, at which point I try to connect to www.google.ie (Ireland - my first instinct) but this too has also failed at times. www.google.com's been working so far, but over on Blogger, it wants me to log in to the site in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is presumably Serbian (rather than Albanian). I can't decide if I find it amusing or mildly disturbing that Google seems to be hedging its bets politically in Kosovo in such a vague manner.

Or so I thought until I finally deciphered how to log in via the Cyrillic script (it changed back to my default English at that point) and decided to change my official "location" on my Google profile from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Kosovo. Only to find that Kosovo is not listed as an option in the drop-down list of countries provided by Google. Nor is "other". Kosovo doesn't exist. I am in a place which officially - to some - doesn't exist. Yet I have an entry stamp to this place in my passport, and can be arrested by it's police. International law geeks, where does this leave me?

I might have thought that Google tends to be conservative about these matters, but then I looked at the other places that it does offer in a list which it heads "Country". Intriguingly for instance, both Serbia and somewhere called "Serbia and Montenegro" are listed, even though to the best of my knowledge Montenegro seceded from what was left of the Former Yugoslavia in 2006.

In fact, Google's available "countries" include places with very disputed sovereignty such as "Palestinian Territories", as well as territories which exist under the ambit of other states, including "Puerto Rico". So I am a little confused. Google also lists as "countries" several places like the Pitcairn Islands, Niue and Tokelau - none of which I had heard of before either - which are classified as "overseas territories" or "free associations", essentially lacking full sovereignty but which are nonetheless real places, existing on maps, where people find themselves located and no doubt want to post on blogs, regardless of their political status.

On this basis, listing "Kosovo" rather than, say, "Republic of Kosovo" under available "countries" can hardly be regarded as a political statement: no one disputes that Kosovo is here and that it exists, after all. Why is Google being so careful about this? It certainly wouldn't antagonize the US by recognising Kosovo: is it trying to increase market share in Serbia itself?

Even on Facebook, the same difficulty occurred when trying to update my location. "Kosovo" or "Pristina" do not exist, only the name of the city "Prishtinë". Unlike all other cities listed on Facebook, the name of the country does not follow the name of the city.

Anyway, the upshot is: I've never gone to a "territory" before which doesn't exist under all classifications. Kosovo doesn't fit into categories and classifications and various types of boxes. I'm literally off the lists and off the charts, and that's probably what makes this new adventure that little bit more interesting.