On the tourist trail, Kosovo-style

Prizren, Kosovo: The wood-frame buildings look quaint and, well, touristy. The courtyard is pretty, with a well in the middle. This is it, Prizren's only paid-for tourist attraction.

The League of Prizren does not offer audio guides, or much English translation. But a floor to ceiling map of Albania in the entrance hall bridges any language divide.

The map is painted dark red, the colour of the Albanian flag, with the two-headed eagle from the flag symbolising each town. There is Tirana, half way down on the left hand side. Crane the neck up a bit and there is Prizren. It is well within Greater Albania as this map has it, which grants Albania all of Kosovo, plus a few slivers of Macedonia and Greece.

The main museum lays out the arguments simply for a foreign visitor. Here is a sculpture of a heroic chap with flowing moustaches, fez-like cap and a steady grip on his sword. Paintings show similar looking fellows laying waste to people, presumably Serbs, and maybe a few Greeks thrown in for good measure.

There is some correspondence from the late-nineteenth century between French and British imperial officers, musing upon the Albanian problem. Should they quell these feisty Albanians, ponders the double-barrelled Brit? His French colleague wonders where it all may end. The proper question, with the view back through 130 years, would have been to ask where it would all start, which was in 1914 up the road in Sarajevo.

The League of Prizren, whatever its cute surroundings and charming peasant costumes, falls short of being a tourist destination. The 1 Euro entry fee is far too little to make the ordinary western tourist comfortable. The old man in the museum is more reminiscent of a sentry than a genial old fella you might find in a National Trust home. It just does not have that heritage feel.

And for good reason. Our man from the UN heritage programme says that the place was torched by Serbs in the late 1990s, and subsequently rebuilt by Albanians. For some people, this will always be the frontline.