Not the Worst Hotel in the World, Perhaps, but ‘the World Is Very Big’
After Tito died in 1980 and his multiethnic country began to unravel, the Grand soldiered on and even prospered for a time, its occupancy rate lifted by the arrival of foreign journalists and Serb paramilitary gangs
that wanted to purge Kosovo of ethnic Albanians, who made up a large majority of the population.
A byword for modern opulence when this part of the Balkans was still part of the now defunct Yugoslavia, the state-owned Grand has gone into such a steep decline
that even Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaci, usually an eager booster of everything his country has to offer, struggles to find anything nice to say about it.
Free of Serbian control for nearly 20 years and now celebrating its 10th anniversary as an independent country, Kosovo is itself stuck in limbo, recognized by the United States and most European countries
but still denied a seat at the United Nations and routinely harassed by Russia and Serbia.
However, many of the problems plaguing Kosovo — in particular, endemic corruption
and shady dealings by former commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army — are of the country’s own making.
Stuck in limbo since the end of the Kosovo war, which brought Mr. Thaci
and his comrades in the Kosovo Liberation Army to power, the hotel stands as a bleak monument not only to Kosovo’s painful past but also to its blurry future.
By ANDREW HIGGINSMARCH 1, 2018
PRISTINA, Kosovo — The Grand Hotel in the Kosovar capital of Pristina is regularly reviled in internet reviews.
On my first day at the hotel on my recent visit, a group of revelers from a grimy nightclub on the top floor took rooms in the middle of the night
and boosted the number of guests to five — an occupancy rate of 1 percent, which is about as good as business gets at the Grand these days.
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