Day 1: (14 July ) Arrival in Prishtina

The group members trickle in at all hours of the early morning, and quickly get acquainted with the sprawling Prishtina flat. Due to an unexpected cancellation, there are 9 university students taking part in the 5 day conference: 5 students from Belgrade, and 4 from Kosovo/a; 6 boys, and 3 girls. With 4 coordinators, and 2 hapless "foreign correspondents" hanging around, the group is itself a healthy dose of cross-cultural dialogue.

After catching up on sleep and eating some breakfast stuffs, the group moves to the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) to get better acquainted. After a rousing speech by the coordinators of Talk For Tomorrow, the group engaged in team-building activities ranging from the human knot (students must solve their physically binding puzzle), to the trust fall.

Some lunch down the road, and the group returns to YIHR to hear from Ivan Radic, the project coordinator of Kosova-Nansen Dialogue. The group is part of a wider network but contains offices in Prishtina and Mitrovica. Its goal is to promote inter-ethnic dialogue to contribute to reconciliation and peacebuilding. Ivan himself is Serbian who lives on the Serbian northern side of Mitrovica, displaced after the war in 1999. He tells of his project to school children of Serbian and Albanian heritage under the same roof, and the problems - the red-tape, the prejudice - that have stalled KND's efforts to restore Mitrovica from the divided city it is today. He emphasizes seeing faces instead of numbers, and active listening/dialogue rather than debate. "Perception is reality," says Ivan, arguing that we must go further to promote real change.

After Ivan takes off, the group has time to reflect, unwind, or cook. The cooking team's resolve is tested by a less-than-stellar kitchen, but in a few hours there is some traditional Albanian food bursting onto the porch - pogace (homemade bread, sausage w/cheese), salad, wine, and so forth. The dinner stretches into the late evening - a little too late for one's neighbors taste - but the group steadily carries on with conservation, laughter, and some fine picking and belting by T4T founder Behar.

The group members eventually diverge - some to much needed sleep, others to explore the bustling Prishtina nightlife, and day one of T4T's "Beyond Borders" comes to a close.