This has been especially true these past two weeks, as I've slowly made my way around the forbidden and mysterious communist police state of Albania, which protrudes from the Adriatic into Yugoslavia like some ulcerous scab and which is off-limits to all including the Yugoslavians. My journey around its mine fields and soldier-patrolled perimeter has taken me though the hearts of two of eastern Europe's poorest and most orthodox regions--the Republic of Montenegro and the Serbian Muslim Province of Kosovo.

In Montenegro thick forests of pine, beech, and cool shade replaced the harsh sunlight and semi-aridness of Croatia, as did endless mountain peaks from which springs spilled water so cold it hurt to drink it. As in the Slovenia Republic, I again found myself zigzagging down dirt lanes alongside leftover snow fields and lush steep meadows of white-pedalled daisies. Bathing in brightly-bouldered rivers of liquid snow left me wondering if I would ever be warm again.

Being herders of sure-footed goats and cattle, rather than farmers like the Slovenians or the Croatians, the Montenegrins were tall, lean, and finely-featured. Still exhibiting many of the features of the dark-eyed and dark-skinned Turks who ruled over the area for over 700 years, the people were as eye-catchingly beautiful as the land.

For the first time since leaving the USA, I found homes built of wood--though hardly American-looking with their tall steep roofs, wood slab exteriors, and tiny shuttered windows. Sometimes, as I came upon the stick-fenced dirt yards of farm animals, wood piles, open wells, and women cooking over open fires, I thought of Africa or the Middle Ages. Like so many times on this worldwalk, the terrain could have been very exhausting, but the sights which greeted me were so fascinating, so different from anything I've ever known. The kilometers of sharp switchbacks and steep mountain passes passed by almost too rapidly.

In Kosovo, the society was as colorful, rugged, and jumbled as the scenery of Montenegro. Its villages, with their mosques, were as close to being like North Africa as anything I'd seen in Europe. Only instead of being a strictly Arab populace (as in Africa), the people were a swirling mixture of Turks, Albanians, Slavs, and Gypsies.

Many warned me not to walk through Kosovo--or, at the least, not to sleep in the open there. Apparently the dark-skinned Muslim men with their white skullcaps, and their shaven-headed sons and thickly-clothed subservient women, are too unusual for many Slavs. And, too, there are the Albanians, of whom it is said more live illegally outside Albania than live legally inside that nation.

More than any other region, Kosovo has been the most troublesome for the Yugoslav government. After Tito's death in January 1980, the Muslims, partly inspired by the Ayatollah Khomeini's actions in Iran, began to demand more independence from the central government. Two years of harsh police action and much interracial violence took place. Also, many Albanians feel that that part of Yugloslavia belongs to Albania.

I found none of the dangerous characters of whom I had been warned. Instead, I found mostly warmth and a deep curiosity about my homeland. However, on the surface I could understand the others' concerns about their Muslim neighbors: As in all Muslim-dominated societies I've ventured through, the living conditions in the towns were extremely poor, primitive, and dirty, and the men were unused to the idea of privacy. In almost a repeat of Africa, I had large groups of ragged boys and men crowding about and grabbing at me.

The littered and crumbling streets of every city or village in that extremely mountainous region know more hooves and bare feet than tires. And from the shadows of the dilapidated shops were the constant staring eyes. In public, good manners seemed to be nearly non-existent, and yet whenever I was brought into a home, I would inevitably find myself receiving the best of their food and attentions. While the children and the the wife quietly attended to my needs, the men and I sat in our stocking feet on low cushions around a table set with thimble-sized cups of ferociously hot Turkish coffee and plates piled with goat milk curds, cheese, and rough brown bread smeared in honey and plum butter. Over head, on the walls, would be the usual tapestries of Arab desert scenes and the holy shrines in Mecca, soaking up our laughter and excited conversations in broken English or in French.

Since I spent so little time in the cities (which seemed to be little more than the usual socialist-created slums), I found in Kosovo more enthrallment than worry or disappointment. However, there was always the hint of something askew with the people themselves: More than once groups of villagers told me of soldiers coming and taking away large numbers of their men, who were never seen again.

The notion that "country folk are a gentle folk" was as true here in southern Yugoslavia as in any other region I've walked across. For example, in the cities I watched the gypsies scrounge through garbage piles for food and for cloth with which to make clothes, and yet in the mountains they continually held their jeweled heads as high as any other man's. In the countryside there were no handouts; every man found himself, along with everyone else, making the trip to the fields to dig or harvest, or to the towns to sell his produce or wares.

In both Montenegro and Kosovo, most persons were too poor to make each morning's journey except by horseback or horse-pulled wagon. But from the almost haughty posture of their work-chiseled figures you'd have thought they were in Cadillacs.

Steven