“What scares me the most is that [in Kosovo] you are facing irrational people, the worst kind of populists, people who literally got out of the woods,” Serbia’s Prime Minister told a press conference on May 29, standing next to a European bureaucrat, discussing Serbia’s progress towards joining the EU.

Ana Brnabic later explained that she had not been referring to all people in Kosovo but to those political leaders who had been involved in the war of independence from Serbia in the 1990s.

At first glance, there was nothing that wrong with her statement. Balkan people, especially in the western Balkans, were often portrayed as “people of the mountains” by Romantic European travelers in the 18th and 19th centuries. That’s partly why many tourists who come to visit this part of Europe are hiking enthusiasts.

Although I was born in the fertile plains of central Albania, I grew up listening to fairy tales about Zanas, mythological nymphs who dwell in the Albanian mountains.