Hungerford. Lockerbie. Dunblane.

Sleepy backwaters whose syllables might have languished in obscurity forever, had they not become intertwined irrevocably with tragedy.

I felt the same as we crossed into Kosovo. My knowledge of Europe’s newest country – a territory half the size of Wales, populated by fewer than two-million people – derived mostly from shocking news bulletins during the 1990s. In my mind, Kosovo and its capital, Pristina, were synonymous with atrocities. Tales of massacres, genocide and ethnic cleansing in the lead up to and during the Kosovo War of Independence of 1998-1999.