It's dusk in Pristina, and the streets are thronged. The power is off as usual, and the shops are empty. There's nothing to buy apart from roasted nuts and fake tapes, and little money to buy anything anyway. The warm Balkan air is filled with the sounds of excited chatter and Albanian music.
It take a while to identify that scent, the source of the excitable buzz on the streets. This is the smell of freedom. Just to walk up and down in your own town, even with nothing in your pockets, is a giant step for ethnic Albanians.
Under the Serbs, hostile police roamed the city, handing out insults and beatings as the mood took them. The majority Albanian population was discriminated against in every sphere of life. The Albanians were serfs in their own land. The present sense of liberation makes Kosovo a congenial place to visit. Even in the pitch darkness of a power blackout, you feel safe. British and US troops are hailed as liberators. Journalists experience none of the hostility and threats familiar from other war zones.
Yet the balm is only skin deep. Away from the city centre, the extremists are methodically cleansing Pristina of the last of its Serb inhabitants. Most of those left are old or infirm, but this hasn't spared them the lash of the "thugs" - the term used by the representative of the UN High Commissioner for returning refugees this week.
Hundreds of Serb residents in Pristina's dreary flat-blocks have been visited by these gangs in recent weeks and warned to leave. If they comply, their flats are looted and in some cases burned. If they don't . . . well, more than 150 Serbs have been murdered since the war ended.
As in Rwanda, returning refugees, thirsty for revenge, have driven much of the violence. But the orchestration involved is becoming increasingly clear, and the Kosovan Liberation Army is seen as the culprit.
Irish soldiers and police officers from the RUC will shortly step into this delicate situation, joining an astonishing array of military and security forces from around the world. Countries not known for their exemplary human rights records such as, say, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, are keeping the peace along with the big powers. The presence of Polish and Hungarian units remind you how much the world has changed since the end of the Cold War.
Co-ordinating these disparate forces must be a logistical nightmare, but so far things are running smoothly. The different forces adhere faithfully to their national stereotypes.
Thus, the French troops have been typically robust in dealing with the Albanian protests at Mitrovica. Their captain intersperses his media briefings with frequent complaints about the scarcity of red wine and good cheese.
In the German sector to the south, the Bundeswehr is enthusiastically tackling its first foreign assignment since the second World War. In a country where half the cars carry no number plates and the other half are crocks dating from Tito's era, German soldiers have even been carrying out vehicle controls at their checkpoints.
The first civilian police were deployed in the past week, and eventually the UN police force will assume complete control for law and order in Kosovo. This changeover hasn't been without its problems; a force of Nepalese police men was sent back recently when it emerged that they couldn't speak English or fire a gun.
War and the peace that ensues always breed a particular type of entrepreneur. Smugglers emerge from nowhere to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of normal retail systems.
So it is in Kosovo, where contraband goods are the order of the day. Kosovan statelessness meets Albanian lawlessness to create ideal conditions for criminal gangs. Mafia types drive big new German cars around Pristina while their network of cigarette sellers hawks goods smuggled through Albania.
An ability to speak foreign languages is an asset during wartime. In a country where a doctor is paid as little as £150 a month, an interpreter for foreign media or aid organisations can earn that in a few days.
To an Irish person, Kosovo suggests many parallels with Northern Ireland. A rough list would include: the obvious division between a majority and minority community, the use of flags and emblems as provocation; the identification along religious lines of differences that are actually more complex; the KLA's political and military wings, a la the Irish republican movement.
But Kosovars will tell you that their problems are far more complex that anything in the North. Interaction between the two communities is certainly non-existent. Young ethnic Albanians no longer even learn Serbo-Croat, so a linguistic divide has been imposed on all the others. The mosaic of human interaction is always more complex in the Balkans than anywhere else. There are in Kosovo, for example, Slavs who are Muslim and Albanians who are Christians (Mother Teresa was one). There are long-established Roma, Croat and Turkish communities.
It is only 40 years since the Serbs were in a majority in the province. Before the war, they numbered about 300,000, compared to two million Albanians. Now, they are no more than 30,000, mostly in the far north of Kosovo.
Meanwhile, ethnic Albanians have the highest birth-rate in Europe (23.1 births per 1,000).
While the UN pleads for more cash for Africa, the aid effort in Kosovo is over-subscribed. The West intends to spend €2 billion in a province with a population of two million, and touring the province, it's hard to see where and why so much money is being spent. Perhaps the answer is to be found in the long valley descent out of Kosovo through Macedonia. The hilltop towns on each side of the road are easy to spot, thanks to the graceful white minarets which rise above their skyline. It's as though the mosques were spilling down the valley from Kosovo.
Now that's what the West really fears.