You might have missed it in all the fuss, but for Kosovo, the most sacred part of Serbia, this was the week that saw the ancient regime pass away, to be replaced by something new and uncertain.
Despite all those NATO tanks rolling into Pristina last weekend, the Serb police and army were still firmly in control of the town. There were no cheering crowds in the streets - the Albanians who somehow survived the waves of deportations stayed indoors.
The streets, meanwhile, were full of an exotic array of security forces. The army were there, their vehicles and men looking battered and moth-eaten while the police looked shy, their fragile Zastava cars dwarfed by NATO's grinding tanks. Only the paramilitaries showed fight. By day these mostly young men, hard faced, with sun glasses, combat jackets, jeans, weapons, attitude, cruised up and down, back and forth, giving the troops the eye. By night they had the place to themselves, automatic gunfire crackled from their cars as they raced down empty streets. In the basement of the town-centre Grand Hotel, it was said, was a special police base, in the former disco, though no-one dared go down to investigate.
Despite all those censored reports, there is little bomb damage here. Some big holes mark the NATO bombs, and army barracks on the outskirts have been flattened, their corrugated roofs thrown in all directions. But the town is as it was, minus the people, and minus the shops and restaurants, all of which were looted, then burned.
Walking down these empty streets, after spending a year of my life in this town, was like coming back to the house you recently moved out of. The walls are there, but it's not the same. No furniture. The coffee bars and restaurants that were so much a part of the life are burned out husks. The people gone - hopefully alive. The regime began to die on Monday. The official Media Centre, in the central Grand Hotel, continues to have phones, but early in the week the young, chirpy staff of Serbian students drifted off, bound for Serbia. Radovan, the boss, was a worried man. Now he dared not drive to his house, and was sleeping in his office, grey stubble spreading over his face. Radovan is, in the eyes of Western reporters who were here preair-strikes, an honourable man: when the paramilitaries with their pitiless eyes called at the media centre the night before the NATO bombing began, demanding to take away the handful of remaining Western correspondents, Radovan said no. He called the police, who, to the surprise of everyone, ordered the paramilitaries away.
Despite this, he is contemplating leaving for Serbia, on a daily basis. Others here are less fondly remembered. When things were going well for the regime, they would once mutter about we Westerners getting what we deserved, a worrying prediction given all those paramilitaries. Now the boot is on the other foot, and it is they who look worried.
There must be 3,000 journalists swarming into town. The Grand and other hotels are jammed, my old apartment has been systematically cleansed. And so I am plunged into the world's most bizarre property market.
Pristina is four fifths deserted, and I have been offered four of them by friends who are now refugees, but I could take none, because of the paramilitary factor.
Paramilitaries mean you don't want to be out of sight of either the Grand, or a British armoured personnel carrier, most of which cleared off, alarmingly, just as dark and the speeding paramilitaries returned to the streets. Which meant all the apartments were beyond reach. Instead, it was the hard carpeted lobby floor of the Grand Hotel.
By mid-week the great retreat was on, and the Serbs began their "scorched earth" mode. The water plant was wrecked, the workers left for Serbia. The great Obilic power plant, which powers much of Serbia, and which the Albanians are greedily eyeing, is barely running. NATO didn't bomb it, for fear they would later have to rebuild it. Cars are a second problem. The looters have taken the good ones. Albanians eagerly hire out old bangers, providing we bring the petrol. I have had three cars this week, a Toyota, a Peugeot, and a Zastava. All have already broken down, and much of the week was spend lugging bags from apartment to apartment and sloshing jerry cans from car to car.
And then on Wednesday, the police, army and paramilitaries were gone. In fact, Britain gave Serbia an extra day to vacate the province given to them when eastern Europe was carved up by the 1912 London conference. One day, after the best part of a century, seemed fair enough.
Nights are safer now, the paramilitaries have flown, though groups of thug-like Serbian men still lurk in some streets. But the Albanians have grown bolder, cars are on the streets, refugees coming home, prices going up - last night's landlady wanted $150 for her flat. Time for another move.
The horror is there, of course, the whole countryside appears to be one huge mass grave, and you wonder how many thousands of Serbs, besides the bogeyman, Slobodan Milosevic, it took to generate 10,000 butchered Albanians and hundreds of burned villages.
Journalists from the Telegraph, Times and Financial Times set about re-opening their bar, Tricky Dicks, named after US peace envoy Richard Holbrooke and which shut down when they were expelled from Serbia. The bar survived because it had the name of one reporter's Serb wife on the door. That will probably be changed to reflect the new reality. Meanwhile, bureaucracy outlasts all. Paramilitaries spared apartment blocks in the nearby town of Glogovac because the Albanians inside were renting from the state - never was someone more grateful for being a council tenant.
By Friday I dared venture to the Grand Hotel basement. The disco is now a mass of boxes, upturned chairs and tables and benches with blankets for the police to sleep, along with strips of black cloth for making uniforms. Discarded food and empty tins lie on the floor, and the only thing still working is the fish tank, which is illuminated with bright blue bubbles and a lone goldfish.
Upstairs, the once surly Serb waiters are now a model of politeness, but the food and drink is sparse, this grim state-run - which means all-Serb - hotel is now running low on staff willing to stay.
And as I write, Radovan is still here, still contemplating leaving on a daily basis, and still unwilling to go to his house, while his stubble is turning into a grey beard. The rebel Kosovo Liberation Army have set up a base in the northern suburbs, making the Serbs still more nervous.
Most Serbs have now gone, and the few who remain will probably follow. Even if the atrocities do not bring reprisals, life will not be much fun for them, a tiny minority, shunned by the majority, in a new Kosovo whose future remains deeply uncertain.
This is despite a small rally in the town held by a British major, who told the worried-looking Serbs. "NATO will protect you. If you go, it will be something you will have to live with for the rest of your lives." It is because they would like to have the rest of their lives that so many continue to depart.
And finally, a big thank you to Staff Sergeant Flood and the boys of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers attached to 52 Battery of the British artillery, who somehow fixed the unfixable wreck that I was driving which, by a stroke of luck, broke down right outside their base near Pristina.