Vienna is famed in the Albanian world for possessing the original helmet of Skenderbeg, the national hero who resisted the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans in the fifteenth century.
Nowadays, hopes in Kosovo and Albania itself have been focussed on the Vienna talks with the Serbs that are trying to negotiate the future of the province, which is still technically part of Serbia, though under United Nations control.
Since February, teams of Kosovo Albanian and Serb negotiators have been ensconced in a castle outside the Austrian capital, under the moderation of veteran Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari, to decide the future of what on the surface should be the last Balkan conundrum left over from the wars of the Yugoslav succession.
