Tales from the Trail

Hillary Clinton stopped on Bill Clinton Boulevard to view one of Kosovo’s main attractions: the Bill Clinton Statue.

Clinton, on her first visit to Kosovo as secretary of state, on Wednesday received a rapturous welcome from the crowd waving U.S. flags and cheering on the Clinton Brand, which many Kosovars see as key to their country’s independence.

Clinton stopped and looked up at Bill — now 12 feet high and a shimmering gold — and expressed her satisfaction with the likeness.

She then plunged into the crowd, or at least as far as security would allow, pressing the flesh campaign-style and expressing her delight at being back in Kosovo as an independent country.

“I’m so glad to be back after 10 years, it’s wonderful,” Clinton said as reporters and officials scrambled around, the careful choreography of the motorcade thrown topsy-turvy by the unscheduled stop.

Vice President Joe Biden, in the doghouse for saying he would advise his family against flying or taking the subway because of the new flu strain, will be taking a trip to Europe in a couple weeks — but then again he probably doesn’t have to worry too much since he has his own plane.

Biden drew widespread scorn from the travel industry and pretty much everyone else for saying on NBC’s “Today Show” that he would “tell members of my family — and I have — I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” he said, adding that the problem was that “when one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft.”

The White House had to clarify his comments, advising Americans that they really only needed to avoid unnecessary travel to and from Mexico and that they should stay home if they were not feeling well.