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At the Brooklyn Bar outdoor cafe, young Serbs are chatting over drinks, while keeping a wary watch on the NATO tanks and British soldiers patrolling the main street out front.

At one table, Sandra, a young woman with curly blond hair, is joking with three men over cigarettes and drinks. There has been no running water in Pristina for the past 24 hours -- maybe because Serbian workers at the Pristina water station have departed with the Serbian army, or maybe because Serbian authorities are still trying to annoy the locals.

Whatever the cause, the result is that there is no espresso at this cafe. In one of many slightly comical scenes within the palpable sadness of this place, the waiter goes up to table after table, politely asking for orders, only to quickly apologize when almost anything his guests request is unavailable. In fact, the choices are three -- bottled mineral water, Sprite or vodka.

Inconveniences like this are hardly keeping city residents away, however. People have been penned up too long, enduring airstrikes and reprisals, so the end of all that, for now, has made the sheer act of going out and hanging with friends a sweet pleasure, for Serbs and Albanians alike.

Contrary to expectation, the talk at this cafe popular with local Serbs is only partly tinged with resentment at the international community for changing the power balance in a province that until this week, Serbs have pretty much dominated for a decade. The mood of the conversation is better characterized as a combination of wry gallows humor mixed with uncertainty and humility at what the future may hold.

"Everything's changing," says Sandra, 28, who worked as a translator for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe before it pulled out of Kosovo in March, a few days before the airstrikes began. "It's different now from the beginning of the airstrikes, when the Albanians were afraid of the Serbs. Now the Serbs are scared."

Sandra, who asked that her last name not be used, said although many Kosovo Serbs are afraid of revenge killings by returning ethnic Albanian refugees and the Kosovo Liberation Army, not all Serbs are guilty for the atrocities committed against the Albanians over the past few months.

"A lot of them didn't do anything. They are just ordinary civilians. But if the KLA has a personal vendetta against the Serbs, it's not going to be enough to say, it's not me you want, I didn't do anything," she says, trying to explain the fear that has gripped Kosovo Serbs over the past few days and driven more than 33,000 to leave the province so far.

One tragicomic moment comes when the stereo at the cafe begins to play the song "Hit the Road, Jack," and cafe-goers sing along. Only a few streets away, many of Pristina's Serbs are lined up in their cars alongside the main police station, forming one of the last convoys pulling out of Kosovo with the Yugoslav army. The police station is a place that quite recently struck terror in the hearts of local Albanians, some of whom were imprisoned and tortured there, just a few weeks ago, by Serbian forces controlling the province. "Hit the Road, Jack," the cafe-goers hum, as some of their relatives and friends move out with the departing Serbian convoy, "and don't you come back no more, no more. Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more."

The irony isn't lost on Sandra's table. Over the past three months, Serbian forces, police and paramilitary units have driven more than a million Kosovar Albanians out of their homes, with over 800,000 flooding into neighboring Macedonia and Albania, and others hiding out for weeks in the hills and woods with little food. Now, as the Serbian forces withdraw according to the timetable detailed in last week's peace agreement, Serbian civilians are anticipating that their returning Albanian neighbors may make their lives so miserable that they, too, may soon have to leave.

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