If ever there was a sign that professional conferences are the same all over the world, I saw one Wednesday. I’d been turned onto something called the “Conference on Transparency, Accountability and Anticorruption,” which was being held at the Grand Hotel here in Pristina.

Sponsored by Transparency International, a private organization formed in 1993 to fight corruption on a global scale, the conference brought together various factions of Kosovar society with representatives of the United National Development Programme – journalists, lawyers, prosecutors, members of the Kosovo Assembly, Kosovo Police Service and various other groups – to talk about corruption in Kosovo.

The panel discussions that I should have attended, which focused on print and broadcast journalism, had been held the day before. But I didn’t even find out about the conference until late Tuesday, so I figured better a day late than never. I showed up Wednesday morning, Spokesman-Review press card in hand, for what was to be a panel discussion titled “Roles of Justice in the Context of Transparency, Accountability and Anti-corruption Activities.”

Here’s a useful Albanian phrase: “flisni anglisht?” Do you speak English? I had to ask that question a half-dozen times before I was able even to find the room in which the conference was being held. When I finally got there, everything was already in session. I thought I was late, but I quickly discovered that one program just kind of evolved into the next.

I was confronted by a rectangular room that had at its center a u-shaped arrangement of tables, maybe 40 by 10 feet, with microphones installed at various points along both sides and at the head. Thirty-odd men and woman sat at the table, while those of us observing sat in chairs lined against the adjoining walls.

I found an empty seat and then sat there feeling as if I were out of my depth. Almost everyone was speaking in Albanian, and about the only word I could understand was the one that each speaker after the next pronounced almost as if he/she were speaking Italian: “Co-roop-zee-oh-nee.”

I knew translator headphones were available, because a pair was set in front of each panelist. But it wasn’t until a guy sitting near me left and I reached for his headphones that someone tapped me on the shoulder and offered me a set of my own.

And guess what? The speeches that had sounded so exotic in Albanian turned into the same old boring kinds of speeches that I’d heard as a young reporter covering school board, city council and planning commission meetings in Creswell, Ore. For all its importance, this conference sounded pretty much like every law, library and journalism conference I have ever attended. Complete with PowerPoint.

There were, though, some highlights:

One English-speaking panelist, Anton Nokaj, president of the district court of Pristina, stressed the need to battle corruption. “This is a noble task. Fighting corruption is fighting for Kosovo. … Turning a blind eye to corruption is fighting against Kosovo.”

Ibrahim Makoli, of something called the Council for Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms, said that to see corruption all one had to do is look. “Look at the streets, at the wealth, this is obvious,” he said. “And no one asks how the wealth appears overnight.”

Haki Leci, a Pristina lawyer, talked openly about bribery, referring at one point directly to the three uniformed panelists, one of whom spoke for the Kosovo Customs Bureau. Another panelist, wearing the kind of flak jacket vest popular with war correspondents, also targeted the customs bureau, asking the officer why the bureau recently burnt 700,000 euro (about $875,000) worth of smuggled cigarettes. “These could have been sold and the money given to charities,” he said.

The customs officer explained, in terms of the cigarettes, that the bureau had no idea what kind of “harmful” materials might have been in the tobacco. Thus they were burned, he said, for “health” reasons.

Then, out of seemingly nowhere, one of the panelists wearing a suit, talked about Tom Cruise and “Top Gun.” He said that the character that Cruise plays in the film is based on the real-life character of former San Diego Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. He said that Cunningham’s lavish lifestyle led to his downfall when an investigative reporter wondered how he could live so high on his government salary and kept asking questions.

“And Tom Cruise has just signed to make ‘Top Gun 2,’ ” the panelist said. “But now Cunningham will be behind bars.” Anyone who doesn’t believe this, he added, “can check out the information on the Internet.”

It may have been my imagination, or lack of language skills, but most everyone in the room seemed to take a moment to think, “OK, that was more than a little weird.”

At which point the conference moderator, journalist and communications professor Evliana Berani, after letting one or two others express final thoughts, broke for lunch.

She did so fairly quickly. Like the others, she must have felt the need – for speed.