Oh the honesty thing. It can be brutal and it can be incredibly naive, and it can be very disarming. Part our "primitive" charm. The sister of an American general who knew us well ca. WWII tried warning the Serbs she knew that the Croatians were going to betray us and they wouldn't believe her. She attributed it to our inability to be deceptive ourselves and therefore incapable of imagining it in others. It goes well when others see it as an opportunity to let their guard down and be honest as well, and it can be lovely living without those kinds of inhibitions, but far too often people take it as an opportunity to manipulate us, and nothing good ever comes of that. If you're interested in learning some of the language I have the Pimsleur course I wouldn't mind sharing. If you click my name, and my home page you can use that contact form to reach me and I'll send as an attachment.
Nada (my journalist friend in Belgrade) sent me this link this AM. [YOUTUBE]_Zu_tkk9be0[/YOUTUBE] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zu_tkk9be0&feature=youtu.be Found this one on the same page: [YOUTUBE]O-av8_0fj1Y[/YOUTUBE] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-av8_0fj1Y And here's a Chicago dude on Serbia: [YOUTUBE]P0a5w9K0hLk[/YOUTUBE] http://youtu.be/P0a5w9K0hLk He's got a bunch of videos up on the subject
Propaganda 101 Okay, here's a line of typical "Fourth Reich" (as Nada calls it) propaganda. Listen how the narrator is coloring things, describing Serbia as this aggressor nation who was trying to conquer all her neighbors. This is exactly analogous to an imaginary situation in which Britain had backed the south during the Civil War and enabled the South to win and the North was going down in the history books as this evil aggressor nation who was trying to impose it's rule on her neighbors and enable those gangsta' blacks (Krajina Serbs) in terrorizing them. They wouldn't have even allowed them a Klan to defend themselves with! In other words, Virginia had ceded from the union and had fired on Fort Sumter, but the Union army was to be expected to do nothing. Radical right wingers in Bosnia and Croatia were violently taking over their republics within the union, and the Yugoslav union forces tried to stop them. It's like saying New York was aggressing on Manhattan because right wing radicals in Manhattan were trying to secede from New York so they could kick out all the black people [YOUTUBE]CVW02Pty47s[/YOUTUBE]
I have questions regarding law enforcement in Serbia and the surrounding countries. Is the police there a government supported force or a military one? What crimes are the most common there? And what punishments are used?
I have relayed your question to Nada so we can get the answer straight from Belgrade. The third video there with the white guy from Chicago probably reveals a lot, it's an open society with few regulations and well-behaved people. There's a story that comes from the 19th century, but I think is relevant. The first king of Serbia (in 500 years) was the son of an illiterate pig farmer, who was also one of the military geniuses of Europe (Karageorgevitch) was visiting a village and he asked an old man how he was making out. The old guy said he was doing fine -- in pigs and smuggling.
Those guys were funny. Good clip. If I visited Serbia, where would/should I go first to meet the people and have a good time?
Belgrade is the capital and biggest city, and a big party town. People don't just go home and watch TV at night. They tend to go out to the cafes and clubs and talk to each other.
I liked the helivideo of Belgrade. I didn't know it was so green. I had never seen that many trees in a city(well, Tallahassee, Florida has a lot of trees there, too). Did the production team use radio control model helicopters with cameras mounted in them for those aerial shots or did they use real helicopters? Or both?
Oh what a day. So there was a post from a brother saying that Serbia was amazing, he goes there every year with his Serbian girlfriend and they love him to death, everywhere he goes. So I make one little comment, sure they do, our histories are so similar. So a reasonable guy responds and disagrees saying serbs were their own bosses in many parts of Serbia (debatable, but he may have his own agenda for feeling this way. Denial.) Then three really rank trolls jumped on me and then Nada jumped on them. She read them the riot act. (I never had anybody talk about me in Cyrillic before). I think two were Croatian trolls and she thinks the other one was the kind of xenophobe who crash the LGBT parade every year. Then some other guy jumped in on our side. But it's all irrelevant because the clip is viral in Serbia and comments are being posted so rapidily everything's buried in a heartbeat. But I learned some really cool stuff. Like in the clip he says to the cashier at McDonald's "Speak Serbian so the world will understand you," which is something Serbs say making fun of themselves. Very inside joke. LOL I love it. The reasonable guy thinks that Jovan Crni is okay, (Crni is Serbian for black) he just needs to stop talking about his dick all the time. LOL.
Are those trolls don't like Slavic women dating Black men? Is so forget them they must had supported those skinheads. I wonder of the guy's opinion of Mr.Crni's going out with White women?
No!!!!!!! They're not picking on you, they're picking on me!!! LOL I found out they were swarming me because I openly admitted to being a Krajina Serb!!
LOL. I'm sure you didn't mean to say that you're glad to hear they're persecuting me instead of you. LOL