Some reflections on nostalgia

So, a friend of mine mentioned some of my comments about socialist nostalgia in his blog. I was going to write him an e-mail to tell him that I think he is reading too much into my comments, but after some reflection, I'm not sure he is. There is a lot of reminiscing about socialism, and technically that's not the same as Yugoslavia, but the two are hard to separate. There is very popular show on one of the private networks Friday nights called Night School. Its so popular, that HRT1 (the flagship national TV network) is rumored to be negotiating to take it. Its an odd sort of improv show which is hard to explain, but the premise is that everyone is taking a night class. I was actually going to write something about it a couple of weeks ago because the show was talking about why Croatia needs to join the EU. It was actually a very funny backhanded critique (backhanded because it was so funny) of the pro-EU argument. The guy who plays the instructor (the star of the show) was explaining why Croatia had to join the EU and Bulgaria and Rumania didn't. His argument was that Croatia wasn't a "real country" and had to join the EU to achieve it's full potential, where are Rumania and Bulgaria were real countries that didn't need the EU to be fulfilled.

So, how does that relate to nostalgia? Well, on the wall behind the instructor's desk is usually a picture of Tito on the wall, just like in the "old days." But, just like Our Little Clinic, the show is set in the present, not the past. So, there is nostalgia all around. It pervades popular culture here, at least on TV. In fact, another private tv network is showing old Yugoslav films. Now, on a commercial level, it makes sense. They are cheap, and there is probably a large enough audience of people who will watch them just because they are a reminder of what thy used to watch growing up. I just watched the end of one which was about a brave group of partizan printers operating an illegal printing press in Beograd during the German occupation.

There is also a darker side to this (as if showing old communist propaganda films from the 50s wasn't dark enough). There is also a fair bit of Ustase stuff floating around too. Now, I'm not sure if you can call it nostalgia when people aren't actually old enough to remember what they are missing, but, none the less, there is a market for old Ustase stuff, and even some new stuff floating around the "old book" stores.

Zagreb is a city of 100 villages.

Now, that's a pretty provocative statement in this part of the world. The term "the village" here, has a very pajorative connotation. In fact, throughout my 2 years in Bosnia, the officers of all three armies kept trying to tell us that all the "bad things that happened" were because the armies had been forced to taken in "people from the village." So, given that implication, why would I say such a thing about the city? Does it mean I don't like this place any more?

Well, a little explanation is in order. First, what is not immidiately apparent in Lower Town is that the city is hollow. I don't mean empty exactly, but the buildings on the street are not massive blocks. They are actually not very deep. If they are wide, they usually have a gate that allows vehicles access to the "courtyard" in the back of the building. So, if you look at the first picture, you will see in the center of the building, between the two stores on the ground level, an opening. That opening leads to the courtyard in back of the building. If you wald through the gateway, this is what you find.



Basically, it is a parking area for people who live in the building, and some commercial establishments. In this case, a couple of stores and a cafe - resturant. Now, not every courtyard is like this one. Some are just parking areas, and some are very nicely maincured gardens. But there are a lot of them just like this.








And this is the cafe - resturant. Actually, kind of a nice place with lots of rough cut wood tables. A very "village" kind of place, and they had really good čivapi. So, I had lunch there today. What struck me after a few minutes there was how quiet it was. You could barely hear the street sounds. I really was like sitting at a cafe in a smaller town, very peaceful. The city is full of these little places. This is what the 19th century building regulations in the city were intended to do. They inverted the urban landscape, putting the couryard in the back, hiding "the village" part of daily life from the street. It was an effort to trasform Zagreb into a city while still accomodating desire, and the need, for village life.

Ok, enough for now. More later.

Unseasonably warm weather.

It looks like it is going to be above 70 all week, so the people of Zagreb have retaken the streets. Well, actually, they never really completely gave them up. Last week I was going to post something about Zagreb refusing to surrender to the change of season. It was getting cold out, especially after dark, but people refused to stop sitting outside at the cafes. Well, their perseverence has been rewarded (well, actually, it is a southwestern wind bringing warm air up from the Adriatic).

So, I am taking a break from the newspaper reading room to shop for more old books (I picked up Stjepan Radic's political writings and autobiography). The newspaper library exhausts me. Part of it is the physical conditions. I basically have to stand up and read bent over the entire time I am there because of the way the newspapers are bound. Part of it is the mental exersize of reading the daily recounting of rather traumatic events. The last two days I've been there, I've been reading though the last 4 months of 1918. It is facinating to watch an entire political order come appart at the seams. The kind of political and social transfromation that this part of the world went though in the space of a few weeks in staggering. On the one hand, it is kind of amaizing how the old system kept running, in the face of the inevitable (at least inevitable from the perspective of hindsight). Even as the Empire collapsed, the local imperial government kept chugging along. The institutional continuity is interesting as well. Most of the imperial institutions were maintained, but the individuals were replaced. Almost every day's paper has an article about a particular institution and who was being removed and who they were replaced by. For example, the entire judiciary was replaced over night, but the courts and their juristictions persisted.

Some of the article show just how many things we take for granted in a modern society can just dissapear or become problematic over night. A couple of interesting articles were "What money are we using?" and "Who is the government right now?" There were also a lot of troops just wandering around; Italian cavalry in northern Croatia, Serbian, French, and Czeck troops ariving in Zagreb, the Italian Navy grabbing up as much of Dalmatia as they could, and Hungarian troops trying to get back to Hungary, since Croatia no longer was part of Hungary, and Croatian troops trying to get back to Croatia from the Southern and Italian fronts and occupation duty in Russia.

On one hand it is kind of mind boggling just how much change took place in such a short amount of time, and yet, it was a very orderly chaos.

I'm not really sure if there is a point to all of those observations, but it is what's been consuming my life for a few days.

Once again, a longish post that I may (or may not) check for spelling and typos later.

And now for something completely different.

So, I was on my way to the City Museum today to try and get into their library (which is only open from 10 to 12) and I came across these guys under the clock in the square. They are very authentic Native Americans. They also apperently have been here for some time, because they speak Croatian much better than I do at the moment. So, I am not sure what this is an example of, I guess Globalization, but I'm not quite sure if three guys selling CDs on the square is part of the American media juggernaught that is overwhelming local culture.

Healthy Nostalgia

There is a weekly show here called Our Little Clinic (Nasa Mala Klinika). This is the emblem the characters wear on their uniforms is this, a take off on the red cross that you'd find on old fashioned hospital uniforms. Its also a take off on the old communist red star. Interesting how the sharp points have been rounded off. But then, that is kind of what the show is. It isn't set in the past, its set in the present, but all of the character types are from the socialist period, they've just been updated a bit. I actually don't find the show that funny, but I'd didn't spend most of my life growing up in a socialist society. People here seem to like it a lot, and maybe that is a healthy sign, that they can now laugh at the past a little, even when it is disguised as the present.

Catching up (again).

Well, I took Saterday and a good part of Sunday off as mental health days, so this post will be kind of an eclectic batch of stuff.

First off, today is an aniversary of sorts here, not that anyone really realizes it though. On this day in 1895 a group of university students burned the Hungarian flag in Jelačić square. That probably doesn't sound like that big a deal to most people, but it was pretty important at the time. In fact, it is the first time that anyone used the square for a political demonstration against the ruling authorities. Hense, it is an important date for my project, because it signifies the birth of "democratic" politics here. I use "democratic" not in the sense of holding elections, since they had been doing that here for quite a while before 1895, but in the sense that it was the first time people tried to use the place of regiem power to voice disaffection with the regime. There is a lot to this whole incident, and it will be explained much more completely in the future, so I will move on to other things.

Some more fallout from the "Big Game" last week. The English Soccer Federations has logded a formal complaint (or at least they are talking about lodging a formal complaint, it's not really clear here if they have or not) against Croatia for their treatment of fans. This actually has nothing to do with the game, but with the actions of the Croatian police, who were apparently described by the English Soccer Federation as something translated to "brutal" here in the papers. My response is "Well, duh." The attitude of the police here is basically 'if a little force is nessessary, then more force is better.' The police here seem to have been pretty even handed too, based on the numbers I've seen (they arrested about 4 times as many Croats as the did Brits, but there is now some dispute about that, with Jutarnji list saying that there were quite a few more Brits detained at the stadium without being arrested).

Top headline today in Večernji list was that the former head of Serbia's nuclear bomb program (who knew they had a nuclear bomb program?) is claiming that Milošević wanted the bomb so he could nuke Kosovo. I find that one a little hard to accept, but Miloševič is dead now, so I doubt he will be able to deny it.

Also, this weekend they showed another football game (American) on TV here. This is kind of a wierd thing for a few reasons. First, the station it is aired on is Z1, which is about one step up from local access. It's a local (Zagreb) station, but it really doesn't have a lot of content, so I doubt they have the money to buy NFL games (in fact, it's such a minor station that Jutarnji doesn't even print their schedual, but that may be because Jutarnji is trying to be a more "national" paper then Večernji). This leads me to believe that this is part of an NFL market building program, where US networks are required to provide one game a week to Z1 for free. Second odd thing is that this whole project started 4 weeks into the regular season. The first "pregled" show was really an introduction to what American football is, and I mean the very basics, as in how many teams are there type thing. Last sunday the showed the Cowboys-Eagles game. This friday, they did another "pregled", but it was a recap of last weeks games (a very nice NFL product) with a Croatian voice over. Sunday was the Stealers-Chiefs game. Play by play was much better this time, and it is interesting to see it develop. The first game they were really struggling for vocabulary and they used a lot of English terms. This week they used a lot more Croatian terms, so they have obviously been thinking about how to describe the game a lot (which also leads me to think that the whole thing was very short notice when it started, or else they would have all this figured out by now).

It is interesting watching football from a Croatian perspective. The first game one of the comentators (a guy who has never played) was saying the game is very violent. The other comentator (a younger guy who did play some in the US, I think at high school level) tried to explain that the game is not so much violent, but physical (the distinction being that, while the players are trying to physically dominate the opposing players, they are not actually trying to physically injur the other players, well, at least most arn't). The younger guy eventially gave up trying to explain it. A lot of the time is spent just explaining the rules and why players are doing what they are doing on the field.

More observations later. Once again, I sorry for any typos or misspellings, as I am just going to publish this as is and (hopefully) come back and edit later.

Unhealthy Nostalgia

Well, I came across this yesterday, just sort of by accident. It's tobacco, and what is really interesting about it, is that it isn't even made in Croatia. It's made in Belgium in co-operation with a Croatian company that markets it here.

(Update) Well, I finally came up with a catchy title for this post. Hey, these things are important. How is anybody going to read your stuff if the title isn't catchy?

Zagreb doesn't disappoint.

Some times when I am here I start to think that I am really on the wrong track. Especially when I can't find anything in the local literature that supports my thesis. I even get asked by local people why I am bothering to study Zagreb at all, its such a small and insignificant city. But, when ever I start feeling I am on the wrong track, something happens to convince me I am on the right track after all. I knew there would be a demonstration on the Square last night after Croatia won the game. I even thought about going down there myself, but my camera really isn't designed for night time photos so I figured I would wait to see what the papers said. Well, Večernji list didn't let me down. Now, what's interesting about this headline is that they use an old, pre-1945 name for the square; Jelačić plac, which is a slavitization of the German word platz, and was used before the name of the square was changed to Trg Republika (Republic Square). No one has used that old local name for the square (plac) in about 60 years, but the paper obviously felt they could use it in the headline and people would know it.

Oh, in case you're curious about why I took a picture of the newspaper, I am working out the best techinque for using the camera to make copies of the newspapers in the library when I start working in that section of the library (hopefully next week).

Interesting times in Zagreb this week (updated).

Well, there have been police all over lower town for the last three days, and today they were in full riot gear (note, this is a picture from yesterday and the MUP already had the land rovers with riot cages over the window out). It's 7pm on a warm fall evening and the streets are pretty much empty. This can mean only one thing; there is a big Soccer game tonight. This is an international game, Croatia vs. England, hence all the security. The English are renown for their fans (and not in a good way) but I have confidence that things won't get too out of hand. Croatian fans (as I mentioned before) have a penchant for using road flairs and the Croatian police are not to shy about using force on anyone that gets out of line (its just that throwing a lighted road flair on the field isn't considered out of line around here). Oh, and the city has been crawling with Brits this week, so I am looking forward to this game being over and being mistaken for a local again.

Update: Well, that didn't take long. The game just ended and there are people on the street singing. Croatia won 2:0. England really did not play well until the last 10 minutes. I'm glad Croatia won (even though I am an Anglo-phile at heart) because it means the city will be in a good mood for the next few days. Oh, and no road flairs on the pitch today. In fact it was no where near as rough as the Dinamo-Hajduk game.

Update 2: Ok, now maybe I'm not so happy Croatia won. I have a feeling it is going to be a long and noisy night here. After the Dinamo-Hajduke tie, every just went home quietly. Not tonight.

Research, Bosnian Politics, and Football in Zagreb.

Well, I promised everyone who asked about it that I would write about my research here. I haven't writen much about it so far for a couple of reasons. First, part of the reason I am doing this blog is to unwind and write about something other than my research. Second, I am a little frustraited at the moment with how things are going. Now, let me take a step back and fill everyone who doesn't know what my project is about in on what I am actually trying to accomplish.

This all started with my facination with a particular statue. This statue actually wasn't here when I was in Zagreb in 85/86, but everyone knew it had been here, and they would tell you that if you gave them the chance. Then, when I came back in 2001 for a summer language program, the statue was back. Now, that was a pretty neat trick, considering it was supposed to have been destoryed.


In fact, it was learning in 1986 that this particular statue hadn't been destoryed, but was being hidden, that crystalized in my mind the fact that Yugoslavia wasn't going to last.

So, from that beginning I am now looking at how the statue and the square it is in, relate to the entire Croatian national project and the transformation of Zagreb into "The Croatian Metropolis" over the last 150 years.

So, now why I am a little frustraited with my research. My plan was to use some general histories of the city to find specific event, then look at how those events were portrayed at the time in newspapers, magazines, and books to see how significant a role the square played in them, and to see how that is presented. My problem is that Croatian history, at least history of the city of Zagreb is an exercise in avoiding talking about the 20th Century in any meaningful way. So, I find fotographs that are described as "people gathering for a demonstration" but no one ever mentions any popular demonstrations in their histories. There are three main histories of Zagreb (well, two actually, because the third is just a re-write of one of the others), and they all pretty much avoid talking about anything after 1850. Out of roughly 1,200 pages of writing, I've managed to gather about 20 pages that are at all relevent, and they really don't give me the kind of information I need.

Now, it's not all bad. They are amaizing archivers here of old newspapers, so I will almost certainly find what I need, but I'm going to have to go through pretty much every day of news for the last 150 years to find what I need (well, probably not quite that bad, but it's starting to look pretty close to that). And, I've made some amaizing finds in the "antique" book stores, including a primary school geography book just about Zagreb published in 1995, and a copy of a special edision publication of 30 years of the urban institute of Zagreb from 1957 - 1987, which talkes about urban planning and development in socialist Zagreb. I also found a copy of an exibision publication of the Statue when it was first put on display in pieces in 1990, which includes copies of lots of original documents relating to the statue (and it is in much better shape than the libraries copy I had checked out).

So, that's my research so far. More updates as the situation warrants.

Now, on to the local reaction to the Bosnian elections (because I know some of you really want to know). Well, after the first couple of days here, things pretty much calmed down and Bosnia fell of the front page of the local papers. Jutarnji list had a nice map with voting statistics last wednesday (like I said, they are very "USAToday" in their presentation), and it is pretty clear why the Croatian politcians (and population) are unhappy about the outcome. In the four Zupanjas that are overwhelmingly Croatian, it looks like the SDP got less than 1% of the vote in 2, 5% in one, and 7% in the fourth one. So, Komsic is the Croatian member of the presidency with about 3% of the Croatian vote (which means he was basically voted into office by the Muslim population who apparently voted for SDP over SDA or SBiH). A big part of this is due to the fact that it looks like HDZ in Bosnia has split into two parties, HDZ and HDZ-1990. I have no idea what HDZ-1990 is, but I have a feeling its to the right of HDZ (they got 30% of the vote in Western Herzegovina and Glamoc). Now, the elections basically dissapeared from the papers until Saterday, when Večernji list ran a special insert of analysis on the Bosnian elections, with the overall conclusion that the Croats in Bosnia are in such sad shape because their leaders are, well, idiots. So, it looks like even the mainstream nationalists in Croatia have given up on the Bosnian Croat political leadership.

Well, this is already a pretty long post, so I will hold my thoughts on the NFL on Croatian TV until later, but I will say this to my friend James; give the NFL a call. They are obviously looking at exspanding into this market, and one of the guys doing the play by play here had about the same level of experience playing the game as you did, so there may be openings in the near future.

P.S. Sorry for any typos or bad spelling. I am going to publish as is and go back and spell check later since it's been a few days since I posted.

Good weather.

Well, the sun came out again finally. It's after work on Friday and lower town is packed with people. One last day to pretend it is still summer.

So, this is a post I wanted to make before I started this blog. It's about the wisdom of the ignorant. I was watching TV when I got here and there was a news story about some American movie people who are here shooting a film. It was a standard press conference with the local media at the beginning of the project. One of the local journalists asked one of the actors (one I didn't recognize, but I am not a pop culture junkie) what they thought about living in Zagreb, and his response was 'I don't know what the economic conditions are here, but everyone seems really well dressed.' Now, that may sound like a really ignorant thing to say, but it is actually a really accurate and insightful observation. It really doesn't matter how good or bad the economy is here, the people of Zagreb are going to look good. This was the most fashion conscious city I had ever lived in the last time I was here, and that hasn't really changed in the last 5 years.

Tonight will be an interesting experiment in cross cultural communication. There is a half hour show on 'Američki footbal' (actually, in the TV listing they are calling it Američki nogomet, but on the promo they actually said footbal), so it will be interesting to see what they say about it.

By the way, if you're curious about what the weather is like here, there is a weather page I found:

http://weather.msn.com/local.aspx?wealocations=wc:HRXX0005

Ok, one final note, I will write about my research and give an update on the Bosnian elections from the perspective of Zagreb next post.

A sad day in Zagreb.

Well, the city was kind of down today. In Croatian, this month is named Listopad, which translates into basically "Leaffall." And right on cue, yesterday morning was the first day when the streets began to fill with falling leaves. Then, today we got a torrential rain shower, but not one of those summer showers that passes and the sun comes out and it warms up again. Nope, this was a cold rain, and even after it passed, it stayed cool for the rest of the day. So, this was that day that comes at some point every year when everyone realizes summer is really over and it's time to get ready to stop eating and drinking outside.

For me though, not so bad a day. I can now actually check books out of the City Library and take them back to my lodgings. So, I actually got to use the digital camera and tripod to copy a book today.

Now, for all of you that are Balkan news junkies, here is the latest on the Bosnian elections from Zagreb. Two days in a row that Bosnian politics has been top headline in Večernji list. Today it was Zagreb is not your capital city which was a statement that the leader of the Croatian government and an HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) party member made to the Bosnian Croats. That was in response (or in anticipation of, I'm not really sure) a statement by the HDZ in Bosnia that they don't recognize Komsic as the "Croatian president" of Bosnia. This has the potential to get sticky because if the HDZ can somehow prove that Komsic didn't actually get the highest number of Croatian votes for the presidency, then it could spark a constitutional crisis. Now, I don't think that there is any chance, especially with the way the system is rigged in Bosnia, that Komsic won't take office, but the last time something like this happened (when the HDZ won the largest number of Croatian seats in the parliament, and were denied seats in the government) the HDZ managed to create quite a mess, including a mutiny of the Croatian part of the Federal Army. So, we will see what the future holds.

Politics and the Press.

Well, as someone has already noted in an e-mail to me, a Croatian candidate won the most votes for the Presidency of Bosnia. This means that not only will he be the Croatian member of the 3 seat presidency, he will also be the president of the presidents so to speak. This is a big deal for quite a few reasons. First, Croats are the smallest of the three main nationalities in Bosnia, so this really is kind of a surprise. The winner is also a member of the SDP party, which is basically the reformed communists and the least nationalistic of the Croatian political parties.

So, that was all politics, what about the press part you may be asking. Well, I'm getting to that. There are basically two daily papers in Zagreb that people read (there are more, but not a lot of people read those). Večernji list (Evening newspaper) is the older one. It was the main daily when I was here 20 years ago. In the last few years though, a new paper has come on the scene, Jutarnji list (Morning newspaper). As you can probably tell by the names, Jutarnji list set itself up as the "opposite" of the older paper. Jutarnji is very "modern" and has a kind of USA Today feel to it in it's graphics. Jutarnji list also seems to have a more "Europeanist" outlook to local politics. This is probably because Večernji list seems to have a very "nationalist" orientation, which I imagine they picked up in the late 80s. Right now, it seems that Jutarnji is winning the circulation battle, so Večernji has really extreme headlines and is always pushing "exclusive" stories.

So, bringing this back to politics and local reactions to the Croatian wining the Bosnian presidency, today's main headline from Večernji list was (roughly translated) "President with 1% of the Croatian Vote." Like I said, they like to be kind of alarmist in their headlines, but, underneath there was an important point. In fact, Komsic, the winner of the presidency, only got 330 votes in WesternHercegovinaa, which has a Croatian population of 30,000. That is kind of an important thing to take into account when looking at the results. It looks like Komsic's victory really was much more a win for the SDP then it was for "Croats" in Bosnia.

I am very happy to see SDP and SBiH (which I think is still Haris Silajdzic's party) do well, as they are both essentially anti-nationalist parties, but I don't think the Croats in Bosnia are behind the SDP's ideas as much as the results might make people think.

Grudge match.

Well, tonight was "the big game" here. DINAMO (Zagreb) played HAJDUK (Split) in soccer. I only watched a little of the begining and the last 20 minutes or so. What a brutal game. The most physical soccer game I have ever seen. Now, why do I care? I don't really enjoy soccer much. I've tried to do my duty and develope an appriciation for the sport, and I do like it more now than I did a few years ago, but it really doesn't do that much for me. But, this is about more than sports, or should I say, it is about sport as a means of politics. Split is Croatia's second largest city, and it is a much older city than Zagreb. Zagreb has only been a real cultural center for about 150 years. Split was where Diocletian's palace was established when he divided the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western halves. Split has always seen itself as Zagreb's equal if not actually superior in many ways, but Zagreb has treated Split as a quaint tourist town on the coast for the last 50 years. So, this game was really about more than just which team is better, its about which city is better, and the teams know it, and the fans know it.

The game was played in Zagreb, and the local fans did their best to support the team. about 75 minutes into the game, DINAMO was up 2 to 1. When HAJDUK got the ball down near the DINAMO goal, some fans lit some road flairs and started throwing them onto the field. This accomplished a couple of things; it stopped play while the firemen on the sidelines ran out to pick up the flair and run it off the field to the dunk bucket to put it out (this implies to me that this is something that happens at this game a lot cause you don't just get half a dozen fire men in full gear and a couple of dunk buckets set up on the pitch in a couple of minutes) which disrupted HAJDUK's attack, it also smoked up the field and made it hard to see the goal from more than a few yards away, also making it harder for HAJDUK to score. It also started part of the stadium on fire, but I'm sure was an unintended consequence.

Anyway, final score, 2:2.

Some reflections on the news here,

or You can take Croatia out of Yugoslavia, but you can't take the Balkans out of Croatia.

These a quick responses to some things I've been reading in the papers or seen on the TV relating to current events here.

The affair de Brodosplit: The day I arrived here, news broke that Brodosplit, a government owned shipbuilding company (actually, it may just be government subsidized, issues of who "owns" these big, industrial enterprises seems just as murky as when I was here 20 years ago) "lost" some money. Now, you're probably thinking, so what, companies loose money all the time, that's the way capitalism works, some companies make money, others loose money. Well, when I said lost, I meant lost, as in no one seems to be able to find $5,000,000. Actually, that's an estimation, because they are not even sure how much is exactly missing. It seems that who ever did this managed to take advantage of the negotiations for the price of building some ships, and the company thought it was getting one price, while the buyer thought they were paying a higher price, and the difference in those two amounts just vanished. This is obviously rather embarrassing for quite a few reasons, which I might go into later if I have the time.

Croatian Army draw down: The current government wants to cut the size of Croatia's military from over 400,000 to around 300,000. That sounds like a big cut, but Croatia only has a population of around 4 million. That means right now over 10% of the population is in uniform on active duty or the reserves. That's kind of astonishing when you realize that the US has a population of around 285 million, and we have a military of about 1.5 million including all of the reserves and national guard.

Bosnia's elections: I got to watch the debate between the four leading candidates for the Croatian member of the Bosnian Presidency. Funny thing was it was done on Croatian National TV in Zagreb. All but one of the candidates was there in person, and one appeared via video link from Bosnia. So, how many other countries have their presidential candidates debate on live TV in a foreign country? Just wondering.

Finally, on the lighter side, Croatian TV is producing a TV version of Mujo and Haso. For those not familiar with these two, they are a pair of Bosnian friends who are their own comedy genre in Former Yugoslavia. I really don't know what to say about this.