Corruption

You know, you always read that in this and that country the corruption is to high, they are doing something against it, it works or not, they have to improve the situation to join EU or whatever... all pretty abstract when it's all far away.

So, two weeks ago was the first time that i got into contact with actual corruption. Nothing big, but still. And if you've read my last blog entry you might have a guess which country i am talking about. BUT it's not like that: the Serbians were perfectly ok, i mean, i've seen nothing like that there. And that's including the Serbian border controls. Perfectly fine, just checking my passport and asking if i had anything to declare.
Where i have seen corruption was well inside Schengen. To be more precise, it was at the Schengen border where the Hungarian border police let us know that they are corrupt. I was travelling by bus, inside a Serbian bus. After passing the Serbian border control we moved on to enter the Schengen area, still in a queue with other buses. There was an announcement in Serbian. I expected that it would say we should get ready to get our luggage inspected by Schengen border control - i had heard from a friend that they check every piece of luggage for smuggled cigarettes. I asked the lady sitting next to me and she explained to me that the border police had informed us that they want one euro per person to let us through faster. Otherwise they would "do it by the textbook" which meant checking everyone's luggage. That might take several hours more. We had one guy on the bus who was rather keen on collecting the one euro from everyone. When they came to check our passports his was one of two passports that they took with them to inspect it further, so he his passport was neither Serbian nor EU. Anyways, most of the people on the bus paid. And nobody checked any of our luggage. Could've had anything in my backpack, everything passed.

50+ euros per bus, i-don't-know-how-many buses per day; you do the math.

Corruption. Disgusting. How normal it was for everyone, and all people were pretty happy about "one euro for two hours of my life". Well, i don't have any solutions to offer here, who am i to judge especially all those commuters going there everyday.
But it's definitely not allright this way.

Burek for breakfast

So, last week i took some days off to visit good friends in Serbia. It was the second part of a so-called cultural exchange, meaning that my friends were already in Vienna last may and now me and some other people went to visit them.

Anyways, i'll tell you a bit about my experiences in Serbia. First of all, i ate a lot. Yummy food. And because it's Serbia, most of it is meat, of course. I still don't feel hungry, even though i left Serbia about five days ago =)
I ate a lot of Pljeskavica. With and without cheese filling, at any time of day or night, bought in little sausage-stand-like stores or personally made and bbq-d by friends... wonderful fast-food. Wouldn't mind having more of that here in Vienna. A picture to give you an idea:

Nice, huh? Also notice all that meat in the background. Of course i also ate other food. Niš is the world-capital of Burek, or so i was told. Not only that, they also had the annual burek festival while i was there (Buregdžijada according to Wikipedia). Nice little festival with lots of good burek to eat, life music, and so on, each year in a different part of the city. Yummy again.

General observation in Serbia: toilet doors cannot be locked, almost everywhere, be it in public places, restaurants, or at private homes. Well, i guess some can, but most of the ones i saw had a lock but no key inside. At least that's what i saw, not making any assumptions here.

Back to Niš. My friends also took me to a place calld Radon which is one of the hotelst in Niška Banja spa. The water with supposed healing abilities is radioactive. Which is definitely not one of its healing factors :-P but whatever. You are only allowed to stay for it for one hour at a time, so that's what we did. Quiet fun in the hot pool.

Another cultural thing, and again this wets my appetite, was the Slava: a truly Serbian tradition. Every family has its own date for it. Basically it means that you invite all your family and friends and eat together. Lots of nice food, some traditions. Ooooh it was nice. They organised it especially for us, even though we weren't there at the date of their actual Slava. So nice.

A not so nice but very interesting thing in Niš was the visit to the concentration camp. The Nazis built one there. Smaller dimensions than the ones i have seen so far. Still horrible.

Niš also has some 'celebrity sons', most memorable for me was Constantine the Great. He was born there and returned to the city several times throughout his lifetime. They have a huge area where they started uncovering ancient villas. With beautiful mosaics. And a lot of it is still uncovered because there simply isn't enough money to properly preserve it. Until there will be, keeping those mosaics covered is the best option to preserve them. Bloody shame that those treasures of old aren't visible for us. If anyone feels like investing, do it! ;-)

Anyways, i had a great week, thanks a lot to my Serbian friends!
I'll leave you now with a picture from the skull tower, and impressive monument of the first Serbian uprising against the Ottoman empire: