Čevapija

Croatian Government Scared by Yugo Terror Threat

Hudin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 09:16:08 +0000

Someone went and left a Yugo in front of the Sabor (Croatia’s main governmental building). And by in front of, I mean parked right in front of the main doors. It is pretty suspicious activity as most Yugos are currently within Serbian borders.
In the US, the equivalent would be parking a Chevy Citation (worst. name. ever.) on the steps of Capitol Building in DC. Obviously, this sort of thing can’t happen in the US, but in Croatia, it’s rather wacky how immediately accessible the federal government buildings are in the country. For friends and family living there, they know this is done due to the fact you will be going there a lot in your daily life.
Anyways, enjoy the embed below. If Croatian media outsmarts me, then try this oldskool link technique.

Google Maps Loves Italy. Balkans, not so much.

Hudin — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:23:34 +0000

I’ve driven around the Balkans a bit. Probably the craziest driving is in Belgrade. The easiest is in rural Slovenia. People generally always drive fast. They love it, like this moron who I assume is on the A1.
Driving fast is fine when you know where you’re going. When you’re a tourist, things get dicey. A map is necessary. I always had mine from Freytag & Berndt when I was driving and I was thankful for it. There are those who think that Google Maps technology trumps the age-old paper map though. For those interested in using it, you might want to think again as shown here and here for going between Dubrovnik and Mostar and Split and Dubrovnik. I know I like a ferry to Italy, how about you?

Nice and to the point...

Slovenian Bears Terrorize Weak French

Hudin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:21:48 +0000

Concerns over the rising bear population in the French Pyrenees are growing. These bears aren’t just any bears though, they’re Western Balkan bears, proudly exported from Slovenia. I wrote about this previously when I learned of it happening in 2006.
Sure, people are worried, but they’re forgetting about the possibilities that a great many of their most annoying countrymen might get eaten as a result of this. The bears aren’t competing for jobs or crossing union strike lines, so what’s the problem? They’re bears. Just chill and let them take a sheep every now and again. But, if by chance these bears think they’re going to cross the border and hit on some jamón in Spain, then I’ve got six fully loaded answers waiting for those bastards.

It may seem hard to believe, but this fellow is both French and against bears in France.

Please Help to Save the Serbian Panda

Hudin — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:49:13 +0000

This was spotted on Belgraded yesterday. I think he was the first to “break the story”.
For those unaware, most Serbian (and Bosnian and Croatian and Montenegrin etc.) meals consist of meat. Followed by more meat. Followed by a side of meat. Then maybe a potato or bread just to make mom happy that you’re not eating meat all the time. Then just a touch of meat at the end to wash away the bread or potato. While in Belgrade, I ate tons of meat. While in Novi Sad, I shared what must have been five kilos of delicious delicious meat with my cousin Ivan. My heart nearly stopped halfway through the meal. We weren’t able to finish all of it to which the server just laughed and asked if we weren’t from around there. It’s damned good meat there, but damn it’s a lot of it.

So cute, endangered, and delicious.

Croatian ‘Free’ Media Suffers a Minor Setback

Hudin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:34:53 +0000

At 18:25 yesterday, a car bomb exploded in Zagreb, Croatia killing the publisher and editor-in-chief of Nacional, Ivo Pukanić and journalist, Niko Franjić. Naturally, if such an event happened in US America, the immediate response would be to blame terrorist and that “damned El Kayduh”. Such assumptions are not made in Croatia. They assume that it’s the mafia instead.
While Split has always been known to be unsafe due to all the drug activity (which is of course all from Italy as such issues can’t possibly arise domestically), the problems of safety in Zagreb have been escalating in recent events. It seems if you cross the wrong person, you can get you shot in broad daylight. Not a great image for a country relying heavily on tourism money at the moment.
Ironically, I was just having a conversation with a friend two days ago because I was asking him about Nacional and if they’re any good. They’re apparently better than most as they actually do research and create their own stories; an art lost on most in the media these days. Nacional had run a particularly scathing article on a one Davor Butković who is (or maybe was) a very prominent journalist in Croatia. The man is about as corrupt as they come and Nacional outed him on account of it. My personal grudge against Butković is for the fact that he writes blather about wine that I’ve found to be worthless. This is doubly unfortunate as it comprises the National Tourism Board’s entire Wine Guide for the country, but I digress.
Pukanić had been fearing for his life for some time. I have no idea as to what his dealings were behind the scenes, but on the surface, he appeared to try to report on what was actually wrong in Croatia. This is not a popular stance to take. It has not been a particularly free media scene since the days of Tuđman and his propaganda machine (which thusly morphed in to today’s newspapers) that was nearly on a level with Milošević’s. The death of Ivo is undoubtedly going to have a chilling effect on the freedom of the press in Croatia. If the EU ascension talks of 2009 get pushed back, I will not be surprised in the least. On the bright side, it gives all the competitors a chance to heap praise on their main opposition without losing any ground.

The scene of the explosion.

An Impressive Retrospective of Rijeka, Croatia

Hudin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 04:40:15 +0000

It’s usually the case the proper names of places get squat upon on the internet quite quickly. For instance: unitedstates.com, congo.com, and spain.com are all crap sites that someone is sitting upon to collect advertising money or until they get the right offer to buy it off of them.
So it was the other day that I was bouncing around various Croatian city names to see what came up. Much like the examples above, the variety of names that I tried were all being held by cyber squatters. For kicks, I tried rijeka.com which forwards you to this gallery page. While the gallery takes and insanely long time to load, it’s worth it as it’s one of the most comprehensive collection of old photos from Rijeka that I’ve ever seen. If you’re feeling bored, got to the page, get a cup of tea/coffee, come back, and give it a look.
To give a little history, Rijeka is Croatia’s most northern coastal city east of the Istrian Peninsula. It also happens to have one of the most boring names in the world as ‘rijeka’ simply means, ‘river’ in Croatian. This was derived from the original, Italian name for the town which was ‘fiume’, that also means, ‘river’. Visitors to Croatia will know Rijeka as a northern hub for trains connections to the interior, buses to Istria (probably Rovinj or Pula), and the end of the line coming up from Dubrovnik. I’ve been there twice although my gallery is pathetic at the moment. Despite its grunginess and overall aura of being a port town, I quite like the place. I don’t know if this comes from the fact that until the last century, it was a crossroads between Romance language and Slavic language speakers, as well as serving as the main port for the Austrian Empire, but there’s something to it. Croats often call it a feeling of “rock n’ roll”.
If you ever pass through, spend a day checking out the few sites and getting in to the vibe of the town, which I like a great deal more than Split. If you never fancy yourself hitting up Croatia’s main port city, then just enjoy the photos of the link above.

The Roman arch in Rijeka.

Let’s Stop Saying, ‘Balkanization’

Hudin — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:05:03 +0000

A word that is oft tossed around freely is Balkanization. In its truest form, it refers to the breakup of the country that was formerly known as Yugoslavia. In its most idiotic form, it is used to refer to collection of smaller items that separate from a larger one. I have a crazy idea: stop using this word.
As you can see from the Wikipedia article that I linked to, there isn’t really any history given as to how the word came about. Obviously it came in to use as former Yugoslavia started to fall apart, but there isn’t any mention as to who was the first person to coin it in to the common vernacular. At this point, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that it’s an offensive word. Why people can’t simply say, “breakup”, “collapse”, or “separation” is the same reason that we use French words for wine varietals, in that one believes one has the air of being educated if one is to use this bigger, fancier word.

Another breakup that we don

Do any of you who use this word think of the people who actually live in this region of the Western Balkans and what this means to them? It would be like saying every time you serve a bad meal that it’s suffered “Britization”. No one wants that and it’s an unfair association to a region that never asked for the word to be used in the first place. And I pick on the British in this example as I suspect them of starting common use of the word, such as in this article on the BBC that’s actually about Africa. It’s just one of many.
Beyond the offense of the word, there is just the complete blindness to history. Yugoslavia was actually comprised of various states that had been independent as various points throughout history. So, Yugoslavia was an artificial entity that was bound to separate just like countless other larger countries that have broken up over the centuries. Of course we don’t say USSRization, Czechoslovakization, British Empirization, or even Austro-Hungarization. No, we say Balkanization and we say it too much. It’s a word we need to lose and just revert back to the normal words I mentioned before. Saying Grenache instead of Garnacha may sound “fancier” to some, but saying, Balkanization just shows that you have no true grasp of what you’re talking about, leaving you to fumble for large words to attempt to cover that fact up.

Yes, Balkan Stuff

Hudin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:18:05 +0000

Although, I have to be specific that this will be about the Western Balkans. So many people just say, “The Balkans” when what they really mean is former Yugoslavia. I’m sure that Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and that little bit of Turkey have been wondering where the hell they are since, “The Balkans” never actually means them.
But, the reason for this site is that I actually write at my main site, Hudin, but all my posts about the former Yugo get mashed in with my complaining about how good life in the US is. So, I’m working to sort things out a bit more. If you want to read my meandering posts on Sub-Saharan Africa, you can check out, Subsaharska on Maneno.
But, just a bit of disclosure. Yes, I’m a Croat. I was born in and have lived in the US all my life. Currently I live in San Francisco. I have traveled extensively throughout Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia, and Montenegro. I speak Croatian somewhat okay, although I have a lot of work to do before I can say that I’m fluent. I’ve written a book on the wines of Dalmatia and Herzegovina with my wife, which we’re working on publishing. And that’s about it. Oh, as for the title, I really wanted it to be, ‘čevapčići’, due to everything I’m going to write about all being little parts of something that was larger, but that name was taken (not a surprise really as they’re freakin’ delicious little buggers). So, I have to settle with čevapija, which is kind of similar and actually a title I don’t all that much now that I think about it.

My Precarious Adventures through the Dot ME Domain

Hudin — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:24:11 +0000

With the breakup of Yugoslavia, various member states fared better than others. At the bottom of the list would probably be Bosnia who unfortunately inherited the front lines of a war between the power hungry assholery of Milošević and Tuđman. After them comes Macedonia which mostly seems to have inherited a name conflict with Greece. It gets harder after that. Croatia got amazing coastline for a ready made tourism industry in the postwar economy, but they were also somewhat shunned by the west due to barbaric actions in the war. Serbia didn’t get the coastline, got the same shunning as Croatia and then some, but they also inherited all of the built-up institutions of former Yugoslavia such as the seat on the UN. Slovenia came out quite well, despite a touristic coast, as the West loved them as seen by their amazingly quick admission to the EU, EuroZone, and now even Schengen.
The one odd apple in all this group is Montenegro. Until this year, they were just kind of puttering along, doing their own thing. Sure, they had coastline, but it’s somewhat polluted and being devoured by Russians at the moment. In fact, they were really low on my list of successful post-Yugo states until the most amazing thing happened. As I mentioned earlier, funny things were a foot when it came to the domain extension of Yugoslavia which went from .yu to .cs for Crna Gora (Montenegro) Serbia, and then, once Montenegro voted for independence in 2006, the name was split again to .rs for Serbia and .me for Montenegro.
What a windfall for this tiny nation of 600,000 people. The combinations are endless. Everyone who ever wanted www.fuck.me or www.la.me could have their dreams come through. Perverts who may have been desiring www.co.me are out of luck though as they’ve reserved that for country use, much the same way are co.uk exists in the United Kingdom.
I took a little trip down new domain registration land myself. I decided to take on registering www.taste.me as I thought it would have multiple uses from culinary to perverse. Unfortunately a lot other folks felt the same way which led me down an interesting path with how they are coordinating the deployment of these names.
Montenegro made a very smart initial move in that they didn’t handle selling the domain names themselves. They bid out the rights to that. There’s nothing new in this as most countries do this. So, when you’re buying a .me name, you’re not actually buying from Montenegro, but from some reseller in your country. I ended up trying GoDaddy for the first (and last) time. I searched around for a name that seemed to be available, which was taste.me, filled out the forms, submitted the credit card info and thought that I was the proud owner of this name. Oh how I was wrong.
First off, it turns out that GoDaddy had some problem with me. I registered this name while in Europe and for some reason they came to the conclusion that I was a fraudulent registrar. Given that assumption, they froze my account, locked me out, and sent me a single email that had no information but to contact them. I tried to contact them and the monkeys on the phone didn’t seem able to do anything or tell me why I was locked out. They eventually refunded my money and I gave up on my dreams of owning taste.me.
It turns out that this was all for the better as paying that initial $100 for the name was not actually buying it. It was reserving a place in line to be able to bid in a domain auction further on. All of this is not readily apparent and with good reason. I doubt most folks would be $100 for the right to then bid on something as small and silly as a domain name. Let me also emphasize that it was $100 for each .me name you wished to chase down.
Oddly enough, I continued to receive updates about the auction for taste.me. This was interesting to follow because unlike a normal auction where there is a set time frame, the way this auction worked was that once someone submitted a bit, if there was a new bid submitted within 24 hours, the auction would continue. It basically just encourages people to bid like crazy to own the domains. In the case of taste.me, the auction went on for about two weeks and ended up at a final price of $6,505. Crazy, huh?
In theory, a large percentage of money from the sale of domain names if going back in to the country. It had better as it’s apparent that Montenegrin’s aren’t buying .me. It’s also about $20 now to register a name since this asinine auction system has ended and it’s business as usual. There does seem to be some black box business going on with the registration still. If you try to register something like asdasjj90.me, you can. But if you try to register something like theearthiswaitingfor.me it will most likely tell you it’s already been bought, but you’ll get the offer to bid on it. I don’t know what they’re doing, but it definitely seems shifty and I hope that it’s not just a few entrenched Montenegrin politicians making off like bandits on this.

Yes, it's really for you, this who ME thing.