Some day these countries would want to be a part of Serbia again? Or Serbia will rise to be an expansive imperialistic power? Either scenario seems doubtful. More likely would be Serbia getting absorbed either into a resurgent Turkish or Russian Empire, or perhaps something like a United States of Europe.
They were within the Soviet sphere of influence before... and... if Putin takes Western Ukraine there's only one country (Romania or Hungary take your pick) separating them... so why not? Likely? No. Possible? Yes. And more plausible than Serbia ever regaining control over any other country.
There are people who want Republika Srpska to be part of Serbia again and even want to wage war over it both Bosnia and Serbia are not part of NATO and if in war Serbia could be guarenteed by Russia (Putin) so they can get what they want.
This is a region about which I know very little. I'd like to see a quiz about the country itself, not just its location, but this is a good start Jiaozira. I would probably totally bomb on it, but with repeated attempts it would be a good learning experience. I feel that way about all countries of the world and I'm happy to see the quizzes on specific countries which are being featured.
I agree with ander, but this quiz is also very helpful to me because, to be honest, while I know that Serbia is ONE of the countries in this region, if you asked me WHICH one it is (like, on a map), I probably couldn't tell you. The only one of these countries that I can consistently identify by shape/location is Croatia, because it looks like a slightly flattened Pac-man.
Similar things could be said about pretty much each two neighboring countries on this peninsula. Or in short: Welcome to the Balkans where nobody likes each other but everyone hates the Turks.
If that's true then why is there a Serbian customs checkpoint at the border with Kosovo? I should know, that's where Serbian police stole my car. If there was no border there that wouldn't have happened.
That "border" is only there temporary, it will be removed soon or later in the future. I can't tell if you are lying or not, i don't have any evidences that 'stealing' actually happened.
I'm not lying. Corrupt evil jerkoffs, maybe they were mad at me for being American and trying to go to the sovereign nation of Kosovo which they are impotent to exert any control over, or maybe they just saw my car and wanted it. I'd owned that car for 13 years; drove through dozens of countries with it and never had an issue. When I entered Serbia they looked at my papers, everything was fine. When I tried to leave, they decided my registration wasn't valid. They took me to some kangaroo court in Prokuplje, acting like they were doing me a big favor the whole time; the "judge" there decided that my legally owned and registered car was "undeclared goods." They marched me to an ATM, got as much money as they could out of me under threat of incarceration. It was a straight up shake down. No set fine basically just "how much you got?" And the cops from the border got kickbacks I'm sure. They couldn't afford a liter of gas on the way in. On the way back they stopped to buy food and booze.
I was told that if I could produce more documentation that the car was legally registered I'd get it and the money they stole from me back. I produced more documentation. But I got nothing. Part of it may have been my incompetent lawyers. Most of the ones I contacted didn't want to touch the case; probably they were smart enough to realize that nothing could be done in the face of this obvious corruption. But I fought it for a year and nothing happened. Pulled in every favor I could, nothing. They stole my car.
And before that.. Belgrade was boring. Most of the people I met were jerks. and they charged me an outrageous fee for driving in to the country even just for a week. Seems like if their plan was to confiscate the cars that you take in they might ease up on that. But I got gouged on the way in and the way out. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made. I should have turned around and just gone through Croatia.
Serbia is a beautiful country. As with any country there are great people and mean people. You shouldn't base your opinion on where you decide to travel on one account, which does seem incredibly biased.
I'm sorry for seeing this now and I probably won't get any answers but I believe it's good for people to know this. State of Kosovo was made in the west because the Albanians living there promised to the Americans a lot of stuff Serbia didn't want to (for example: mine Trepča, which is rich in a lot of materials, and we know how Americans are in those fields...). When Serbia refused to give them what they were looking for, they turned to the other side. Albanians had nothing to lose: giving a mine in exchange for independence is a great deal. That's one of the reasons America bombed us. I agree that currently in Serbia almost everything is led by mafia and criminals, including the state itself. That's why we don't do much over there. Because the western leaders told our president he will be in that place as long as he can provide the independent Kosovo. I would like to add that the name Kosovo itself and all of the cities over there are in Serbian.
Personally I don't have a strong opinion about whether or not Kosovo is independent. Kosovo is shown as independent on this map because that is the Jetpunk standard. I have created a Serbian language version of this quiz with border that Serbians will better agree with here.
mjnc: that's absurd. That mine has been out of commission since 1999. The estimated infusion of foreign capital to get it up and running again would probably cost less than the NATO missions to stop Milošević and his adventures in ethnic cleansing, and if that were the real reason for this it seems like that capital would have quickly been forthcoming after the conflict was over.
by far the biggest one, yes. But I was ripped off multiple other times there, encountered a lot of corruption, a lot of rude people (some nice ones), and overall didn't find much worth recommending a visit over. I had better experiences in literally every other European country I've been to, and can't really think of anything good to say about the place. There was a small place next to the McDonald's downtown in Nis that made good chicken sandwiches. That's all I got right now.
well... what should I say? Theoretically not all of them are jerks. But I've got little evidence to back up that statement. I do understand that anecdotal evidence isn't everything, though. Even if there's a lot of it.
Sorry to about your problems in Serbia, Kalbahamut. I've had similar experiences (not in Serbia, and not involving my car), but being subjected to arbitrary decisions by those who have assumed the power to harass those with certain passports. (I was even interrogated once in Grenada because I landed with a Robert Ludlum novel in my purse)! So I can empathize. Hope that your further travels are more pleasant experiences.
The Serbian version merges Kosovo into Serbia. In retrospect, I regret making this. Once you start drawing borders influenced by sentimentality rather than who currently administrates the territory then it becomes a massive can of worms. Pure objectivity when drawing a map is unreasonable, otherwise the borders of a country like Syria or Ukraine (pre-2022) would look quite different. Even Mexico would see half of the southern state of Chiapas become its own thing, considering that it is controlled by rebels. Pure objectivity isn't going to happen when making a map, but I do believe that we can follow universal standards, however controversial the resulting decisions may be. I have no stakes in either Serbia or Kosovo, or Albania for that matter. I'm planning on keeping the quiz up but these are my current thoughts about mapmaking.
Ha! I just typed in all of the answers to the quiz without realising that my cursor wasn't typing, so I typed them in again. Thankfully, I still had time left after both of those things.
serbia would be pretty happy to see all of its annoying neighbors gone but then it'd get nostalgic about the good old days of getting drunk and arguing over kosovan independence in a bar in pristina with the locals and it'd launch some sort of government operation to lift all the countries out of the ocean somehow
someone needs to write a book about this, maybe i will.
And before that.. Belgrade was boring. Most of the people I met were jerks. and they charged me an outrageous fee for driving in to the country even just for a week. Seems like if their plan was to confiscate the cars that you take in they might ease up on that. But I got gouged on the way in and the way out. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made. I should have turned around and just gone through Croatia.
someone needs to write a book about this, maybe i will.
Kosovo is Serbia!!!
Oh well, it's fine I guess...
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