Money talks

When the government strikes a deal with the Catholic Church you can be sure our liberty is in danger. And so were denied the pleasure of shopping on a Sunday afternoon. For the sake of a handful of childless priests and nuns, many hard working shop owners and parents lost income or even their job as they suddenly had to close their business on Sundays. According to Večernji list already 1152 shops went out of business.
Some smart local guys found a way to defeat the unholy alliance between the national government and the universal church. Towns simply organize a fair, week after week. During fairs, shops are allowed to work all Sunday long. That is, after all, the essence of a fair: buying and selling.
Especially in Dubrovnik, tourists were unpleasantly surprised to find the doors of souvenirs shops closed. Often they arrive with huge cruise ships and spend one day in Dubrovnik. If that day is a Sunday, they won't be able to buy Dubrovnik's best selling souvenir: Babushka dolls (Matryoshka dolls), mostly made in China. Inventive entrepreneurs from Dubrovnik started organizing trips to nearby Montenegro (Herceg Novi, Kotor, Budva), with its beautiful beaches, lower prices, liberal opening hours and night clubs.


Oh, and with its euro, which is really convenient.

Death of a language

At Interliber, the annual international (Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro are present too) book fair in Zagreb, the book Language and Identity in the Balkans by Robert David Greenberg attracted my attention. I did not buy it, but decided to borrow it from the Zagreb public library. It doesn't have the original English (or should I say: American?) version, but it did have a Croatian translation. At least today we call it a Croatian translation. Earlier translations would enter libraries with the language code "serbocroatian", but that is history.
Pointing out that the differences, in spelling or pronunciation, between Serbian and Croatian are next to nothing compared to the variety you can find in German, Dutch, French or English makes no sense. Also, the three Croatian dialects (štokavian, kajkavian and čakavian) differ much more from each other than standard Croatian differs from standard Serbian. But who cares about science? It's all a matter of identity. Some people believe in extraterrestrial life, others in a language - fine with me. Serbo-Croatian is dead (except on Wikipedia) or simply never existed. The pencil strokes and question marks in Greenberg's book suggest that the previous reader was of that opinion.
Maybe that person is right. When I visited Montenegro, I spoke Croatian with the lady that sold me an ice cream. She said: "You speak nice Serbian". I felt very proud, but at the same time I wondered: Who is crazy here? If the lady listens to her government, next time she should tell me: "You speak nice Montenegrin". My CV is getting longer and longer.