Oooops!

Not much later, he broached the most sensitive of politically sensitive topics, Kosovo, over beer and billiards with a young man from Krajina, where Serb patriotism runs high. After stating his opinion that Kosovo is "occupied territory" similar to the West Bank in Gaza, the young Serb became visibly agitated and responded hotly, "You don't know anything about Serbian history." "Oh, I do know a few things about Serbian history," he said. "I've traveled in Kosovo, and I've spoken to Serbs and Albanians there, and I know that the population of Kosovo is 90% Albanian, and that the Serbian population is largely military personnel and clerics. And I know that what the Kosovo Albanians have been asking for is their own Yugoslavian state, to be just given the same status as Montenegro." "That would just be the start. They want their own country," the local replied angrily. "And what about your treatment of the Indians in your own country?" The potential hostilities were followed the following day by apologies, not to my friend, but to me.

Serbs are not ones to swallow their pride. I don't blame Serbs for being sensitive to the negative impressions foreigners might have about their country and I have a certain amount of respect for their national pride and their reluctance to kow-tow to the world's so-called superpower. As one YURO reader recently pointed out, Serbs don't want to be under the shadow of the U.S's mediocre leadership and culture. You'd be hard-pressed to find me beating my breast about American foreign policy, credit card culture, and our treatment of Native Americans as well as Serbs can on topics such as dissolution of Yugoslavia, patriarchy and the threat of Islam.

Westerners have always viewed Serbia and its inhabitants as woollier than the rest of Europe. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written in 1776 by Edward Gibbon described the Serbia that existed in the middle-ages as a "Barbarian kingdom".