>Heh, Rob... Slovenians would not agree to be *in* the Balkans, especially
>after some edition of the Britannica placed them on the ambiguous fring... A
>Croatian girl said that Croatians are Catholic, and thus a world away from
>the Balkans, and another one (from Macedonnia) once remarked that
>Macedonians are unique on the Balkans for preferring diplomatic means for
>settling conflicts (wasn't good at history, obviously). I guess Greeks feel
>victimised, being forced to put up with bickering barbarians (grossly
>exaggerating an article I read ab Macedonian-Serbian relations written by a
>Greek who's based in the US). And I remember a friend in Belgrade
>passionately arguing that Yugoslavia is <in>, but not <of> the Balkans (that
>was years before Kosovo, though). Read somewhere, don't remember exactly
>where, the now become cliche that if the Balkans did not exist, they'd have
>to be invented. They do come in handy - especially if their own offspring
>(like film director Kusturica) say that war is a natural phenomenon on the
>Balkans. And a Polish friend, shutting up an argument with "People from the
>Balkans tend to get offended easily and are quick to pick up fight".
>The Balkans are a symptom and, as such, would be handing them over to Ken
>who's more qualified to prove that the Balkans do not exist ;-)
Before Ken gets rid of the Balkans for us (guess they're an enjoyable symptom for some ... ), we should remember that, whilst the original connotation obviously hadn't died out completely (it was too easily redeployed after 1990), it wasn't dominant over the thirty years leading up to 1990. I think we westerners had rather a favourable, if not positively romantic, view of the area, really (Tito was looked upon as a pain in the arse for Moscow - obviously a good thing - and the details of his tempestuous bout of self-assertion in 1946 had been forgotten - and Bulgaria was full of alpine panoramas, mighty weight-lifters and exotic throat-singing peasants - oh, and an apparently blue Danube and all those Black Sea holiday resorts).
Anyway, you might as well make the best of the tag, eh? Guess you're stuck with it over there in Bulgaria, Elena. You're where the bulk of the Balkan Mountains are, no?
Guess it'd constitute some really vulgar cultural materialism to speculate that the dramatic topography, paucity of unifying waterways, and the presence of huge contending and meddling imperial powers at the fringes all around, helped the Balkan population develop along differentiated lines, eh? That'd explain those Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, Ottomanised Kosovars, Euro-Slovenians, and, er, throat-singing Bulgars ...
>P.S. Got the joke, Kel,
Wish I had ...
Nighty-night, Rob.