Balkan Culture will Enrich the EU
As European ministers urge Western Balkan states to meet strict conditions laid down on the long road to European Union membership, it is easy to forget the benefits and opportunities that new states and their cultures can bring to people on both sides.
The last states to join the EU in 2007 faced a bumpy start and even open prejudice. As Western Balkan states progress along the path to candidacy and membership, recent history should tell us that a more informed approach could smooth out bumps in the roadmap.
Serb Diaspora Urged to Submit Kids for Photo Contest
The search is on to find a child from the Serb diaspora who best embodies ‘Serbian values and traditions’. A contest has been launched by the Small Serbian Shop (Mala Srpska Prodavnica), apparently the largest online retailer peddling Serbian shirts, music, films, flags and nationalist ephemera to satisfy the diaspora’s hunger for a flavour of home.
Serb families overseas have been invited to post photos of their child dressed in ‘traditional markings’. Cue shots of kids in colourful costume, fur hats and draped in flags. Occasionally treading a thin line between cultural pride and fancy dress, these children from a foreign land are being encouraged to relive the past, reclaim the heritage and revisit the homeland of their parents. Mostly born to families who left Serbia for various reasons, they literally wear their Serbian heart on their sleeve.
Strawberry Energy Showcases Entrepreneurial Young Serbia
Belgrade student entrepreneurs are flying the flag foryoung Serbia. Strawberry Energy is a pioneering business that is generating international acclaim for its renewable energy devices that teach about the benefits of clean energy technologies and, by highlighting actual benefits, help people appreciate the importance for our future.
“We share a dream in which energy is gained from the sun and the wind, in which air is clean and rivers unpolluted, and new technologies are used for the preservation of our environment,’ said Strawberry‘s CEO Miloš Milisavljević. “We want to develop devices that make renewable energy available to all, to bring home the advantages of green technologies, so people become familiar with renewable energy and realise its potential. Our future depends on sustainable energy. We want to encourage understanding of the good that it can bring.”
This team of ambitious young engineers has achieved something that many others would have failed to deliver – they have created a thriving business and an innovative product with practical use.
Hamam Balkania: A Book Review
Hamam Balkania from Vladislav Bajac, leading contemporary Serbian author and founder of the Geopoetika publishing house, is described as one of the most exciting and poetic novels in modern Serbian literature. Having won the Balkanika, Golden Hit and Isidora Sekulic awards and been translated into ten languages, it is rare among Serbian novels in that it is so widely available internationally.
Using powerful prose, Hamam Balkania is a meticulously structured tale of friendship and redemption, where Bajac considers linkages between issues of personal, individual and national identity in the shadow of dramatic historical events. It also raises the question of how much faith can be placed in history as written by the victors, or even events tainted by the prejudices of our own interpretations.
