Souvenir I / Souvenir II / Water

Souvenir I

A patrol of Danish members of UNPROFOR who control the border between Macedonia and Serbia has had a "close encounter" with Serbian border guards. While patrolling the beat, Danish soldiers ran into a group of Serbian soldiers who wanted the United Nations flag as a souvenir. After the Danes (all of whom are beardless youths) resisted, the Serbs began to insist profusely, resorting to all means of physical coercion. In the end, both groups parted with souvenirs: Serbian border guards with the blue flag and the peace-keepers with bruises. Also blue.

Souvenir II

Western European Union customs officers, who are "helping" their Rumanian colleagues enforce sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the port of Caliphat on the Danube, stopped a Rumanian tourist ship a month ago. The ship's cabins and parlors were packed from the floor to the ceiling with new furniture made in Serbia so that the crew had difficulty in moving around the ship. When asked by suspicious customs officers, the captain calmly replied that the furniture was a souvenir, which Ukrainian tourists, all of whom happened to be employees of an export-import company from Kiev, had bought during their two-day-long stay in Belgrade. Sanctions do not apply to souvenirs, so the ship was allowed to continue. However, only ten days later the same tourist ship on the same route with the same cargo was stopped again. And, the tourists were the same. After consulting the headquarters in Brussels, "the souvenirs" were confiscated but the story does not end there. The ship appeared soon afterwards with new furniture and a new explanation of the captain: the furniture was personal belongings of a group of Ukrainian citizens who were allegedly moving back to Kiev after a several-year-long stay in Belgrade. The papers are all right and the investigation is still underway.

Water

"Mostovi" (translates as "Bridges") the paper for refugees from the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) in the Czech Republic has published a recipe for maximum use of three liters of water:

"First wash your hair over a pail with 1.5 liters of water. Use the same water to wash your feet and the other liter to wash the body while standing in the pail, so that you don't spill one drop. Then wash your laundry, rinse it with 0.5 liter and use the water from rinsing to wash your socks. Then use all the water to clean the bathroom, but don't throw it away. Take an old rag and clean the floors in the flat and the stairs. And, again don't throw it away, but spill it into the toilet."