Love

People who went to Greece for a vacation in the past few years might have noticed that this year many tourist resorts didn't try to bait Serbs into spending their money there. Last year virtually every place there had signs calling Serbs to stop over and offering discounts. In the meantime, the Serbs learned that the offers were good for their national egos but not for their pockets. The Greeks also began focusing on Bulgarians and Hungarians who are vacationing in Greece in growing numbers. The only thing that was left were signs at exchange offices offering not to charge provision to Yugoslavs. As a rule those exchange offices have a much worse exchange rate than others.

Calf

A report of a calf with two heads which a daily published recently was just seemingly part of the practice of filling newspaper pages with sensations over the summer months. This time the birth of the calf was called a genetic incident. The report came from the Zeta river valley, a region whose population has been saying is ecological problematic with examples of chickens with four legs and two heads, huge fruit, eyeless fish and even deformed children.

Locals blame the aluminum plant; i.e. the toxic waste it produces. The calf died immediately after birth.

Miss

Tanjug News Agency reported that Serbs living in the Nordic countries will hold their first Serb Polar Assembly in Malmoe, Sweden early in September. Organizers have already sent out invitations saying Serbs "can be proud of achieving a lot in the region which is so different to their birthplace, more than the people here expected". They plan to close the gathering with a ball where the most beautiful polar Serb girl will be proclaimed.

Mihail Vukas, head of the Serb community in Scandinavia, said the Serbs also have a most beautiful man; Dragan Nikolic from Svrljig won the title of best looking Norwegian.

Market

The Macedonian government adopted one of the most unpopular measures during its mandate aimed at banishing the gray economy and filling empty state coffers. Early in August the small goods market in Skoplje was closed.

That market was one of the biggest in the Balkans covering several thousand square meters with over 400 containers and freezer trucks selling anything from food to detergent and cosmetics at low prices. That attracted shop owners from across Macedonia every day and a large number of Macedonians not only from Skoplje who bought up goods from Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia.

The market provided a social valve that is easily imagined given the increasingly obvious low living standards in the former Yugoslav republic.

Market vendors spent weeks protesting in front of the government building and even met government spokesmen but got nowhere.

The government's main justification was that the market sold perishable goods such as cooking oil, butter and similar.

Today, the market in Skoplje is empty and the government measure has resulted in the first shortage (sugar) and higher prices of goods that used to come from the market.