Read all posts for ‘Central and Eastern Europe’

In the village where I’m living you can meet people from different nations. Mostly Slovaks and Hungarians. A few Czechs, Serbs, some Vietnamese and Chinese. Sometimes Gypsies. And also someone of clearly Sub-Saharan origin. A football championship between various groups living in our area took place recently at our local stadium where I […]

As ever more Hungarians decide to leave the country, Hungary faces a creeping social crisis. Who will replace those young talents who emigrate? And what effect will this have on the way we Hungarians define ourselves? To understand such questions, you have to dig deeper into the history of the […]

Riding the subway in Chicago recently, I saw an advertisement for the popular American television show “Two and a Half Men.” The punch line of the ad was “men will be boys!” I’ve seen the show a few times (ironically, on TV in Croatia), and I’ve gathered that the protagonist […]

Sasha and I were colleagues in university. He was a mediocre student. After graduation I didn’t manage to find any work paying more than 30 euro a month. So I started my “career” as a clerk in a music shop. One day Sasha dropped by and said he was going […]

At the moment Bulgaria is governed by a caretaker government appointed by the president because the ruling party GERB resigned at the end of February after a series of country-wide protests. They started innocently enough against the unexpectedly high electricity bills people were unable to pay. All that citizens wanted […]