Alex Massie points me to this little piece in the Guardian. It’s about how Croatians in Zagreb have overcome their government’s ban on smoking in bars and cafes by simply continuing smoking. The piece’s author, Euan Ferguson, is commendably enthusiastic about this development, but his traditional British contempt for the region shines through nonetheless:
What have the Balkans ever done for us? Until I saw this picture, I would have said pretty bloody little. Anger, wars, vampires, evil food, poisoned rivers, dictators, distrust, revenge and fear and it still features the only part of the world – mad northern Albania – where I’ve been offered a handgun for protection in a hotel because they’d lost the bedroom key.
Right back atcha, pal—what have you ever done for us? British policy in the Balkans has always been wrong-headed, hatched by the dimmest bulbs in the foreign office, whose understanding of the region seems to have come from a reading of Rebecca West’s disastrous Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and not much else. Stuff your sanctimony, pal, and ponder your own country’s turd-filled legacy to the world (Pakistan, Afghanistan, the modern Middle East come to mind) as you drift into cultural senescence and irrelevance, the distended state teat lolling about your wrinkled lips.
