Shortsighted Balkan Business Mentality -- Why I Avoid Doing Business in Croatia & Serbia

Not every Croat or Serb professional or businessperson is like this -- but enough are that the others stand out like red roses on a field of snow.

Here's what happens: you start a business relationship, perhaps hiring a person in the Balkans to do a job for you or perhaps starting a business contract if some type. Everyone is smiling and nice and happy. Then, fairly soon after that your friendly employee or partner screws you. Blatantly.

I've had all sorts of people, both Serbs and Croats ask for emergency loans... and then string me along with excuses for months until I realized they never intend to pay the money back, and sometimes the "emergency" had never existed in the first place.

I've had Serb contractors, who had just finished one job but were up for rehire on another, turn in their company computers... that were just hollow shells because they'd literally stripped out the innards to use somehow elsewhere.

I've had a Croatian lawyer, who was on the US Embassy's recommended list, agree in writing to do a job for me for a particular amount, and then when he was up against my tight court deadline, he suddenly raised the amount of money required and demanded it up front before he'd do a lick of work.

The weird thing for me in all of these situations is not that people screw other people. I'm not naive. That happens in every country of the world, including America. The difference in the Balkans is that all these people screwed me when it was against their own best interest!

In each of the cases I mentioned above, I was in the midst of starting what I thought would be a longer-term business relationship with these people. One that would be very fruitful for them. But, they grabbed the chance to screw me at the very start. That lawyer, for example, knew we had a longer court case coming up.
Why cheat me at the beginning when I'll just dump you?

My theory is it's due to short-sighted Balkan mentality. Maybe if you grew up in a country where everything kept changing and falling apart over and over again, you begin to think, "forget tomorrow, grab what you can for today!" If you don't have faith in even the near future, why build toward it?

This may also explain why Balkan ex-patriots themselves very rarely invest in Serbian or Croatian business. You only hear about expats investing their savings in two things -- cafes and residential buildings. Even the infamous Pink Panther gang of international jewel thieves funnel their millions back home into almost nothing but cafes and flats in towns such as Nis. Which is incredibly stupid from both a local and national economic standpoint. Outside of limited tourism areas (which are overbuilt and underselling these days in much of Croatia) cafes and buildings don't help rebuild Serbia or Croatia's economy. They don't provide many new ongoing jobs. They don't help with exports. They don't grow expertise. They just sit there.

I do still, occasionally now, do business in the Balkans. But I catch myself flinching whenever I'm doing it. I've been burned too often.

The Hidden Cost of Serbian Gasoline

I knew that the cost of gasoline (petrol) in Serbia, like the rest of Europe, would be far higher than it is in the US. We built that extra cost into our budget, and planned to drive less than we normally would at home in the US. What we didn't count on was the hidden cost of crappy Serbian petrol quality. In the US, we got about 25 miles per gallon. The same vehicle with a tankful of Serbian petrol got fewer than 18 miles per gallon, even with similar driving speeds and conditions (ie. steady highway at ~70 miles per hour.)

In the US, 87-89 octane worked great. In Serbia, we had to switch to 95 octane. Actually I think I should put that in quotes as in "95 octane" because looking at the car's performance, the number "95" was used for marketing purposes only and bore no relation to reality. If there's such a thing as an octane inspector in the Balkans, he's clearly getting paid off.

After experimentation, my husband found a petrol station in Novi Sad with a "95 octane" Euro brand petrol that worked about as well as 89 octane US. In fact, he's planning on gassing up from there from now on. It's a long drive from our house in Sombor, which has plenty of petrol stations of its own, but you get so much more mileage from the Novi Sad petrol that it's worth it.

For what it's worth, my husband says he had the same problems with Croatian petrol as well. There goes my budget.

In Which I am Chided By an American Hotel for Misspelling My Last Name

I am in Arizona at an industry trade show. I checked into the hotel using my married name -- which ends in the traditional Serbian "ic".

Then I go to my room and try to get online so I can email everyone to let them know I arrived safely. To get to the Internet, you have to type your room number and last name. I do it over and over again. No good, something's not working.

Defeated, I call the front desk. "Well, how are you spelling your last name?" she asks. "Like it's spelled," I say slowly, thinking what an odd question.... "How did you spell it exactly?" the woman at the front desk sounds a bit exasperated. I spell it out for her. "There's your problem!" she exclaims, "you're not spelling it correctly. You have to put an 'h' at the end."

Most Flights From Belgrade to US Are Cancelled Due to Iceland's Volcanic Eruption

I'm posting this here because apparently this news isn't on the news in Serbia that anyone I know knows of. If you, like my husband, are planning to fly from Serbia to the US this weekend, you'd better contact your air carrier right away. I've heard the Lufthansa staff at Nikola Tesla Airport are working overtime answering calls tonight.

Turns out a big volcanic eruption in Iceland has shut down most flights in Northern Europe including France and Germany. The ash cloud is expected to drift eastward over the weekend, which isn't good for Atlantic travel because most Europe-to-USA and Europe-to-Canada flights are normally routed where that ash may be. And ash is very dangerous for plane engines. (I'm not an expert, I just heard this in the news here in the US.)

If you have any reason to be concerned, don't expect your travel agent to call you -- call the airline directly!

Update on Stray Dogs in Serbia: Fewer but Happier

As I wrote in 2007, although I had a typical American horror of strays, living in Sombor Serbia for a few months surrounded by mostly sweet and jaunty owner-less dogs had changed my thinking.

The first thing I noticed on my visit this month was that there are far fewer owner-less dogs on the streets. In fact, at first I didn't think I saw any. I sadly asked my husband had they all been put down? I'd heard a mass round up and slaughter happens every few years when the Serb stray dog population gets out of control. "Oh no, not all of them," he replied. "That's an independent dog right over there." He pointed to a healthy-looking dog sniffing at the flower-beds in front of the cafe where we were sitting. But, the dog had a collar. I'd assumed it was somebody's.

Turns out, this past year instead of killing all the dogs, vets in Sombor, Belgrade, and perhaps elsewhere in Serbia did a mass spaying effort on the healthiest of the owner-less dogs. These dogs were fitted with identifying collars and then released to live their lives at their own discretion again. Some Serbs inveigh against spaying as a barbaric practice that robs a dog of its natural personality. This may be true, but spaying also has two benefits for the wild dog population -- not only will they cease to reproduce, but their potential for aggressive behavior toward humans is greatly lessened.

My sister-in-law, who had several scary encounters with feral dogs as she bicycled about her neighborhood in Novi Beograd last year, now fondly watches the wild, collared-dogs playing with a stick in the little park beside her building. Oh, now they've found a rag and are engaged in tug of war battles with it. Adorable. She tells me now that the dogs are less scary, her neighbors have begun setting out food for them.

For now, anyway, Serbia's solution seems to be working. At least, unlike America where generally all dogs must have owners or they are put down, there's a chance for a dog to live its own life in Serbia without leashes and obligations.