User blog comment:Marina Moreau/Contemporary European geography/@comment-27.32.169.187-20130119032951/@comment-5959682-20130120224104

You are right. Still, it is a bit puzzling to hear people saying ex-Yugoslavia, about 20 years after it ceased to exist. I had a conversation a few days ago with a person from Macedonia. It is a bit perplexing when people expect you knot to know where the country is. she was positively surprised to hear that I knew exactly where it is, and named all of its neighbouring countries.



Anyway, sorry for the disgression. I agree that countries like Croatia and Slovenia are countries on the crossroads between southern Europe and Central Europe. It is on the crossroads because geographically it is in southern Europe, much to the south from Europe's midpoint in Lithuania, but culturally they resemble characteristics of Central Europe.

Serbia is perplexing because unlike Croatia, the religion is Orthodox Christian (like Greece and so on) and the Cyrillic script is used (like in Bulgaria and so on). Serbia is also politically friends with Russia, while it is an EU candidate country with almost all accession chapters being in accordance with the EU requirements and the government of Serbia has set a goal for EU accession in 2014. The culture and architecture is Central European...

I suppose with such an ecclectic background, it is much up to Serbs how they feel about themselves and where they belong culturally - Central Europe, Southern Europe or else...