180 degrees from what culture? I’ve been to Belgrade a few times for work and worked with lots of Serbians for a number of years. They are more like the conservatives in the US.
People move to Belgrade because it’s cheap and the food is awesome. I’ve partied at the Splavs and had a great time. Random people were much more friendlier than Germans (the Serbs told me they were robots). There are some resentments by the Serbs against Americans and NATO bombings. It did come up while I was there.
I meant culture of living. Things like cities with lots of parks and pedestrian zones, more walking/less dependency on cars, hidden coffee shops between old buildings, ability to live decently on a very small budget, free education and healthcare, generally easier to make friends, specially if you are a foreigner - things like that.
I would not necessarily compare Serbians to conservatives in US (we are both generalizing now). What you may have experienced in general is 'caution' because that region of the world experienced wars every 30 years on average for the last 1000 years (unlike US). So it's not like its resisting change, but the progress was hindered so many times, having to rebuild everything from scratch. And it is hard to be 'liberal' in an environment where in some places you do not have basic infrastructure. Political 'progressive' thinking usually comes after you solved basic needs. That's just my assessment.
I'm sorry, but as a Serb from Serbia, I cannot agree with the first part of your answer. Belgrade is not a pedestrian friendly city by no means, and you are dependent on cars more then in an average European city. I've spent some time in multiple, smaller and bigger, and those are not features I would associate with Belgrade.
Compared to the US it definitely is. Especially if you stay away from New Belgrade, I've always underestimated how much is there to walk between like two or three blocs there.
Other than that it's just an incredibly interesting city to walk through, even if you're inconvenienced as a pedestrian multiple times on that trip. You never know what you'll find behind the corner: a building that looks like it's falling apart, a gaze-inspiring brutalist building from Yugoslav times, or a modern-looking office. The only thing you know for sure is that you won't have to walk long before finding a café.
The reason I made the comparison to conservatives is because my coworker over there did an exchange program in High School and he thought the South had similar viewpoints to Serbians. I do agree with him about both being conservatives.
Yes I would agree that political views are in general more conservative but for historical reasons I described, not because it is someone's choice (plus strong influence of church 'helps').
Lol. All I can say is that if you’re Muslim or of African decent it’s not gonna be the same as a Caucasian. Many do not believe in political correctness. Not that Europe abides by that like the US does but also not something you’d see in the UK, France, or Germany. Even Indian coworkers had "issues" there.
I have childhood friends who came to the US during the Yugoslav wars in the 90s. When I mentioned them my coworkers they would quickly point out the last name was Muslim and not Serbian. Also they would point out the one or two Albanians that worked with us.
I would disagree. What is important to know is that in this region of the world discrimination (if at all present) is in general not based on the race/color of the skin - and this is in general true for the rest of Europe too.
In Europe, discrimination, when it happens, is usually based on national or religious differences. All wars Europeans ever fought were over national or religious reasons.
In Serbia generally racial discrimination is not present, nor is a topic of any conversation in media or society (certainly not to any extent like in US). There was a war between serbs and bosnian muslims and serbs and kosovo muslims (note national/religious connotation) some 20 years ago, and some people may have 'hard feelings' about it, but in general that's the end of it. Still, being a Muslim in Serbia is IMO a 'better' experience than being one in USA (maybe also because 5% of population of Serbia is Muslim vs ~1% in USA).
Fellow European here, I have to somewhat disagree. While it is true that discrimination is not as heavily based on skin colour as it is in places like the US I believe it plays a bigger role than you make it out to be.
Discrimination based on nationality is a thing, but it is very much something that varies a lot in Europe. To generalise it as one of the top reasons for discrimination isn't quite right in my opinion.
That said, it's the type of discrimination that is the most prevalent, simply because that's what most people deal with.
However, I think that in day to day life skin colour may be more noticeable than other types of discrimination, simply because it is easier to make out.
While in some places discrimination of certain nationalities or religions is certainly common place and as such might seem like it is the predominant form of discrimination, discrimination based on skin colour is also present. Maybe to a lesser degree, but it is present everywhere.
The simple truth is that the "better" experience will be the one Caucasians get.
This is why I used 'in general' so many times in my comment :)
Perhaps we can agree that in Europe, national/religious discrimination is probably an order of magnitude more prevalent than any other form of discrimination. From my experience and in practical terms, I would even put social/economic/education based discrimination before skin color based one.
The USA might not treat Muslims well, but there have not been mass killings (in country - obviously there have been abroad). Anyone who wants to know more should google Srebrenica genocide, was the July 1995 genocide of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica, during the Bosnian War.
Those individuals who during the 1990s were the most ardent supporters of the ultranationalist politics that paved the way for the genocide in Srebrenica—for the ethnic ‘cleansing’ of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Kosovo—are in charge today, too. Since the time of the socialist state’s end, there have hardly been any powerful political actors in Serbia who did not in some way advocate some idea of a ‘Greater Serbia’.
There is a clear continuity of nationalist politics that has more or less been going on since the nineteenth century, and the dominant line of political thinking in Serbia throughout history has mostly been nationalism. The essentialization of Muslims as the ultimate ‘Other’ has been one of this nationalism’s main pillars. On the one hand, Serb converts to Islam are in some way worse than ‘born’ Muslims for most Serbian nationalists. There is the popular saying ‘a poturica [convert] is worse than a Turk’, and the derogatory term poturica applies to all South Slavs who have accepted Islam—including Bosniaks and Serbian converts.
People move to Belgrade because it’s cheap and the food is awesome. I’ve partied at the Splavs and had a great time. Random people were much more friendlier than Germans (the Serbs told me they were robots). There are some resentments by the Serbs against Americans and NATO bombings. It did come up while I was there.