Stories from and

The Art Nouveau Windows to Belgrade's Soul

  19 July 2014

Aleksandar Lambros, a Serbian-born photographer currently living and working in Monaco, has been snapping photos of tell-tale details of Belgrade's architectural history and collecting them on his blog. While the city still retains snippets of Roman and Ottoman architecture, as parts of the city were under both Roman and Ottoman...

Artists Explore the ‘Melting Point’ of Art and Propaganda in Skopje

A not-for-profit, self-financed group of artists calling themselves Kooperacija (“Cooperation”, Macedonian slang for a general store in small villages) hosted an exhibition titled “Melting Point: Art as Anti-Hegemonic Propaganda” [en, mk, with photos] in Skopje recently. As reported [mk] by several news outlets that cover culture [mk], including Belgrade-based SEE...

Serbian Artists Create “Neighborly Hanger” for Handouts

  3 July 2014

The image of the poorest segments of the population rummaging through trash cans has, unfortunately, become a common one in many Balkan countries in the past few years. From some of the 38,000 pensioners who currently receive the minimum monthly pension of barely 120 euro in Serbia, not enough to...

Serbian Insurance Company Refuses to Pay Damages to Roma Family

  29 June 2014

Serbian daily Blic reports on a curious case in which Serbian insurance company Takovo Osiguranje has, in writing, refused to pay damages to the widow and children of a car accident victim, based on his ethnicity. Blic journalists and an attorney representing the victim's family claim that the insurance company...

Serbia Mourns British-Serbian Legend Timothy John Byford

  11 May 2014

Author, actor, educator, television and film director Timothy John Byford died in Belgrade on May 5, 2014, after a long illness. Born in Salisbury, England, Byford spent most of his life in Belgrade, where he moved in 1971 and later became a naturalized citizen of Serbia. As news portal InSerbia...

VIDEO: Serbian Child Prodigy's Drawings Stun the Art World

  30 April 2014

Dušan Krtolica is an 11-year-old artist from Belgrade that has taken the local and regional art world by storm with his exquisitely detailed pen and pencil drawings of complex animals, dinosaurs, knights, and people. Mainstream media in Serbia, and now other countries, discovered Dušan in February of 2014, but the...

“Catalan Independence” Explained in 16 Languages

  20 November 2013

The debut video of The Catalan Project (@Catalan_Project) features Fernando de Castro, “a Catalan from Galicia and Spanish”, presenting the project and explaining why some Catalans want independence from Spain using the 16 languages he is able to speak. Subtitles are available in English, French, German, Spanish and Catalan. The Catalan Project, an...

Online Magazine Publishes Leaked Emails of Serbian Government Agency

  17 November 2013

Online magazine Balkanist was among several media to receive over 300 leaked emails from the Investment and Export Promotion Agency of the Republic of Serbia (SIEPA) that allegedly reveal corruption, nepotism, misappropriation of Agency funds and several other malpractices of the government agency's top officials and employees. SIEPA Director Božidar...

UNESCO Patron of First SEE Science Promotion Conference in Serbia

  12 September 2013

The Center for the Promotion of Science (CPN), under UNESCO patronage, is hosting the First Regional Science Promotion Conference with the aim of gathering science promotion professionals, practitioners and enthusiasts from Southeast Europe. The conference program will discuss science from a scientific, but also from an educational and economic point...

Bureaucracy and Motherhood in Serbia

  10 February 2013

Marija Janković's photo of her 3-month-old baby sleeping peacefully next to the 52 medical and administrative documents has received 942 ‘likes’ and 826 ‘shares’ on the Facebook page of Status Magazin [sr], a Belgrade monthly, and was awarded the first prize in a photo contest run by the publication. It...

“The Un-European Union”

  29 January 2013

GV Author Filip Stojanovski, on his blog Razvigor, has translated into English a mock story [sr] by Njuz.net, “the Serbian equivalent to The Onion,” about the UK striving to join “the Un-European Union”: The Council of Ministers of the countries of the Un-European Union stated today in Skopje that a...

Regional Bloggers Attend Blogomanija Conference in Serbia

  9 December 2012

Dozens of bloggers [sr] from Serbia, as well as from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia, attended Blogomanija [sr], a regional blogging conference that was held in Serbia on Dec. 7-9. Among other things, they discussed [sr] the impact of blogs and social networks on social and political...

SEE: Social Media Use Study

Growth in social media activities has slowed down, indicates the research of Wave6 [sr; en], which surveyed active Internet users in 62 countries: Macedonia and Croatia are more involved in the social media than Serbia, where watching video clips is the most popular activity (91%). For the first time, there...

Serbia: “Internet (R)evolution”

Center for Internet Development in Serbia reports [sr] that Serbs use the Internet mostly for current news (63%) and educational purposes. The research was conducted in April 2012, with a sample of 1,239 respondents: 80% of them considered communication and info-exchange with government institutions via Internet very relevant, while 68%...

Serbia: First Conviction for Online Hate Speech

The High Court in Belgrade has recently brought its first conviction for online hate speech, sentencing Simo Vladičić to three months in prison and two years of probation for threatening members of the LGBT community via the Facebook group 500.000 Srba protiv gej parade/500,000 Serbs against gay parade in September...