Liveblogging the first half hour, before I’m too drunk to continue.
Romania okay, will get votes but not a winner. Britain so-so, not that bad but not real Eurovision. Albania cute female lead singer in a cloak with bare midriff and a wind machine… okay.
Germany godawful! Geez — bad outfits, [...]

I’m tempted to liveblog, but I plan to drink, so maybe not.
Quick: in the few hours that remain, who’s your favorite? The bookmakers’ favorites are Russia, Ukraine and Greece. Me? I like those Latvian pirates, and hell, Romania’s always pretty good. Okay, a kind word for Armenia too. Bring it.
Who’ve [...]

Politics, politics, politics. Time for a bird post.
Larks. Larks are awesome.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

As an American transplanted to Europe, I didn’t encounter larks until recently. (The American [...]

The mostly pro-European Democratic Party (DS) did surprisingly well — possibly because of a surprising last-minute from Brussels to give Serbia a “Stabilization and Association Agreement”. This was fairly blatant intervention on Brussels’ part, but it seems to have worked — at least in terms of getting more votes for DS.
Prime Minister Kostunica’s increasingly [...]

I’ve been meaning to write about the Serbian elections, and the continuing slapfest over Macedonia, and some more about the frozen conflicts, and all that good stuff. But first:
Niko Bellic is Serbian.
He’s not just a generic Eastern European; he’s a Bosnian Serb who fought in the war as a teenager. The [...]

I’d like to come up with more thoughtful and respectful titles for these posts. But, well.
Stupid #1: In the wake of the NATO summit, and Greece’s veto of Macedonian membership, there’s now a boycott campaign in Macedonia against Greek goods and Greek-owned businesses. Since Greece is one of Macedonia’s largest investors and [...]

So, the Albanosphere: about 7 million Albanians in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Greece and Montenegro, plus another million or so recent emigrants and gastarbeitern scattered across Europe and the US.
I’m going to leave the diaspora mostly out of the picture. They’re very important, but I can’t spent all my days writing blog posts. I’m [...]

You remember I blogged a few weeks back about how Macedonia’s government was collapsing (because of demands from the Albanian party in the coalition).
Then a bit later I posted about how, no, it wasn’t collapsing after all — the coalition partners had reconciled.
Well, now it has collapsed again. Elections are on June 1.
I should [...]

Okay, first thought: there is not going to be a “Greater Albania” in the political sense.
The Albanians of Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia are evolving away from political union, not towards it. Kosovo’s new Constitution has “no union with any other state” as Article One, and that’s not just wallpaper for the internationals; [...]

The Hague has acquitted former Kosovo PM Ramush Haradinaj of various horrible war crimes.
This is not much of a surprise. One, while the case against the KLA leadership generally is pretty strong, the case against Haradinaj personally wasn’t so much. Two, Haradinaj put up an aggressive and very competent defense. And three, [...]