Whether positive or negative

I’ve worked with some Bosnians and Mexicans at the shop I work at. Never a bad experience. I still work with one of the Mexican guys. Hardest worker I ever met! Still friends with a few of the Bosnians too. Good people!

Bosnians, you say? Looks like there are more fellow jarans in America than I've thought. Do they eat ćevaps there as well?

Not sure what those are, so I couldn’t say. But yeah, we had six of them working here at one point. What is a jaran?

Jaran (yaran) means 'friend' in Bosnian. And ćevaps (chevap) are in the picture.

That looks good! What’s in the pita looking thing?

Ah, you mean lepinja (lepeenya)? Nothing in it by itself. It's just a special kind of bread to eat ćevaps with. Sometimes, ćevaps are inside lepinja, alongside other things usually serves with ćevapi, like onions and sour cream.

It's easy to make ćevaps. All you need is mixed meat (usually beef and pork, but since one half of Bosnia is muslim, pork is not always included) and something to cook them. Roll the meat into the shapes as in the picture, grill them, and that's prety much all there is to it! Prijatno!

Now I’m hungry! 😋. I take it you’re Bosnian too?

Yep! Serb from Bosnia, to be exact. But to me, Bosnians, Serbs and Croats are all the same peoples with trivial genetic differences. The only thing which truly seperate us are religion and nationalism (Bosnians are muslim, Serbs are Orthodox and Croats Catholic Christians)

Interesting! I didn’t know about the religious differences. I had one of the Bosnian guys tell me that him and his family were kicked out of their homes and off their land. (I don’t know by who). And that’s why he’s so happy to call America his home now. I recall another guy tell of the violence he saw over there. I admire their strength and adaptability to overcome those hard situations.

Probably by Serbs, maybe Croats. There was a horrific civil war during the 90's as a consequence of falling apart of the Communist Yugoslavia. Everyone was genociding and persecuting everyone. Serbia, however, was the only one who was blamed and seen as a villian, and as a result, was bombed by NATO with depleted uranium in 1999 (and that bombing is to Serbs what 9/11 is to Americans, or what the Holocaust is to the Jews). The aftermath was the complete balkanization of all countries of the former Yugoslavia.

What the nationalists don't know, however, is that the CIA was responsible for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. http://hangthebankers.com/cia-agent-dismember-yugoslavia/

Wow. So that’s how it went down. I don’t doubt any of it. The CIA is responsible for a lot of BS, 911 prob. being one of them. The Serbs getting the blame fits in with the religious affiliation you mentioned, for Christian Orthodox seems to be the least violent of the three groups. Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out. Knowledge is power! Metalhead...😉

Dude, when I lived around there for 21 years till 2013, I used to buy stuff at this store on the corner of 187st & Hoffman Ave in the Bronx just about once a week.
Forgive me butchering names, but sudxuq (hot), suhim mesum (? or is it meso? That dried beef), bread, lokum, jam, honey, goulash in a can....
Gosh, I miss it.

I guess white people aren't too bad. ;-)

And us South Slavs/Balkanoids are even less bad :D

I've seen some stuff from other countries in this internet. Norther Ireland's DOE road safety, some UK foods, and Canada's MADD and Teletoon

Two birthday parties

A few years ago, me and my family were visiting our cousins in Belgrade. We took some time to walk around the city. When we reached hotel Moskva, some Arab guy came to me and asked me to take a picture of him while in front of the hotel. He handed me a huge-ass tablet with which I took the photo. The thing was as big as an average TV, I was literally afraid I'd drop it and break it. Still, I managed to take a photo, and he thanked me for it. Both me and my family were left astounded.

When I was a kid I drove a delivery truck. Once, on one of the longer trips, I picked up an old guy hitchhiking. He was from Scotland and turned out to be a pretty interesting guy. We ran into a sudden thunderstorm & it started raining really hard. The truck I was driving hydroplaned and spun around once completely, then another half turn so that when we came to a stop we were facing the traffic
coming up behind us. The truck had bounced off the concrete median a few times, but other than
a broken headlight & bent bumper, there was little damage to the truck and we were completely unharmed. I remember very vividly, the hitchhiker yelling out at me to "hold 'er steady, lad!!" while we
were spinning. It was very surreal. Time really does slow down when stuff like that happens. I was amazed at how calm he was during and after the incident. I was pretty shook up. I don't know how that truck didn't fall over, it felt like it was leaning waaay over. I dropped him off at the next city & gave him $10 for food or whatever. Can't remember his name, but I remember his face really well.

You drove a truck as a kid? Wow!

I drove a tractor when I was young, but it was nothing special. Most kids my age have done that.

Well, when I say "truck" I mean one of those box trucks, not a semi w/ a trailer.
& when I say "kid" I mean when I was about 18. haha. I'm a little older than that now.

…......when I say "a little" I mean a lot. :/

Four months ago? Come on, PMH. Jess is here!

Yes, me, two Brazilians, a British, Two Canadians, and a few more idiots came up with a plan to take over the world.

Memorable? I've met people from all over the globe all the time. I am white (and officially Christian) myself and I've worked for a black boss (said to be from Niger, but that's according to rumors as I never asked him) for awhile. Given private lessons to a boy from Sudan. I live in a neighborhood with loads of Muslims and I've been overloaded with food, drinks and friendly gestures on a barbecue by Muslims. I've helped one night with Syrian refugees trying to help them with mastering the Dutch language, and I've been talking with somebody who committed as serious crime because he fled from Africa but learned the hard way the Europe was not the paradise he hoped for and resorted to crime as the only way to get money for food (and he fully admitted he had been stupid).

Unlike what populists wanna make you believe, I've seen the good side of these people. Especially when I helped those refugees with the Dutch language, it was so wonderful to see how happy they were when I approved what they said as correct Dutch, as they really wanted to master it in order to be able to make their way into the Dutch society (and Dutch is not an easy language, I tell ya).

Of course, I am always interested to learn something about different cultures, in small bits of information at a time (I have trouble digesting a lot of information in once), but when judging people as persons, I couldn't care less about ethnic background. Be good to me and I'll be good to you. Be bad to me and expect me to be bad to you. Simple huh?