Posted
on February 15, 2014
When
I was a kid, I dearly loved doing map jigsaw puzzles. I loved our
family globe, and I pored over it, trying to make out the names of
all those squished-together European nations. I was a whiz at
geography games and quizzes.
But
I had never heard of Serbia. You see, when the textbooks I'd read
were being written and the puzzles and globes I'd loved were being
created, the Serbs were part of a country called Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia
broke apart in 1992, and even though it was only about as large as the United Kingdom, it broke up into five (and later six) separate
nations. Serbia is one of those nations, what is sometimes called the
heart of the old Yugoslavia.
Serbia
is known for plums—because, small though the nation is, it is the
world's #2 producer of plums—and raspberries—and this time, it's
#1 in the world!
(I read that 95% of the world's raspberry exports
came from Serbia!)
Serbia
is known for one of the top tennis players in the world, Novak
Djokovic, and for the scientific genius Nikola Tesla (who was a Serb
who was born in what is now Croatia and who eventually moved to the
U.S.).
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| Uvac Canyon |
Serbia
is also known for being on the border between “the East” and “the
West.” It is one of the only nations to celebrate two Christmases
(one on December 25, like Western nations, and one on January 7,
like Eastern Orthodox nations) and two New Years Days (January 1 and
January 14). Serbs also use two alphabets—the Roman alphabet, like
Western nations, and the Cyrillic alphabet, like Russia.
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| Devil's Town |
Last
but not least, Serbia is known for Europe's largest gorge, the
Djerdap Gorge, through which the beautiful Danube River flows, and
for Davolja Varos, or Devil's Town, an area filled with rocky spires.
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