It seems at times to those of us in the UK that the ‘Credit Crunch’ will be a long, dark, unbearable period the awfulness of which is yet to be discovered.
I asked a good friend of mine, Igor Cvijanovic, a Bosnian (Serbian-Bosnian) living in Northern Serbia, about whether the “crisis” had hit, as it seemed to be all chaos and apocalypse over here.
His answer, I thought, was worth a blog entry:
“The crisis in Serbia, and Bosnia too, has never left, actually, so this big fuss does not come like some new condition here. things did get worse, but not so much to say that people here are completely nuts and lost because of it. KRIZA [crisis] here is still measured by the 90s standards, and it’s very hard to beat those 
now and then you come across someone who lost their job but then there are so many people here without jobs anyway. all this is valid for serbia and bosnia too, just that bosnia has always been in deeper shit… arijana and me don’t personaly feel KRIZA yet since the load of work is the same and we still get money on time and i hope it stays that way. no one here is really worried too much yet, except for the people who work in foreign companies, but, as i told you, haos [chaos] and apokalipsa have been here for a while so it’s all relative.…”
Indeed, compared to the hyper inflation of the early 90s, when unemployment was above 30%, things could certainly be a lot worse.
The numbers involved in the inflation are as unfathomable as advanced astronomy and the anecdotes from the time are peversely fascinating. I heard one about a friend’s neighbour who kept goats in her towerblock flat for milk, for example.
As petrol prices went up, petrol stations closed and farmers could no longer use their tractors and other equipment. Those who could not afford to buy petrol on the roadside crowded onto buses, which became too full to collect tickets.
Anything and everything that could stop working did. As inflation accelerated the government placed price controls on the everyday commodoties, bakeries stopped serving customers as a consequence. Going without bread and burek is not easy if you’re Serbian. Without bakeries and with farmers underproducing there was risk of famine.
The government’s next step was to postpone activation of heating, so people started using electric heaters, as a result the electricity grid overloaded and there were blackouts.
“Between October 1, 1993 and January 24, 1995 prices increased by 5 quadrillion percent. This number is a 5 with 15 zeroes after it”, writes Dr. Thayer Watkins.
“The telephone bills for the government operated phone system were collected by the postmen. People postponed paying these bills as much as possible and inflation reduced their real value to next to nothing. One postman found that after trying to collect on 780 phone bills he got nothing so the next day he stayed home and paid all of the phone bills himself for the equivalent of a few American pennies.”
This also meant expensive international calls were suddenly effectively free.
There were also banknotes like this:
Monopoly money was probably literally worth more.
Throw into the potent mix lawlessness, corruption, a bloody civil war, UN sanctions and probably the world’s worst music and it puts into perspective the doom and gloom of the moment.
So cheer up!
If you are a glutton for punishment, here is a little bit more music for you, from Novi Sad’s own DUGA TV, coming live from above the bakery down the road:
Reminds me of many a horrific bus journey through the Vojvodinian wastelands. BLJAK!
