Re: Serbia

[Alejandro Colomar <alx+linux-man@kernel.org>]

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Hi Stefan,

> Date: 2026-10-29 20:49:06+0200
> From: Stefan Puiu <stefan.puiu@gmail.com>
>
> Hi Alex,
> 
> Sorry to hear about your Serbian "experience".

Thanks!

[...]
> 
> I'm from a country neighbouring Serbia - Romania. I've been there a
> few times, though it's been a while - in 2007, 2011 and 2012 (the
> latter two for the Exit Festival, which was quite nice). In 2007 a
> police car stopped us and started checking our papers, and were a bit
> aggressive verbally, but eventually they let us go, they did not find
> anything wrong. They only spoke Serbian, which I don't understand,
> luckily we had a guy who could translate with us.

The cop that stopped me was actually quite nice.  Other than the evident
discomfort of being retained for so many hours, I must say he was nice
verbally, and he was very transparent when searching my bad so that I
saw he didn't take any money (or anything else) from it.  And he spoke
good English.

His boss also offered some soap when I went to his bathroom (which was
quite dirty).

And they didn't hand-cuff me at any time.

> Also, they had a
> system where foreigners had to tell the police when they were staying
> somewhere in Serbia; they were a bit pissed off in 2007 when we did
> not have the paper from the police when crossing the border back to
> Romania. My impression was that they still had the old police state
> behavior from communist times, and also suspicion towards foreigners
> of any kind. Were you there before the elections? Maybe there was some
> paranoia in the mix as well, who knows... Ceaușescu was quite paranoid
> before his overthrow, he was suspecting all kinds of foreign
> interference, who knows, maybe Vucic took a page from our guy's
> manual.

Hmmmm, I entered the country on 2026-10-14, the incident happened on
2026-10-15, and I left the country on 2026-10-16.  It seems I was there
10 days before the election (I only learnt about that election yesterday
night, after writing the email).  That probably made them suspect of
foreign interference, indeed.

> Anyway, I hope you are OK now.

Yup!  Thanks!  :-)


Have a lovely night!
Alex

> 
> Regards,
> Stefan.

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>

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