Hi Stefan, > Date: 2026-10-29 20:49:06+0200 > From: Stefan Puiu > > 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. --