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Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
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A hostile guide to Slovenia, in Croatian. Click to enlarge.
The
above guide to Slovenia strikes me as pretty goofy, and not in a ha-ha
way. Here are some of the "facts" about Slovenia it lists:
* Slovenes are Alpine Croatians.
* According to new research, Slovenia has a seaside. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen it around Piran and Koper.
* The climate is middle European, in the northwest it’s Alpine, and lately it’s anti-Croatian.
* The war for Slovenian independence (1991-1991) was one of the
bloodiest, longest, and most exhausting in the history of humanity.
* Slovenia has about 1.5 million inhabitants. For comparison: this is
how many people fit in Zagreb’s hippodrome. Of these: 16% are stingy
and selfish; 14% are rude and arrogant; 13% are alternative; 6% are
fat; 51% are women; 0.002% are innocent.
Maybe
I don’t have the right sense of humor, but man is this stupid. Then
again nationalist humor is almost never funny. I’m always reminded
of stuff like Die Brennessel, a patriotic German "humor" magazine that somehow managed never to be funny in seven years.
That said, the above guide is the lamest attempt at Slovenia-related humor since the Austrian newspaper Der Kurier published its ultra-dumb "Welcome to the EU"
cartoons last May. I don’t know how these writers are managing to get
paid for squeezing out such verbal flatulence. I wish I did.
(Thanks Mitja!)
Comments
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That’s how it is with this nationalist humor wannabe, isn’t it? It’s funny only to the members of one nation; to all others it seems a bit silly and quite boring. Personally I find the cartoons from Der Kurier much more insulting than this piece of neighbour rivalry – the Croatian article is at least in part derived out of envy of Slovenian relative economic success and endless political disputes (and to be honest Slovenes aren’t always very friendly to Croatians, either), while the patronising Austrian article is just reflecting the (so it seems) never forgotten feeling of superiority to all »inferior races« and we all know where that comes from - and where it can lead.Anyway I can’t imagine how any of this nationalist nonsense can do any good.
"Then
again nationalist humor is almost never funny."
You know, I really enjoy reading The Glory of Carniola, but this
post has ticked me off. I guess you probably received the scanned
article above in an email forwarded who knows how many times, so it
would be hard to find the original source, but I wish you’d taken a
little time to research it. The fonts and a very characteristic style
of writing tell me this could be nothing else but Feral Tribune, a well known Croatian satyrical weekly. You can find them online at http://www.feral.hr or http://feral.mdlf.org. They have been equally poisonous (and critical) about Croatia and Croatian government as they were about Slovenia in that scanned article, since 1984,
resulting in numerous law suits from prominent politicians and also
numerous press awards. They’re one of the few newspapers in Croatia
that had the cojones to stand up and speak the truth during the Tudjman
era. I admit their humour is sometimes not for the faint-hearted, but
they certainly didn’t deserve the attitude you’ve shown in your post.
I admit, this is a new point of view, nevertheless I think in humor we should distinguish between satire and bitter revengeful making fun of something. While the first one is more or less funny and has a positive social role (by pointing out the mistakes of politics and society in general) the second one is just throwing rocks at something/someone you don’t like or are frustrated with (and people that share the same opinion with you will perhaps find it satisfying). Pointing out things can help improving them. At throwing rocks someone can easily get hurt.
I have read the Feral Tribune before it went to being a paid site.
It’s like a REALLY BAD ;underground’ paper in the States back in the
1970s.Some of it was funny but they don’t like ANYONE!
Rats this feature could use an edit button, sorry for the double post, but I remembered something else to say.Was the word for innocent ‘nevin’? because that can also mean ‘virgin’! I ask because that font is WAAAAY tooo small for me!
I found the snippit about the Slovenian coast and the “war” (1991-1991) for indepedance funny.
That’s the deal with humour. Some will find it funny, some won’t. That’s why fart jokes work so well.
The Feral Tribune used to be pretty cool. But that was a while ago.Doug M.
I found it quite funny or at least nothing outrageous. Maybe it’s a
Just think about the
bit harsh at some points, but it also makes fun of Croatia and the
section about state structure is just beautiful
fact that a Slovene satire about Slovenia would put the percentage of
stingy and selfish people way beyond 16%, and we make jokes about
Slovene sea all the time as well (and yes, I also think "nevin" is more
likely to mean ‘virgin’ in this case)
The Austrian cartoons are much worse, i.e. a much better example
of nationalist "humour" that often - if not usually - stems from one’s
own frustrations: Austria has even 42 km of sea less than Slovenia and
whatever were the Austrian merits at creating Lipizzaners, it still
happened in Slovenia/Slovene-populated area. Dr S is also right about
the superiority complex: just remember the Austrian reaction when
Ljubljana was chosen for the first Bush-Putin summit - something along
the lines of "how dare you choose a province for such an important
meeting, Vienna is close by and there’s no way a provincial town could
be more suitable than Vienna"
I think this is very strongly a matter of personal taste, but I
disagree that "nationalist" (I’d prefer to say "national" as I don’t
see an intention to offend in most cases) humour can’t be funny.
Personally, I can enjoy jokes about nationalities as long as they mock
traits that can actually be found in a large part of the nation in
question, or geographical predispositions (as is the case with "Small
Slovenia" jokes).
Of course there is great potential to be just tasteless, especially if
the punchline can just as well be applied to blondes, cops or
mathematicians (as in most of the "Polish jokes" that seem to be
weirdly popular in the English-speaking world).
For instance, as a Czech, I have rather enjoyed the Czech "Welcome to
the EU" cartoon, and I’ll try to dissect the way I think about it.
It says (you can look it up in the link in the above article):
* "Czechia is a forested area in the north." The fox and the bunny in
the picture are saying "Good night" in Czech, which is a reference to
the Czech idiom "where foxes bid good night", meaning a god-forsaken
place. What they’re suggesting here isn’t pleasant, but I think the
manner of execution shows there are no hard feelings.
* "Czechs like to drink beer…" Even as a complete abstinent (is that an English word?), I cannot dispute that.
* "… and then build nuclear plants…" This is a jab at the dispute
between Austria and Czechia over the Temelín power plant, and while I
think the Austrians got needlesly worked up over that one, this
rendition seems fairly humorous to me.
* "… the plans of which have sparked entire new terms." The guy is
saying "Kafkaesque!" This is where they’re taking it a bit too far,
IMHO - it’s not offensive, but they’re sort of flogging a dead horse.
* "They have weird names." This panel references the fact that as a
result of 300 years of Hapsburg rule, many Czechs have German names and
many Austrians have Czech names, including the late president Klestil.
It’s a fairly nifty reference, IMHO.
* "And they only play soccer like 300 times better than us." And the
Austrian says, defensively, "please, we’re just a little country,"
which is how most Czechs probably feel about the Czech Rep. (Austria is
only slightly bigger.) Certainly no offense taken here.
I also kinda liked the Latvian one, with the "stolen flag" running
joke. It seems to me the author is mocking Austrians
for their supposed ignorance rather than Latvians. (The latter is of
course also possible, but IMHO extremely unlikely.)
The Slovak one was just odd. I could see how someone with a dulled sense of humour could get offended by that one, but to me it
was just "meh". (Plus I’m not a Slovak.)
Well, that’s just the way I feel about it. This rant is getting too long. I’ll stop stealing your blog now.
Also, it seems to me the line between some of the above and the June 28 post (Croatian radars) is not so thick.