[lizol]

Eastern European ping list

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FRmail me to be added or removed from this Eastern European ping list

[Joe 6-pack]

At least they understand the importance of Borders, Language and Culture.

[marron]

This strikes me as unnecessarily petty.

[2banana]

The penalty for the regular public misuse of the Slovak language is a fine of up to $7,000, which is close to the average yearly salary in Slovakia, the news service reported.

Yet an average flat in a so-so area of Bratislava goes for around $250,000.

Can you say housing bubble that has yet to pop (same for most of eastern europe)?

[dfwgator]

I guess they will need their Hungarian-Slovak Phrasebooks, so that they can say, "My hovercraft is full of eels", in Slovak.

[Chiltepe]

The problem is the same as it was with the Sudetenland to the west: Austria-Hungary was excessively punished at the close of WWI, and their borders were redrawn to leave millions of Germans and Magyars marooned in hostile new statelets. This helped grease the skids for WWII, and now it seems the Slovaks have learned nothing from the past and are creating ethnic tension with their southern neighbor again.