Various web services and shops require user registration. This is pretty annoying considering that you have to memorise dozens of usernames, passwords etc. But ok, i can understand that it’s necessary.
What puzzles me though is that on ninety percent of these services i can’t choose my country on the dropdown meny because it simply isn’t there.
I see ‘Serbia and Montenegro’ sometimes, sometimes we are not on the list at all and most often it’s ‘Yugoslavia’ (and once again, for the record, this country doesn’t exist anymore). Boris Tadic had this same problem while discussing something with Kofi Annan recently.
I don’t mind choosing Yugoslavia or S&M as my country, because ‘what is in a name?’ but i find this puzzling simply because it really doesn’t seem to be much of a problem to rename ‘Yugoslavia’ or ‘S&M’ to just ‘Serbia’, i think it’s mere seconds of work really. Yet it still appears everywhere on the web as the official name of my country.
Which leads me to a following conclusion: Not many people in the world actually know that there is a country named ‘Serbia’ and they don’t really care. It’s kind of nice living ‘under the radar’ really. But it’s also kind of boring to explain every time where Serbia is located (except to Americans, than it’s enough to just say ‘in Europe’).
Do you know some people that have never heard of your country too?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I know what you mean on this one! I’ve been going to battle with phone and phone card companies for more than a few years now.
Some like to charge more for a second of time than others simply because they have a different country name than what it is supposed to be.
I got one company to admit that they still used Yugoslavia rather than Serbia so that they could charge more per min.
I guess when it all boils down to it, it’s what in your heart that matters…not what some corrupt web site or corrupt phone-phone card company, or anyone for that matter says or thinks!
John
my favorite is the beginning of an e-mail that I got from a well-meaning, but ignorant, acquaintaince: ‘how is life in Siberia?’
When filling out forms in an embassy, I never know what to write. My country of birth is not the same as the country which issued my passport, which is not the country in which I currently live. The Americans, at least have made it easy. You fill out the form online and the only country on the drop down menu is S&M.
In 1998 in London, I had trouble persuading people that I come from Yugoslavia. They kept telling me that it doesn’t exist. They heard it in the news.
A couple of times people asked me if I’m from Yugoslovakia.
Really interesting comments from everyone!
You wouldn’t think it would be so difficult to just quickly change the country options. I know that there are still quite a few online businesses that “only ship within the EU”—any yet you won’t find any of the new members states on the list of options.
Can you blame them? I was born in the SFRJ, I’ve got a FRY passport, SCG came and went, and now we’re Serbia – except we still don’t know where our southern border lies! Personally, I consider the whole of Yugoslavia “my” country, and Belgrade – my city. Though that doesn’t really help when you’re trying to explain to a border guard at a French regional airport why your goddamn country isn’t on his list of states…
Well, this happened to me some 40 years ago. At that time nobody new (in GB where I was doing my MA research) where is Yugoslavia- asking almost what is it, they were confusing it with Czechoslovakia- but when I mentioned Tito, that name was familiar to them. I guess today everyone abroad does know the name Milošević, Tudjman, Izetbegović, but they do not know from where do we come. And if that with numbers in UN is thrue, then what do we want?!?
What you see on websites is not the worst of it, Viktor. Not only did Serbia not exist in the U.S. government’s Passport Office, they didn’t even use Serbia & Montenegro while it was the temporary name of Yugoslavia. When I renewed my American passport, which previously had shown my place of birth as Pancevo, Yugoslavia, the following happened:
1. They rejected my use of “Yugoslavia” as my place of birth on the application form (nevermind that I WAS, in fact, born in Yugoslavia—not in S&M and not in Serbia; the COUNTRY I was born in was Yugoslavia.)
2. I was told to put Serbia & Montenegro (this was last year), and my objections were met with “Take it up with Congress, they’re the ones who decide these things.” But, get this—when I received the passport it showed only the city I was born in, Pancevo—no S&M, NO COUNTRY AT ALL! So I carry a passport without a country of birth in it. My father’s passport (issued 4 months ago) says only Caglavica! Well, maybe these places are so well known since 1999 that they don’t need any further explanation…hmmm, waddaya think…?
I have found out since that the U.S. Passport office limits place of birth information on passports to just the city IN INSTANCES WHERE A COUNTRY’S STATUS REMAINS IN QUESTION. That tells you right off the bat that they knew years ago that it would not remain Serbia & Montenegro because last year and the year before and the year before that, etc., they were issuing passports to former Yugoslavs with only the city or village they were born in in their passports, no country reference. The only glint of light in all this is that they didn’t put my father’s country of birth down as Kosovo/a! Maybe Kosovo’s independence is not such a foregone conclusion—they/Congress should, after all, know. They’ve known well in advance about everything else that was awaiting Yugoslavia. I was instructed at a U.S. Post Office 8 years ago when I tried to mail a package to someone in Serbia to change the address from Yugoslavia to Serbia & Montenegro. Wasn’t that well before that name was even up for discussion in Serbia or Montenegro?
So maybe, Viktor, these websites are just lazy in not updating their list of countries to include Serbia, or maybe they’re hip to what’s going on and don’t want to bother until the thing is finally sorted out (this is sarcasm). Who knows how many more changes there will be and what parts of its land Serbia will be “allowed” to keep. They’re not through with Serbia yet and you might have still another new name in your future…
I guess, we will have to get new passports eventually. They will probably have big letters on the cover saying that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, and will therefore be invalid anywhere outside Serbia (without Kosovo)
dear sir/madam i come from ghana,but all my dream is to be a yugoslavia citizin and i am just asken if the is any possibliyy for me to as for the pastport to leaves and work in future