The morning sun lit up the whole green sparkling plateau of Pešter. Lark song filled the air and even by 0600 when I crawled out of the tent I could see our hosts already at work bringing in cows and feeding animals. It was the last day before the long slow drive back to Novi Sad so we cycled South from the village, the sun shining bright on the white minaret, and new leaves on the willows a delicate green. On the map we reckoned it would only be some 6 km to the border with Crna Gora (Montenegro) but the track was reputed to be very rough. We took passports in case the police were out on anti-smuggling patrol; cigarettes and cattle were said to be the main black-market trade. The track turned out to be well used! We rose up a series of slopes until we suddenly came out on a top with a breathtaking panorama of Alpine pasture, fir forested slopes and Crna Gora's rocky snow capped tops. It is said that God had a lot of rock left over during the Creation and chuckling to himself decided simply to throw it down in Crna Gora. Leaving bikes lying beside the track we just wandered around awe-struck by the scene. An alpine summer house lay nearby and we soon made friends with the shepherdess. It turned out that this dark slim woman was different race altogether from those in Pešter just over the border, but the people in this valley were also Muslim. She had 2 sons and 3 daughters, but only one daughter was up in the summer pasture with her. A small flock of sheep grazed nearby which she occasionally ran after to keep them from wandering; wolves killed a couple of sheep last year she said. We inspected the dairy with its sheep's cheese in the making. This is taken down the mountain to mature in the village below. Sadly none of that hard fatty sheep's cheese to buy. Perfectly good tracks led off towards distant rocky peaks, high up pastures, the high mountains of Albania and strange peoples left undisturbed up on their pastured heights by histories vicious tides. Oh for the open road, but reluctantly we turned our bikes for home dreaming of summer pasturages and dark-skinned shepherds. The all-seeing raven croaked black in the cold blue sky.
23 May 2008 – Sofra of Sandžak
The hazard of camping beside someone's farm anywhere in the mountains is Serbian hospitality, and so it was that old Sali and his wife Mera insisted that we abandon plans to fend for ourselves and go into the summer kitchen to join them for supper. As so often happens, there was a perfectly good new house but everyone seems to prefer to cook, eat and live in the old square wooden house with its earth floor and wooden lath roof. The sofra (Turkish low round table) hung up on the wall out of the way and we were arranged on couches around a table that was spread with newspaper before communal trays of beef on rice, scrambled egg, cheese, bread and salt were set in the middle. Remembering to use my right hand, or a fork and spoon if it helped, we pitched into the communal meal. There is something delightful about sharing a common bowl. Sali placed particularly nourishing grisly bits before one, Mera kept topping up our glasses with creamy fermented milk, and the heap on the guest's side of the tray never seemed to diminish. The son Latif and his wife Selma were out milking cows leaving 2 little granddaughters with the old folk.
They call Pešter the sofra of Sandžak; it is a high karst plateau set at some 1200m right against the Montenegrin border. It is also called the Serbia's Siberia recording temperatures down to -40c. But there is abundant grass in the short cool summers and thanks to tampering with some underground river system they have abundant clean water. It is a sheep and cattle country, remarkably flat in places, and very green. It was surprisingly reminiscent of English Cumbria with its clear light, open spaces, flocks of jackdaws, herds of cattle. Redstarts (Mountain red-tails in Serbian) seemed to be at home in their traditional environment singing from every roof, and uncannily there were Hoopoes calling from a nearby scrubby hill. It was only when the sun shone on the white minaret of the džamija that I knew I was in the little village of Ugao on high Pešter on the Montenegrin border.
“We are Turks” said Latif as we reclined happily after our meal. Pešter must be one of the Balkan's most remote communities both culturally and geographically. They are of course ethnic Slavs speaking Serbian (with a lot of colourful Turkish words), but being a minority they feel isolated in their poverty. As recently as 10 years ago Milošević's police came beating people up and ransacking houses looking for weapons; the Sandžak has usually swung to whomever offered the best protection. There were posters to be seen “Sandžak for Europe”; surrounded by Serbian nationalists, all the more strident because of nearby Kosovo, they form an important minority to bolster the chances of a pro-Europe Democratic government. I hope this may give them help to develop sustainably.
Everywhere in the Balkans the older people can remember the horror of the Second World War. Sali told us that the Četniks (Serbian royalist army) came to burn the Sandžak in 1943; personal stories featured the stealing of sheep and cattle along with murder and burning. It is recorded that over 1100 Moslem “fighters” were killed and 8000 women and children were massacred. At war crimes trials the justification was reprisal for Moslem involvement with the Fascists, or the Communist Partisans. In reality the pattern that became sickeningly familiar in the Bosnian and Croatian wars of 1991-95, wide-scale ethnic “cleansing” was carried out to “solve the problem” of ethnic minorities. But this “problem” is shown to be a fantasy when you look at the extraordinary mosaic of loyalties. During WW2 the Četniks themselves had some 8% of moslems in their ranks, and moslems fought with the Partisans as well as being recruited into the Fascist Ustaša.
The sun came out and the world seemed to erupt in the song of Skylarks; the “mountain red-tails” grated and sung from the roofs. God's world is extraordinarily diverse; a rainbow arched over the wet green steppe speaking of promise and hope. I am so grateful that my world is set in a wider spiritual framework and that I know where I am going; I rejoice at the light. And Sali told us a really exotic contemporary story. In the Christian village of Crvsko to which we sped the next day on our bikes to see the gorge there, there is a serious women problem; that is to say that this comforting and adorned part of God's diverse world is in short supply, having fled to easier lives in distant cities. The solution? A synergy has been discovered with Catholic villages in Albania where it is the men who have fled the responsibilities of rural hardship. A couple of the men of Crvsko are declared to be well satisfied with Albanian brides! Help us to embrace all this wonderful otherness!
22 May 2008 – The God of Abraham
From Golija's top one can see out over the Sandžak and onto the Pešter plateau up against the border with Crna Gora (Montenegro). In good light you can make out the white pencil thin minarets of the village džamije (mosques), for the Sandžak is a Moslim area that as recently as 1912 was part of Turkish Europe. As in parts of Bosnia and elsewhere in Ottoman Europe, indigenous people often converted en masse to Islam; for land owning begs conversion protected their interests, whilst for ethnic minorities conversion gave them identity amongst the majority Serb peasant population. The people are Slavs and Moslim, and that's the way it is to this day. The Sandžak had strategic importance to the Turks connecting Bosnia's mountains with Kosovo and so on to Istanbul.
Arriving in Duga Poljana on a Friday I was struck by the market atmosphere until I realized that it was of course Friday prayers. At 2 O'clock the call to pray was broadcast from the minaret; flocks of jackdaws continued their noisy social life in disregard, but I headed for the Džamija. If you carry a camera you can get away with being a “journalist”, and after a brief meeting with the hodja I was welcomed in and bidden to sit quietly on a stool at the back. The experience was all too brief, but it was a privilege to share those moments with them. In the entrance to the Džamija shoes are removed and feet and hands washed. Some 50 men assembled, quietly kneeling in rows. The call to prayer was delivered in Arabic, then there followed a time of private silent prayer with prostration, head to floor on the coloured rugs. I have no idea even whether the Qur'an is read in Serbian translation, but the use of Arabic was striking since Calvin and the Christian Reformation turned the Church upside down by insisting that everyone, even the “boy who driveth the plough”, should be able to read God's word for himself in his own language.
I was also struck by the faithfulness on display. Five times a day there is a public call to prayer, and for these Friday prayers the little Džamija was full. Here on display was a quiet theocentric world-view that has far far more in common with the Christian faith than secular Western materialism. Christian missionaries to the Islamic world, as far as I know, begin with a recognition that Muslims worship the God of Abraham. My eyes rested on the assorted cheap socks of the worshippers and the rich woven rugs that covered the floor. We are very ordinary creatures but uniquely made in God's image and called to something greater. How can man know the way unless someone tells him? God's jackdaws set up a racket in the minaret, the hodja mounted the steps to teach and I slipped out quietly also praying to the God of Abraham and all the earth.
21 May 2008 – The singing mountains
Serbs are very suspicious of diaries, prefering to keep all options open for as long as possible, even long past the event. But thanks to the planer Mark, Vladimir and I were able to carve out a week to take our bicycles were biciklisti have seldom if ever been seen before. We set off on a Sunday to the Central Serbian mountains of Čermeno and Golija, but alas without 2 of our party from last year who had had 12 months to work out good excuses for avoiding another 2-wheeled adventure over remote, possibly snow-bound mountains. Without drivers to move base for us we settled on a series of camps for making extensive circuits, the first of which was on the Northern side of Čermeno mountain. Those modest forested and meadowed uplands of Dragačevo were alive with birds and flowers, but little time to explore in peace. However a Middle spotted woodpecker was feeding young in a hole in a plum tree right beside the tents at our first bivouac, and all around in leafy orchards Hoopoes “poop-poop-pooped”, Wrynecks cried and Oriels fluted.
Stopping at an almost deserted kafana for some thick coffee we discovered that there were bears in the area which was very heartening. If the mountain people leave, which they are doing so bit by bit, the forest and the bears will reoccupy their old strongholds. But wolves depend on sheep in the absence of deer which are very thin on the ground. We shifted camp to Tolišnica, hemmed in by the forested slopes of Čermeno; old Grandpa, the wartime Četnik, was still there managing the woodsmen's kafana and I was able to buy some more of that special mountain honey. We set off up the forest tracks and eventually broke out on the long grassy ridge of Čermeno at 1579m. An old shepherd was summering his sheep and cattle there; “No, I haven't seen wolves” he said, but I noticed that he put the flock inside a high stockade at night. Compared to the rich soils and oozy waters of Vojvodina, the mountains are very quiet. Every species knows where to go for its needs, and bicyclists don't like gathering thunderstorms on mountain tops, so we soon traversed the grassy ridge with its unripe blaeberries and came down to safety.
Golija is a higher and larger mountain with small settlements high up every meadowed valley under its Northern slopes. We began in a thunderstorm with hard rain, but the day soon cleared up as we crossed several ridges heading for the highest point of the mountain. We almost got into serious trouble; a very poor track was tempting but sense prevailed and we turned back onto a ridge with a good track. One can travel fast on vehicle tracks, but if the tracks run out far from home you are into a survival situation. I heard my only Corncrake high up a valley in the meadow right beside a small house. No time to stop! we pushed up to the ridge, skirting Vrhovi (“tops”) at just under 1800m, hurried along the crest noticing snowdrifts and crocuses, arriving back at our camp just before dark. A fire and hot soup were never more welcome.
Birding highlights included a “roding” woodcock heard from the tent very early passing over several times; a “strange owl” woke Mark up but sadly not me. Could it have been the Eagle owl? We heard Nutcrackers in the fir forest on top of the mountain, and saw Black woodpecker several times. On the way down off Golija the next day I saw, at last, a Golden eagle and then no sooner than the eagle had soared round Golija's West shoulder than 3 “white-headed” vultures cruised around the slope! “Let the mountains sing together for joy!”
15 May 2008 – Desperately seeking Europe
Well, the votes have been counted and various foreign observers declared the voting fair, bar one or 2 complaints of pensioners taking their wives into the booths to “help them choose”. And now we know that the For a European Serbia coalition won the most seats closely followed by the nationalist Serbian Radical Party and their friends. So the good news is, as far as I am concerned, that liberal and pro-Europe sentiment has rebuffed the nationalist reactionaries. Looking at our Novi Sad paper there is a map of Vojvodina showing a very large majority (40 seats) going to the For Europe coalition and only 6 for the Radical Party, plus one for the Hungarian Party that would have remained in “Europe” in the first place if wars and treaties hadn't marooned them in the former Yugoslavia. My friend said thoughtfully, “I am quite encouraged actually; its been a good day.” So speaks one of the younger generation that simply wants to get on and start solving Serbia's many problems.
But the less good news is that we now we have the spectacle of the late Milošević's Serbian Socialist Party becoming king makers in the hectic bargaining going on to form a government. It could go either way, and if you include Belgrade's city government, it could even go both ways. Taking a cynical view, every party leadership is now scrambling for a slice of power. There will be hard bargaining and double-dealing to secure cabinet posts, powerful ministries, tax revenue, privatisation income, development programmes, fiefdoms for the appointment of favours. This naked personal ambition sours the voters who are probably resigned to broken promises and powerlessness. Most foreigners, should they dare to express an opinion, would say that Serbia has to move forward. Justice for appalling war crimes must be done. Reconciliation with Kosovo is the only fruitful option and the only way in which the Serbian minority and Serbian heritage in Kosovo can be given fair minority treatment. Hungarians and other minorities in Vojvodina, and Macedonians in the former Yugoslavia, have all coped as minorities.
However the really bad news is that the political system is corrupted in a way that election observers don't see. Political parties, when and if they come to govern, have an extraordinary power to reward or punish with political favours. We are not talking about very senior government administration posts but state-funded jobs down to very low levels. We recently heard the story of a State ecologist being threatened (promised) with sacking once that minister comes (back) into power. He will appoint a loyal party member who can be expected to support his development programmes with weak environmental assessments. The result of this corrupting system is that people feel it necessary to sign up to a party, either to gain personal advantage or to protect their jobs. Of course we have heard all this before in recent history. If you had your little red Communist Party book you got favourable treatment, and if you refused to compromise your integrity by joining, you were barred from jobs. This may be, incidentally, why atheism seems to be well rooted in universities. Taking this dire situation to its extreme, you even have students who join parties and then find themselves falling foul of professors who either oppose that party or perhaps despise this corrupting process. Another reason why, for the sake of the new generation, the Western Balkans must come into the EU as soon as possible. Politicians should serve their people, and the people should be highly sceptical of power.
One election spin-off was that 3000 people attended my photographic exhibition “Sowing and Harvest shall never cease”. This was certainly a record and might have even tempted me to feel gratified if the venue hadn't also been a polling station. In between desperately seeking Europe I hope they found hope, compassion and beauty in the pictures. Birding news; the uncommonly beautiful Common Redstart, which should be called the monastic Redstart, starts its day singing on the roof outside our window in the perfect darkness and silence of 0345! Since noone else is singing at that time, except our house mates last night, I can hear that there are at least 2 or 3 of them. The little but noisy Skop's owl, which is also heading for Europe, is “beeping” with excitement or passion or both. And this evening we found that the kittens up a tree turned out to be white balls of fluff with large eyes, in fact Long-eared owlets.
The morning sun lit up the whole green sparkling plateau of Pešter. Lark song filled the air and even by 0600 when I crawled out of the tent I could see our hosts already at work bringing in cows and feeding animals. It was the last day before the long slow drive back to Novi Sad so we cycled South from the village, the sun shining bright on the white minaret, and new leaves on the willows a delicate green. On the map we reckoned it would only be some 6 km to the border with Crna Gora (Montenegro) but the track was reputed to be very rough. We took passports in case the police were out on anti-smuggling patrol; cigarettes and cattle were said to be the main black-market trade. The track turned out to be well used! We rose up a series of slopes until we suddenly came out on a top with a 
breathtaking panorama of Alpine pasture, fir forested slopes and Crna Gora's rocky snow capped tops. It is said that God had a lot of rock left over during the Creation and chuckling to himself decided simply to throw it down in Crna Gora. Leaving bikes lying beside the track we just wandered around awe-struck by the scene. An alpine summer house lay nearby and we soon made friends with the shepherdess. It turned out that this dark slim woman was different race altogether from those in Pešter just over the border, but the people in this valley were also Muslim. She had 2 sons and 3 
daughters, but only one daughter was up in the summer pasture with her. A small flock of sheep grazed nearby which she occasionally ran after to keep them from wandering; wolves killed a couple of sheep last year she said. We inspected the dairy with its sheep's cheese in the making. This is taken down the mountain to mature in the village below. Sadly none of that hard fatty sheep's cheese to buy. Perfectly good tracks led off towards distant rocky peaks, high up pastures, the high mountains of Albania and strange peoples left undisturbed up on their pastured heights by histories vicious tides. Oh for the open road, but reluctantly we turned our bikes for home dreaming of summer pasturages and dark-skinned shepherds. The all-seeing raven croaked black in the cold blue sky.
The hazard of camping beside someone's farm anywhere in the mountains is Serbian hospitality, and so it was that old Sali and his wife Mera insisted that we abandon plans to fend for ourselves and go into the summer kitchen to join them for supper. As so often happens, there was a perfectly good new house but everyone seems to prefer to cook, eat and live in the old square wooden house with its earth floor and wooden lath roof. The sofra (Turkish low round table) hung up on the wall out of the way and we were arranged on couches around a table that was spread with 
newspaper before communal trays of beef on rice, scrambled egg, cheese, bread and salt were set in the middle. Remembering to use my right hand, or a fork and spoon if it helped, we pitched into the communal meal. There is something delightful about sharing a common bowl. Sali placed particularly nourishing grisly bits before one, Mera kept topping up our glasses with creamy fermented milk, and the heap on the guest's side of the tray never seemed to diminish. The son Latif and his wife Selma were out milking cows leaving 2 little granddaughters with the old folk.
They call Pešter the sofra of Sandžak; it is a high karst plateau set at some 1200m right against the Montenegrin border. It is also called the Serbia's Siberia recording temperatures down to -40c. But there is abundant grass in the short cool summers and thanks to tampering with some underground river system they have abundant clean water. It is a sheep and cattle country, remarkably flat in places, and very green. It was surprisingly 
reminiscent of English Cumbria with its clear light, open spaces, flocks of jackdaws, herds of cattle. Redstarts (Mountain red-tails in Serbian) seemed to be at home in their traditional environment singing from every roof, and uncannily there were Hoopoes calling from a nearby scrubby hill. It was only when the sun shone on the white minaret of the džamija that I knew I was in the little village of Ugao on high Pešter on the Montenegrin border.
“We are Turks” said Latif as we reclined happily after our meal. Pešter must be one of the Balkan's most remote communities both culturally and geographically. They are of course ethnic Slavs speaking Serbian (with a lot of colourful Turkish words), but being a minority they feel isolated in their poverty. As recently as 10 years ago Milošević's police came beating people up and ransacking houses looking for weapons; the Sandžak has usually swung to whomever offered the best protection. There were posters to be seen “Sandžak for Europe”; surrounded by Serbian nationalists, all the more strident because of nearby Kosovo, they form an important minority to bolster the chances of a pro-Europe Democratic government. I hope this may give them help to develop sustainably.
Everywhere in the Balkans the older people can remember the horror of the Second World War. Sali told us that the Četniks (Serbian royalist army) came to burn the Sandžak in 1943; personal stories featured the stealing of sheep and cattle along with murder and burning. It is recorded that over 1100 Moslem “fighters” were killed and 8000 women and children were massacred. At war crimes trials the justification was reprisal for Moslem involvement with the Fascists, or the Communist Partisans. In reality the pattern that became sickeningly familiar in the Bosnian and Croatian wars of 1991-95, wide-scale ethnic “cleansing” was carried out to “solve the problem” of ethnic minorities. But this “problem” is shown to be a fantasy when you look at the extraordinary mosaic of loyalties. During WW2 the Četniks themselves had some 8% of moslems in their ranks, and moslems fought with the Partisans as well as being recruited into the Fascist Ustaša.
The sun came out and the world seemed to erupt in the song of Skylarks; the “mountain red-tails” grated and sung from the roofs. God's world is extraordinarily diverse; a rainbow arched over the wet green steppe speaking of promise and hope. I am so grateful that my world is set in a wider spiritual framework and that I know where I am going; I rejoice at the light. And Sali told us a really exotic contemporary story. In the Christian village of Crvsko to which we sped the next day on our bikes to see the gorge
there, there is a serious women problem; that is to say that this comforting and adorned part of God's diverse world is in short supply, having fled to easier lives in distant cities. The solution? A synergy has been discovered with Catholic villages in Albania where it is the men who have fled the responsibilities of rural hardship. A couple of the men of Crvsko are declared to be well satisfied with Albanian brides! Help us to embrace all this wonderful otherness!
From Golija's top one can see out over the Sandžak and onto the Pešter plateau up against the border with Crna Gora (Montenegro). In good light you can make out the white pencil thin minarets of the village džamije (mosques), for the Sandžak is a Moslim area that as recently as 1912 was part of Turkish Europe. As in parts of Bosnia and elsewhere in Ottoman Europe, indigenous people often converted en masse to Islam; for land owning begs conversion protected their interests, whilst for ethnic minorities conversion gave them identity amongst the majority Serb peasant population. The people are Slavs and Moslim, and that's the way it is to this day. The Sandžak had strategic importance to the Turks connecting Bosnia's mountains with Kosovo and so on to Istanbul.
Arriving in Duga Poljana on a Friday I was struck by the market atmosphere until I realized that it was of course Friday prayers. At 2 O'clock the call to pray was broadcast from the minaret; flocks of jackdaws continued their noisy social life in disregard, but I headed for the Džamija. If you carry a camera you can get away with being a “journalist”, and after a brief meeting with the hodja I was welcomed in and bidden to sit quietly on a stool at the back. The experience was all too brief, but it was a privilege to share those moments with them. In the entrance to the Džamija shoes are removed and feet and hands washed. Some 50 men assembled, quietly kneeling in rows. The call to prayer was delivered in Arabic, then there followed a time of private silent prayer with prostration, head to floor on the coloured rugs. I have no idea even whether the Qur'an is read in Serbian translation, but the use of Arabic was striking since Calvin and the Christian Reformation turned the Church upside down by insisting that everyone, even the “boy who driveth the plough”, should be able to read God's word for himself in his own language.
I was also struck by the faithfulness on display. Five times a day there is a public call to prayer, and for these Friday prayers the little Džamija was full. Here on display was a quiet theocentric world-view that has far far more in common with the Christian faith than secular Western materialism. Christian missionaries to the Islamic world, as far as I know, begin with a recognition that Muslims worship the God of Abraham. My eyes rested on the assorted cheap socks of the worshippers and the rich woven rugs that covered the floor. We are very ordinary creatures but uniquely made in God's image and called to something greater. How can man know the way unless someone tells him? God's jackdaws set up a racket in the minaret, the hodja mounted the steps to teach and I slipped out quietly also praying to the God of Abraham and all the earth.
Serbs are very suspicious of diaries, prefering to keep all options open for as long as possible, even long past the event. But thanks to the planer Mark, Vladimir and I were able to carve out a week to take our bicycles were biciklisti have seldom if ever been seen before. We set off on a Sunday to the Central Serbian mountains of Čermeno and Golija, but alas without 2 of our party from last year who had had 12 months to work out good excuses for avoiding another 2-wheeled adventure over remote, possibly snow-bound mountains. Without drivers to move base for
us we settled on a series of camps for making extensive circuits, the first of which was on the Northern side of Čermeno mountain. Those modest forested and meadowed uplands of Dragačevo were alive with birds and flowers, but little time to explore in peace. However a Middle spotted woodpecker was feeding young in a hole in a plum tree right beside the tents at our first bivouac, and all around in leafy orchards Hoopoes “poop-poop-pooped”, Wrynecks cried and Oriels fluted.
Stopping at an almost deserted kafana 
Golija is a higher and larger mountain with small settlements high up every meadowed valley under its Northern slopes. We began in a thunderstorm with hard rain, but the day soon cleared up as we crossed several ridges heading for the highest point of the mountain. We almost got into serious trouble; a very poor track was tempting but sense prevailed and we turned back onto a ridge with a good track. One can travel fast on vehicle tracks, but if the tracks run out far from home you are into a survival situation. I heard my only Corncrake high up a valley in the meadow right beside a small house. No time to stop! we pushed up to the ridge, skirting Vrhovi (“tops”) at just under 1800m, hurried along the crest noticing snowdrifts and crocuses, arriving back at our camp just before dark. A fire and hot soup were never more welcome.
Birding highlights included a “roding” woodcock heard from the tent very early passing over several times; a “strange owl” woke Mark up but sadly not me. Could it have been the Eagle owl? We heard Nutcrackers in the fir forest on top of the mountain, and saw Black woodpecker several times. On the way down off Golija the next day I saw, at last, a Golden eagle and then no sooner than the eagle had soared round Golija's West shoulder than 3 “white-headed” vultures cruised around the slope! “Let the mountains sing together for joy!”
But the less good news is that we now we have the spectacle of the late Milošević's Serbian Socialist Party becoming king makers in the hectic bargaining going on to form a government. It could go either way, and if you include Belgrade's city government, it could even go both ways. Taking a cynical view, every party leadership is now scrambling for a slice of power. There will be hard bargaining and double-dealing to secure cabinet posts, powerful ministries, tax revenue, privatisation income, development programmes, fiefdoms for the appointment of favours. This naked personal ambition sours the voters who are probably resigned to broken promises and powerlessness. Most foreigners, should they dare to express an opinion, would say that Serbia has to move forward. Justice for appalling war crimes must be done. Reconciliation with Kosovo is the only fruitful option and the only way in which the Serbian minority and Serbian heritage in Kosovo can be given fair minority treatment. Hungarians and other minorities in Vojvodina, and Macedonians in the former Yugoslavia, have all coped as minorities.
However the really bad news is that the political system is corrupted in a way that election observers don't see. Political parties, when and if they come to govern, have an extraordinary power to reward or punish with political favours. We are not talking about very senior government administration posts but state-funded jobs down to very low levels. We recently heard the story of a State ecologist being threatened (promised) with sacking once that minister comes (back) into power. He will appoint a loyal party member who can be expected to support his development programmes with weak environmental assessments. The result of this corrupting system is that people feel it necessary to sign up to a party, either to gain personal advantage or to protect their jobs. Of course we have heard all this before in recent history. If you had your little red Communist Party 
book you got favourable treatment, and if you refused to compromise your integrity by joining, you were barred from jobs. This may be, incidentally, why atheism seems to be well rooted in universities. Taking this dire situation to its extreme, you even have students who join parties and then find themselves falling foul of professors who either oppose that party or perhaps despise this corrupting process. Another reason why, for the sake of the new generation, the Western Balkans must come into the EU as soon as possible. Politicians should serve their people, and the people should be highly sceptical of power.