You know what bugs me about Croatia. Everyone complains about how terrible it is, politicians are stupid and corrupt, nepotism everywhere, etc etc and please leave somewhere better as soon as you can, but then when you do the tune changes and now it is the nicest place on Earth with natural beauty and beaches and good life and come back as soon as you can. It's a real conundrum.

Every word of what you've just said is correct.

Croatia really has natural beauty. It has gorgeous beaches. Those beaches are usually overcrowded and in many places turned into concrete slabs. It has good life, unless you can't find a decent job. It has free healthcare, in which you wait a year for an urgent medical examination. It has low taxes (10% capital gains tax! 0% LTCG!) but extensive red tape and extremely inefficient bureaucracy and judicial system.

Corruption is a way of life (ask your grandma if it's decent to visit a doctor without a gift). Politics is a joke to such an extreme Boris Johnson looks like a Stoic philosopher. He partied during COVID restrictions, right? Well, our Minister of Health partied during COVID restrictions he invoked, and nothing, whatsoever, happened.

We're like that country in Tropico (the game), only in real life. Even on a map, if you squint, we look like a banana country.

Still, we've free speech, we're fairly well integrated into the EU (barring some unforseen problem, like, dunno, a war on a doorstep, maybe we'll even adopt the Euro next year), we're pretty safe. Child-care is inexpensive, schools are okay for the most part, public universities are free, and if you work in a well-paid industry (like tech, which is booming), it can be a good life.

So, a banana country with benefits?

> It has low taxes (10% capital gains tax! 0% LTCG!)

Besides capital gains and corporate income, Croatia has some of the heaviest income taxes in the world (up to 45%), and i think the highest VAT tax in EU (25%)

Croatia has lost 9.25% of its population since 2011.

Guessing that's because of Schengen.

Edit: Not Schengen, that is something more specific; but the Treaty of Accession from 2011?

> Croatia doesn't have any real influence in NATO so nobody will be obliged to listen

Unfortunately, same applied when that drone with explosives fell in the middle of Zagreb. Deafening silence from NATO.

What's also strange is that drone flew over a couple of other NATO countries before entering Croatian air space and somehow it wasn't shot down, intercepted, etc. The circumstances around that drone are rather vague and seem to be kept so on purpose.

Yeah. If that happened in Berlin, we'd have WW3 by now.

Given that Russia directly, intentionally, and provably shot down a plane full of Dutch nationals, lied about it, and escaped major sanction let alone active war, I think it's fairly safe to say that an almost surely accidental airspace incursion almost surely caused by a technical error, of unclear national origin, that could have been from a presumptive ally, probably wouldn't have caused WW3 even if it landed in Berlin instead of Zagreb.

I went on a hyperbole there, true.

But: that was then, and this is now.

Russia escaped sanctions for a long time, for many things, because of EU countries giving it the benefit of the doubt, and because of oil and gas.

> Yeah. If that happened in Berlin, we'd have WW3 by now.

Had that happened in any other nation surrounding Ukraine that would have been the case, too; it's odd why they let that slip. Are we really to believe that if Serbia decided to attack again on some absurd notion of Russian loyalty or whatever they wouldn't defend Croatia despite being a NATO member?

In complete agreement with above; same source. Ever since he became a president, he's been spewing crap everywhere, and daily spats with/at prime minister (who's a special kind of "tool" , of course) or whoever would be the flavour of the day, are essentially "his normal" now.