The countries in the Balkans are dangerous for life. You can get everything done - every inspection, every permit, every certificate. If you can't do it yourself, someone can do it for you. If you can't do it for a few bucks, you can do it for 100, 200, 1000 marks or euros. That's roughly how much our lives are worth - on a bus that might not make it to its destination, in traffic where someone buys a driver's license instead of passing it, in a house under a quarry without a permit, in a club without a fire escape, on a bridge that no one has remembered to check for stability for years, under a canopy that could fall at any moment.
Seemingly ordinary situations, until they become tragedies.
Last night, 59 young people went out for a night out in Kočani, and ended up in flames (text published on March 17, ed.). Macedonia, the country of the happiest people in the Balkans, is once again shrouded in black. I spent several months of my life in this country and I sincerely sympathize with their pain.
Another Balkan country-champion of corruption, like everything in the neighborhood. Now they are arresting, detaining, searching for the guilty - too late. This should not have happened. The number of those responsible is much greater than those who just stamped the permit or turned a blind eye to the fact that there is no adequate fire protection.
Corruption is the absence of any order. Rules are left to chance and the illusion that misfortune will not happen to us, to one of our own. We are used to there being no system, to rules not being respected - so if we get away with it without consequences, that's fine. Except it's not.
Because which club is this that burns with children inside? Who knows which one. And no one can claim that it is the last. On weekends, clubs and venues are packed, people are pushing each other, you can't move, you can barely get in, let alone get out in case of an accident. There are no evacuation plans, no fire exits, and no one respects the maximum number of people in the facilities.
And so on for decades. Until it's one of our turn.
And until then, the majority will do nothing to change the situation. And that is perhaps the most tragic thing of all.
Bonus video:
