A great thread indeed.
I can go on and on about Croatians.
1. We love tourism. Every summer there are many news reports about how well tourist season in Croatia is going. We hope that magically tourist season will bring our country back to it's feet, and that whole country will live in prosperity because of it.
2. Drunk. Being drunk is considered cool in our society. We drink alcohol on public places and even though it is prohibited by law you will not get punished by doing so 99% of the time. Also selling alcohol to minors is prohibited by law, and yet 16 year old in emergency with 1 or more promille is a common sight in late Friday or Saturday night hours.
3. Cheating, stealing, hypocrisy and manipulation Political corruption is a common site here, and every now and then some politician gets accused of stealing from government budget and money laundering. He is instantly judged by media which manipulates public into doing so too. I am all about proving guilt first, but we do not trust into our incompetent juridical system, so we are easily manipulated into judging first (myself included). Although everyone is ready to judge without a trial, most people see nothing wrong with avoiding taxes, stealing at import duties, paying for passing at collage exam, of course, as long as they don't get caught. After they get caught, everyone is ready to nod their head and give lectures about how that is wrong. They think it is somehow different because they stole things of a lesser value.
4. Religious It is a sin not to be religious here. Catholic church has tremendous amount of power here, to the point of influencing referendum voting. If you do not go to church god will strike you dead. Ok maybe I overstated it a bit, but I have heard of local priests suggesting how to vote on referendum or elections. It's not uncommon, and people do genuinely stare at you with confusion if you tell them that you do not trust in existence of a god.
5. Scarred with past. People here are scarred with war and former country. I am not going into details here. Croatians hate Serbs for sins of the past, and at the some time, older generations are Yugo-nostalgic.
6. Politically dumb. I'm not talking about politicians (which are catastrophically bad), I am talking about people. People here are not used to ways of democracy. In Yugoslavia they (I'm saying they because I was born after Yugoslavia) had to elect one option of possible one. There were elections with one option and you had to give your vote to one of the available options, or so I was told. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. For some reason, that mentality stuck with people and was transformed to what me and my friends call believers. Believers are people that always vote for same political parties, usually based on your family preference. That means if your dad votes for one party, you vote for that party, not because it has something to offer, but because your mom or dad votes for it. Both main parties together have managed to ruin Croatia's economy in every aspect, brought us to
third place for unemployment in Europ, and people still vote for one of those two parties based on family preference.
7. We admire foreign knowledge. People who are educated outside of Croatia are worth more. They somehow poses knowledge that people educated here cannot have. If some research was done by experts outside of Croatia, it is treated as more valuable than research done here.
8. Bureaucracy. Our ministries love to overcomplicate things with overly complicated papers. I am too tired to write more about it, just google it, you will find something.