Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Somehow, I have a problem with considering a mental hospital a "time capsule"....

Yugoslavia lives on in Kosovo time capsuleFri Jan 12, 2007 7:07 PM GMT
By Matt Robinson
STIMLJE, Serbia (Reuters) - More than a decade after Yugoslavia shattered into separate countries along ethnic lines its multiculturalism survives.
In a mental institute.
The dialects and languages of the old federal state can all be heard behind the iron gates of Stimlje mental health institute in Kosovo. Some patients rant about the icons of the old days, whose legacies blight the landscape.
"The patients came here when Yugoslavia was still alive," says the director, Kujtim Xhelili. "So we have Serbs from Kosovo, from Serbia, from Vojvodina, Croats from Croatia. We have Albanians, Macedonians, Roma, Muslims from Bosnia."
The 50-year-old facility in central Kosovo bears all the hallmarks of an underfunded, Socialist-era mental hospital. But the political reference points for patients who arrived before the break-up of Yugoslavia now exist only in their minds.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2007-01-12T190541Z_01_L12571668_RTRUKOC_0_UK-KOSOVO-ASYLUM.xml

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