A prime example of that EU attitude would be the very common nationalism of the Balkan states, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Serbia, Monteblack in spanish, Croatia, Albania...
A prime example of the American ignorance is their frequent inability to name said Balkan states.
In other words, this is all silly. I'm trying to dispel a bit of the silliness. How about you have your attitude towards people, regardless of their place of origin.
Good sir, this offends me.
Croatia may be on the border of the balkan peninsula but the mentality is somewhat different in the rural areas and radicaly different in the urban ones in comparison to the other countries you mentioned. The influences are more romanesque/germanic to the slavic population here, we are closer to the western mentality than any other country you mentioned in your post, hence the religion is 90+% roman chatolic and we write in the latin alphabet.
In fact i would go as far as to say that we would be as well developed as any of the western european coutries if it wasnt for the constant defensive warfare that pounded our infrastructure to the ground and hindered our development severely. One information that describes the severity of this fact: It is estimated that the number of Croatians living outside of the boundries of the coutry exceeds the number of them living inside of the Croatian borders. A small reminder to the troublesome political and war filled history
After all we have all the traits required for such development (Good resources, lush farmlands and forests, we are on the trade route crossroads between west and south Europe, the busy trade ports and not to mention the island filled touristic meca that is the Adriatic coast - that is probably the explanation why we had to defend the teritory so fiercely throughout our history)I would dare say that it is a miracle we werent wiped or asimilated as a nation. Because of this we are a stubborn, proud, nationalistic people and we are sceptical towards our neighbours, this is one of the reasones we survived.
But i am also aware of how the rest of the civilized world views us: practicaly third world balkan warmongering unwashed barbarians. This saddens me greatly and i can only hope that the Croatian immingrant comunities (that are valued as hard working and upstanding citizens in both Germany, America, Australia and the rest of the countries that have large Croatian immigrant population) can make a differance in changing this view about us.
Because those imbeciles, those torch lighting hooligans sure aint helping. There are stupid people in every nation but the morons in Croatia seem to be good at doing it at live television when millions are watching -.-
I must say; The Europeans tend to be more educated about other societies, but usually act like snobs, not realizing their own society's pettiness.
