[Flame Of Liberty]

sorry, bad choice of words. when I said communist hell, i should have said mafia hell. Because the same ***holes who were a part of the communist system before, are now part of organized crime syndicates......in the end, they still rule the the country.

Well of course, in every post communist country, old nomenclature is somwhat still in power (see president Kwasniewski in Poland for example, and he is not alone). It is a big problem but slowly its changing. I dont think any country in history made a complete transition from tyranny to democracy without some kind of growing pains.

But again, you have probably no country in the world that is not ruled by criminals at least to some extent.

Look, I was born in the country and have tons of family living in Slovakia, and they all speak the same message: to be successful and make money in that country right now, you need to cheat and deceive your way to the top. There is a massive blackmarket ( those fancy Audi's and BMW's you see everywhere are not owned by people trying to make and honest living you know)

Prior 1998 I would totally agree with you. But since then its gotten much better and mafia is actually fought against by the police (which wasnt always the case in the past). Some of the biggest fishes actually faced trials and ended up behind the bars. And this is not always the case in other countries within the region (in Czech Republic, the prime minister is surrounded by people from communist secret police Stb. Kind of like Putin and his KGB hitmen. Now thats something.)

Another thing is big pessimism among some (mainly rural) people. They arent exactly happy about the reforms and all, and they might be preffering for the old times to come back. If you speak to those people, you would think that everything is going to hell, no matter the real progress. But thats a long story.

It's not as bad as in many Russian sattelites, but the mob plays a pretty big part in that countrys way of life unfortunately. And of course Slovakia is a good palce for investment...it's still somewhat dilapidated and therefore the opportunities are there to make it better. There's nothing wrong with that all all, as I think it's getting better all the time. But the dishonest mentality that prevailed under communism is still there, and it will probably take a generation or two to weed that out.

I can agree with this, and it is getting better and better. Sometimes it just irks me when people who have never been there, think that Eastern Europe is like Subsaharan Africa.