I must admit to a certain bias toward the Slavs. All Slavs, I must add, for my bias is unbiased. They reached Europe about a millennium and a half ago. And all this time they have been wedged between the peoples who have came to Europe well ahead of them. The only exception are the Hungarians, who arrived a few centuries later, but who were warlike, which the Slavs were not. Under the helm of more developed peoples surrounding them, the best the Slavs could do is to tile the land using primitive methods, take care of the sparse cattle, and engage in all manner of smuggling, thievery, highway robbery, and the like. A millennium and a half translates into sixty generations of criminal activity of every imaginable kind. Sixty generations! Genetic it is not yet, but cultural it certainly is. Which is why it does not take me more than a few seconds to spot a thief in the streets of the Croatian capital. It is crawling with them, in fact. But it would be the same in all the capitals of Slavic states in the Balkans, as well as north and east of the accursed peninsula. Now, if I am wrong about, as it were, inborn thievery among the Slavs, call it a bias. And I admit to it without complaint. What if I am not wrong, though?