When most Englishmen, or Westerners in general, are talking about the Balkans, they usually imagine small country-states not unlike North Korea – no access to technology, culture stuck in the 80s, people are poor and miserable, no food, etc. While Slovakia technically isn’t part of the Balkans, I do believe that the scene where the American students visit Bratislava from the 2004 film “Eurotrip” is a pretty great representation of what Westerners believe the Balkans are like. I mean, it’s not really that hard to imagine – many Balkan countries used to be Soviet states before the Soviet Union went the way of the dodo, and we all know that communism wasn’t exactly friendly to new technology or foreign influences. Still, that was over 20 years ago, and today the Balkans are about as technologically advanced as the rest of the world. They’ve caught up pretty well, and in some ways they’ve actually surpassed the West. For example, the monthly fee for an Internet connection in Bulgaria is WAY cheaper than it is in England – like, there’s not even a comparison! When my wife and I are living in Bulgaria, we pay about £5-6 a month for 100 Mbit unlimited Internet, which would cost a LOT more in the UK.

But the most interesting aspects I’d love to explore are, of course, cultural rather than technological. And let me tell you, the way people play videogames on the Balkans is pretty different from the way they do it in the West! In the West, there’s typically three kinds of gamers. The first kinds are what are commonly referred to as the hardcores. They own several videogame consoles (PS4, Xbox One, etc), as well as a powerful computer, and play a wide variety of videogames across many different genres. Then there’s the dedicated fanbases, which mostly play just one game or franchise. In America, a very common stereotype is the gamer who plays nothing but “Call of Duty” and “Madden” every year. And then there’s the casual gamer, the people who don’t really identify as gamers, but like to play things like “Candy Crush Saga” or “Threes” on their phones every once in a while. In the West, casual gamers and hardcore gamers have an almost 50/50 split. There’s almost no in-between, and the dedicated fans who only play 1 or 2 franchises very often transition into being hardcores pretty quickly. That’s because, in the West, during the 80s and 90s videogames were a really big part of the culture, and thus many grew up with them and developed a healthy interest in them. If you’ve been playing games all your childhood, chances are you’ll continue as an adult, too. Meanwhile, many people who haven’t played games as a child are able to discover them very easily through their mobile phones, thus becoming casual gamers.

However, on the Balkans, the videogame market wasn’t nearly as popular in the 80s and 90s, because as I already mentioned the Soviet Union wasn’t too fond of foreign inventions. As a matter of fact, most – if not all – Balkan countries NEVER got official releases of videogame systems such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Mega Drive, and instead people who wanted to play those games had to rely on illegal copycats that began circulating in the mid-90s. Throughout the 2000s, as access to the Internet began spreading, more and more people discovered gaming and gradually turned into hardcores, and during the 2010s many began experimenting with casual gaming as well. But both numbers absolutely dwindle when compared to the amount of dedicated gamers on the Balkans. And the gamers who only play one or two games here don’t play things such as “Call of Duty” or “Madden” – they focus on cheap (or even free) multiplayer-only titles such as “DotA 2”, “League of Legends” and “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive”. The solution for that is simple – they’re social experiences, and a fun way to connect with other people. Many don’t really consider them as games. In the eyes of most dedicated gamers, a night spent in a PC club playing “League of Legends” with good friends is just like a night spent partying, or hanging out. It’s a fascinating cultural difference.

Of course, we can’t really talk about games without mentioning online gambling. The thing is, many Balkan countries don’t really have their own online casinos – the most they have are online betting and poker sites, and some countries don’t even have that. Instead, if citizens of the Balkan nations want to play online casino games, they often need to resort to visiting the foreign best casino sites here, looking for ones that accept non-native players. I believe that the lack of local online casinos is the reason why gambling in general isn’t as popular around here as it is in the UK. Another fascinating cultural difference!

When our kids were little, we used to play a lot of board games. Because we moved around so much, we took a little bit of each place we lived at with us and left a part of our hearts there as well. That meant we had to stick together as a family and nurture our British identity. We couldn’t rely on watching TV programmes with the little ones, either. Watching TV didn’t provide the necessary feeling of togetherness, as British TV programmes on the Balkans in the early- to mid-90s were hardly available. TV channels were not much better than what they had been in the 80s. And those had been ghastly.

Can you imagine turning on your TV to find a live broadcast of a lengthy civil war trial, followed by a public execution where you see the bodies of the dictator and his wife collapse under fire? All that as you and your family watch speechless.

It might sound like a scene from a horror movie but that’s exactly what happened on December 25, 1989, when Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena Ceaușescu were captured, tried and convicted by a military tribunal on charges of genocide and sabotage. The trial by a kangaroo court lasted approximately an hour and was later criticised by many democratic countries for being illegal. Moreover, the Ceaușescu execution was broadcast live on public television in many countries from the Communist Bloc.

Anyway, that was just to paint you an accurate picture of what TV shows were like on the Balkans in the 90s. It was the time of the Yugoslav wars and though we seemed to luckily not be at the wrong place at the wrong time and somehow never lived in an active war zone, our family was affected.

So, board games and puzzles were our escape from reality and our safe space. I remember this small roulette set we had. We brought it back from England and started playing it. The kids were ecstatic. They’d fight over who’d be the bank. We would play for hours. And that was how the kids got to know English money, too.

I cherished the time spent with the kids. A couple of months ago, I was talking to my son – he’s exploring Asia the way I did with the Balkans back in the 90s. I told him I missed our playing roulette. I said we should get together and play some soon, realising how unlikely to happen that was. But he surprised me by reminding me there’re cool online casinos – “We’ll all sign up, pick a table and a time to play and we’ll meet online. It’ll be like the old times.”

I remembered that a few months earlier, when I finally succumbed to buying a smartphone and stepped into the 21 century, my daughter sent me a helpful article offering the most comprehensive review of mobile roulette games. I forwarded that to my son and we decided on a game we could all play. It wasn’t like it used to be but, after all, nothing is – we’re older, the kids – all grown up, and the world of technology is brimming with possibilities.

In the US and Western Europe, e-wallet service PayPal is immensely popular and used daily by most people. For those of you who are unaware of its purpose, PayPal is basically a quick, easy and secure way to send or hold money. For example, you can connect a bank account or a debit card to it, and then use PayPal to pay for stuff online without having to input your information every single time. As you know, many sites request your credit card number, your full name, your security number, your billing address, your postal code, your mother’s maiden name, your childhood pet’s name, the name of that girl you had a crush on in fifth grade, but were too embarrassed to tell her even though she was always super nice to you and probably would’ve said yes, but then you had to switch schools and next time you met her she was dating a complete douchebag… You get the drill. The point I was trying to make is that this is a lot of information to input every single time, and besides, if just one of the sites you shop from gets hacked, all of that information leaks out and you’ve got people with access to your credit cards.

PayPal, on the other hand, eliminates both the hassle of having to input all of that info over and over again (all you need to do to pay with PayPal is to enter your username and password) and removes the risk of a potential leak since, well, PayPal has never been hacked before. Like, ever. So if a site you shop at ever does get hacked, the most the hackers will ever get from you will be your e-mail, with the rest of the information kept safely within PayPal’s secure servers. And if that wasn’t enough, you could also just store money in there and pay through PayPal without having a credit card or a bank account at all – if someone sends you money, you can hold it in there forever (hence the e-wallet moniker). That’s awesome, right? It’s no wonder people in the West are using it all the time! But, surprisingly, in the Balkans things aren’t nearly as rosy.

First of all, not a whole lot of people use PayPal in the first place. In the Balkans, the common consensus is that services which store your credit card information (or even worse, your bank account) are fraudulent, and even though that couldn’t be further from the truth, most people from the region refuse to use them. As a result, many services and online shops don’t provide the service, even if they do in other regions. A few good examples are the PlayStation Store and Google Play, which accept payments through PayPal in the West, but deny this option to Balkan nations. Additionally, while most UK Casino Sites accept deposits via PayPal, most online casinos in the Balkans don’t really provide that opportunity and still require credit cards, which, combined with the aforementioned mistrust for sites that store this kind of information, may be why online casinos aren’t as popular here as they are in, say, the UK.

Of course, just because a lot of people don’t use PayPal doesn’t mean no one does. Many more tech-savvy people have PayPal accounts for ease of payments, and similarly, a lot of websites do offer the opportunity to pay with PayPal to the few customers who prefer that method. So things are gradually getting better – here’s hoping they’ll keep improving for us PayPal lovers!