I have enjoyed these peregrinations through the Balkans very much. I'm not sure these folks know how lucky they are in the scheme of things. A country needs both civilization and culture, and any country in which it's thought important to build enough housing for everyone, police officers can be rationally argued with on a contested point (observed, not first-person), the arts and literature are priced at a level that ensures general availability (literally a tenth the price of the luxury-goods pricing), and it's a general practice to linger over conversation or a good book over coffee in the early afternoon is infinitely better off than the folks living in McMansions, spending five hours per day in front of their televisions, and constantly trying to stifle the terrifying fear that they might someday lose everything.
Famously, the Westernization of the countries to the north and east involved an attack on the "office tea" culture. As globalization continues apace, some of the countries in these parts might want to define some of these virtues before the holding companies do.