SERBIA: SHIT HAPPENS

“The Contractor Always Rings Twice…” But Never on Time

A Dream Come True or A Nightmare Yet to Unfold?

By Bob Djurdjevic

September 13, 2025

Shit happens. That should be the national motto for Serbia. I was born there, but I haven’t lived in this country for almost 60 years. And I have never done business here — until five months ago.

True, I worked over a decade as a war correspondent during the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s. But only for a few days or weeks at a time, and meeting mostly country leaders, government ministers, opposition leaders, generals, and diplomats, even the Patriarch (the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church) and Metropolitan Amfilohije (Metropolitan is like a Cardinal) — not ordinary people, except for frontline soldiers.

So I had built up an idealistic view of my native country, one I was trying to help rescue from the jaws of the New World Order dragons: Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Jean Chretien, Ulrich Schroeder, Xavier Solana, Wesley Clark, and their minions in the neighboring countries — Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia.

As I said in my speeches and articles at the time, what happened to Serbia “was a gang rape of a small nation.” For the sake of my ancestors, I felt obliged to pitch in, to expose to the world this travesty — while carrying on with my consulting business and raising my family. The latter helped pay for the former philanthropic endeavor.

“A military alliance of 19 nations with 780 million people; with over half of the world’s gross economic product (GNP), and two-thirds of the global military firepower, ganged up on a tiny nation of 10 million. Day and night they dropped on you thousands of bombs and missiles in nearly 40,000 sorties.”

When it was all over, with Serbia defeated but unbowed, I turned off the switch and returned to my normal life in America.

Then something happened seven years ago that made me come back for six months to see what life in Serbia was really like.

Well, the best-laid plans of mice and men… I met the love of my life, married her, and here we are. Somehow, I got hooked back into my native country.

BUYING THE “BLACKJACK RANCH” 

Five years ago, I bought a parcel of land in Višnjica, a picturesque suburb of Belgrade on the banks of the Danube. At the time, the property was a jungle, but I could see its potential — a beautiful view from high up in the hills above Višnjica. Since the zoning had not yet been done in this part of Belgrade, I hesitated to build immediately.

For four summers, I worked the land like a farmer: clearing shrubs and weeds, tilling the dirt, building fences on our “Blackjack Ranch.” The name stemmed from my wife’s comment back in 2020 that the property “fell to us like an ace on 10” (kao “kec na 10” – in Serbian). 

In other words, it was fortuitous, sort of “God-given.” 

BUILDING THE HOUSE

Then last year, I built the walls around the property and designed the future house.  

This spring, unaware that the urban plan had actually been approved in February (another stroke of luck and divine guidance), I took the plunge and started construction. 

A Dream Come True or A Nightmare Yet to Unfold?

What a nightmare it has turned out to be so far. It was an authentic way to acquaint myself with the national character of the country in which I was born. In the end, I never felt more like a stranger in Serbia than in these last five months, like an alien on a strange planet.

If I were to sum up the attitude of almost all Serbs I interacted with, it would be: shit happens. They take it for granted that they are incompetent, and that this is normal. They do not take pride in their work. They do not aim to please the customer.

They have not learned that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Those who understand that without a happy customer there is no business have probably left the country — like myself. Yet somehow, those who stayed maintain an arrogant self-image of being grand and important, even though they are on the tail end of the global scene.

This self-aggrandizing in-group thinking helps paper over their many flaws, allowing them to continue feeling good about themselves.

“What do you expect? That’s Serbia,” one sheet metal worker told me after dropping the ball for the umpteenth time on repairs to our sliding gate, which his truck had damaged back in June.

“You’re Serbia, too,” I replied. “Are you proud of your incompetence?”

Shrug. As if I were speaking a foreign language.

They just don’t get it. You have to smile, bow, and scrape to please a customer — or you will never get repeat business. As a friend once told me when I started my own company: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

I won’t be fooled twice in this God-forsaken country. This has been an expensive but illuminating lesson. 

They say “shit happens.” Not to me, I have always thought. “People make their own luck.”

And then shit happened to me in Serbia. And I was powerless to prevent it.

The silver lining? Property values in Višnjica have risen manifold since I bought the land. So if we ever decide to sell and leave, at least I may recoup something for the ordeal of the last five and a half months.

Which reminded me of a little story. 

“A man was digging in the garden and found a chest full of gold coins. Then he remembered why he was digging there. So he covered it back up. Because shit happens.”

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PHOTO GALLERY OF THE “BLACKJACK RANCH” HOUSE (Sep 13, 2025)

PHOTO GALLERY: The Blackjack Ranch: A Tale of Sweat, Patience, and Views That Heal

Slide 1 – The House Front
“This is the house I designed myself in 2024. It looks calm now. But don’t be fooled. Every wall, every cable, every brick here cost me at least a year of life expectancy arguing with contractors. Serbia teaches you patience — the hard way.”

Slide 2 – The Terrace View
“When you step onto this terrace and look out at the Danube — Europe’s greatest river — and city of Belgrade beyond, you feel like Kate Winslet at the bow of the Titanic. Arms wide open, king of the world — until a contractor calls to say he’s late again.”

Slide 3 – Side Angle with Solar Panels
“See those panels? They made us independent of another mafia in Serbia — EPS, the electrical utility. Off-grid, off their radar. Sunlight is free. Their bills aren’t. Stubbornness, again, is renewable energy.”

Slide 4-7 – Sunset Over Belgrade
“Some things you can’t buy, no matter how many invoices arrive twice. Like this sunset, painting the Danube gold and the city red. Every headache melts when the sky burns like this.”

Slide 8 – Inside, Still Unfinished, But…
“Still rough edges, still dust on the floors, still promises waiting to be fulfilled. But this is the heart of the Blackjack Ranch. Tomorrow’s laughter will echo off these walls.”

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