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My name is Tedur Covaç, and I live in Sojane. I'm 32 years old.

Perhaps, since you're learning Dravean, I should say that in my own language: "Jèu'm daic Tedur Covaç, e man locài a Sojane. Jèu av trènta-dòi annei."

So much for all the English I know. I have to say that I was surprised when ISOAC put me in contact with you. Normally I just get useless offers on French potatoes (it says on the box "Des Producteurs, tout simplement," so apparantly, they're "just farmers". Personally I think they're just advertising professionals who have been paid too much and, in between sinking martinis and fucking Ukranian hookers, have come up with the least inspiring slogan in the history of ever), but a chef who is learning Dravean? Wow.

Foreigners don't learn Dravian. A thousand years of ruling us and the Hungarians never bothered. The Germans they sent here were too busy talking to each other and appropriating my grandfathers' land to learn how to speak to us backward peasants. Even the bloody gypsies never learnt to speak to us, mate: we don't have enough money for them to bother conning. The only foreigners who learn Dravean are Slovenians, and even then only the ones who live in Ptuj, because most of the sodding city speaks Dravean and you need to be able to ask for a beer somehow. Have you ever been to Ptuj? It's a hole. Aside from hookers and beer, the city lacks anything of interest.

So, you're interested in my beautiful fatherland? Just ask, and I'll tell you.

Regards,

Tedú

(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

Patiku,

What the fuck is wrong with you? We don't believe in magic and shit like that in Dravia. This is the twenty-first century, man. We are a modern, educated nation, and clearly your words stem from know-nothing Western propaganda. I mean, sure, my mother still leaves a crust of bread and the first milk by the hearth for the fairies, but she's a peasant woman from the back-country who doesn't know any better. Of course, my brother claims he was once attacked by a vrecolca* while walking through the churchyard at Sant Ticun, but that's his own fault for going there at midnight on a quarter moon night. I mean, his own fault for being an uneducated low-class schleb.

Regards,

Tedú.

PS: Aurora Rossa, I have heard all about you.

(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

Welcome to my foe list.

So, is there anything that you would like to ask him?

What was it like living through so many political and economic changes (Yugoslavia, independence, joining the European Union)? How did it affect Dravians in particular?

I was actually a kid through most of the really significant stuff, so there's not much that I recall of life under communism as such. I vaguely recall Pelaja Murana becoming General Secretary back in 1987, but given that I was only six at the time all I really remember is that my parents seemed happy about this and we were given a half-day at school. Then a year later she was placed under house arrest and hardliners in the party cracked down on liberalisation efforts. I remember my parents being kind of quiet and scared in those years. My mother's brother was a Party bureaucrat in Sojane at the time, and he was lucky not to be "disappeared": he just got reassigned to some craphole out in the Aravona.

I remember the Civil War well. I was nine years old in 1990, when it all really kicked off. I remember being scared witless most of the time, even though I was living in Vàilana at the time: Vàilana is a little wine-growing town out in the hills, about an hour and a half away from Sojane by bus. Most of the actual fighting took place out in Danoja and the Racognat- the heavy industrial areas- so most of it passed our little village by. My main memories of this time are probably how much I loved all the disruption to my schooling, how Dòna Sojanèsca down the street just stopped talking for good after her son got caught up in the Massacre on the Sala, and waving a little Dravian flag at the side of the road when the UN Taskforce drove through Vàilana. I remember the celebrations after the ceasefire in June 1991, and the trial and exile of the Junta, and then the celebrations when Murana's party triumphed in our first free elections (I kissed my first girl! She was 17 years old and mistook me for her little brother. And I got drunk on crematura for the first time!), but beyond that, not much.

The whole Yugoslav conflict kind of passed us by here. We were recovering from our own Civil War, and the politicoes were trying to rebuild the country from the ground up while the rest of us were just trying to get enough food to survive. The Slovenes, bless them, were efficient in their little war, and not much spilled over the river. The Croats, though. Well. We heard some stories that made our own home-grown little conflict seem like a scuffle at an old man's funeral. I remember we had quite a few refugees pass through our district, but they mostly moved on to wealthier countries: who wants to stick around in a piss-poor country like Dravia was at the time?

More to the point, though, we started getting more visitors from Hungary and Germany after the war. Back before the Second World War almost the whole of Vàilana had been owned by some German bigwig: in the early 90s some of his descendants came back. They were all "Ach Ja!" around the place, taking advantage of everyone being dirt poor and trying to buy up their land, whining about "reparations" and "restitution". At least nobody threw rocks at them like they did with the busload of Hungarian tourists. Some prejudices take a long time to die out.

Dravia only joined the EU back in 2004. I was 23 then and, quite frankly, drunk most of the time. I was working at a dubious little French-themed café in the Old City of Sojane at the time. All I really remember is that we were all expecting everything to become much cheaper, and an influx of open-handed Western tourists. Neither happened. A lot of my friends went to work abroad, though: more than two thirds of my class from Sojane Technical College 4 ended up travelling to France, Italy and the UK to find work in hotels and restaurants. Some of them are still out there: apparently in some English city called Southampton you can even find Dravian shops. My friend Matèu and his girlfriend have even had kids out there. It's crazy.

(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

Yeah. How many Dravians does it take to change a lightbulb?

Only one, but he has trouble in finding the wick.

(I do not understand your English humour.)

(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

How hard is it to get media in Dravian? Is there a Dravian internet community out there?

Dan,

It was nice to friend you on facebook. Why on earth is there a video of you kissing that man?

You express surprise that we have the internet here in Dravia. Well, I'll have you know that some of the world's finest pornographic websites are hosted right here. Honestly, going abroad, it seems that my country's main export isn't uranium or wine, but cheap porn. Ironically, we don't see much of it here ourselves, as Dravia is still a fairly religious country, even after long years of communism. Still, look at Poland. We've got the Catholics in the north and the Orthodox here in the south. There are still a few Lutherans about, but most of them went back to Germany after the war. And now there's the Muslims, they're back four hundred years after we kicked the Turks out. Still, they left some pretty buildings here in Sojane when they did go. My mother's favourite church here in Sojane actually used to be a mosque, you know.

You asked what Sojane is like. Well. I don't know where to start without sounding like an encyclopedia or a travel brochure ("Visit Beautiful Sojane, where we have ten types of tramp and more!")- I'm not even from Sojane. I actually come from Vàilana, about an hour and half away by bus, out in the hills. That's where the best wine in Dravia comes from. It's a small town, only 3000 people there, and quite rural: the people are peasants and winegrowers. But it is pretty, those old-fashioned houses with their thatched roofs, whitewashed walls and long porticos along the southern wall.

But Sojane. Well, I work in a restaurant called "L'Elefant", which is on Jèlca Square. It's not the best restaurant in the city, but I think it's pretty good. Just to the north is the St Bartholomew's Square, the main square of the city, with the city hall and all that. Right in the middle is that old mosque I was talking about. There's a market there every week, and a fair at the end of August. On the corner of the square where it meets Kings Street is my favourite coffee house, the Caffeine Café. They say they serve about 100 different types of crematura there: most of it comes from out by Serota.

All the government buildings are in the north of the city, not far from St Peter's Square, which is where the Orthodox cathedral is. All of this is in the Old City, inside the old city walls: most of them are still standing, and by day they're a good place for a walk. By night, though, you get junkies and teenagers lurking in the shadows and it's not exactly a safe place to be.

The main campus of the university is just to the south of the Old Town, not far from the bus station. This is also the main nightclub district: if you ever visit Sojane I'll show you the sights! Students everywhere, and we all know how easy student girls are.

From pretty much anywhere in the city, you can look north and see the Mògna, another range of hills where they produce wine. This is where most of the tourists stay, out in the quaint little pensions. The wine they make up there is, frankly, piss, though. Nothing like what we make in Vàilana. The city is right at the foot of these hills, so like everything slopes down to the south. This is handy for me going to work, but a nightmare walking back, especially when the trams stop running at midnight.

Regards,

Tedú

(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

Can you post a picture of the Dravean flag?

(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

Que vaiva la Dràvea!

PS: Aurora Rossa, I have heard all about you.

So, Teddy, is your name a very common one in Dravia? And whats up with Tedur ~ Tedú? Is that a common way of forming nicks?

Also your flag is typical European boringness, but that's to be expected.

Are dravian hookers better than regular ones? do they do the reverse dragon? how about the dirty trombone? the well tempered clavier ?
what is the cuisine like over there? do hookers cook?

final question: I am an accountant for a nigerian prince, you see... will you help me transfer one million dollars out of nigeria ? you can keep a decent chunk of it, just give me your bank password.

There are five other yellow-blues, but other than Andorra and that weird postmodernist Bosnia-Herzegovina thing they made up, the other three are all geographically contiguous (romania, moldova and ukraine).