Not only cool communist Style Hotels (like in my previous post here) are an obsession of mine, there are also the communist style shopping centers and commercial buildings that are enchanting to me! Almost every city in the former Yugoslavia has on the main street an empty building of the former chain of shops "Београд" (Beograd). The Beograd chain ("RKB") was established in 1965 and until during the 1980's was the most succsessful chain of shops in the country. Due to the bad economy and war of the 1990's the chain stroke up and later declared bancrupcy in 2002. Lately some of those empty shops are being converted into cheap Chinese Shops (like in my cover picture of Negotin, Eastern Serbia)
There are still a lot of cool buildings like that all over the Balkans. I tried to put some of the most interesting "робнe кућe" (department stores) into this post.
Shopping Center in Bar (Montenegro) picture source
The buildings look like landed U.F.O.s
This commercial building in Kragujevac (Central Serbia) looks like a beetle
The Agrokomerc Commercial Building in Velika Kladusa (Bosnia & Herzegovina)
(picture source: vkladusa.com)
Fikret Abdić, the CEO of the farming conglomerate Agrokomerc, during the Bosnian War, declared his opposition to the Bosnian government, and founded the small, short-lived and unrecognized Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia in the northwest of Bosnia, composed of the town of Velika Kladuša and a few nearby villages. The mini state existed between 1993 and 1995 and it was allied with Army of Republika Srpska.Later he was convicted of war crimes against Bosniaks that were loyal to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Robna Kuca Korzo in Rijeka (Croatia) (picture source) a radical facade!