I can give you first hand info about Slovenia. Armstrong feeling about Slovenia is quite good. Chart of GDP growth published by Zarathustra is correct, but this growth is fake. People really should also look at the debt and then check for correlation.
We went into our real-estate/financial/pension crisis with low level of debt, today we are just like any other EU country - no more room for mistakes. We haven't really made any political/structural changes in the last 10-15 years. Our pension system is unsustainable and we are already taxed between 50-70%. Level of corruption is high (high % of GDP is government). Next crisis won't be fun.
I believe this chart tells you all about our fake recovery. Our companies are hurting due to high taxes, bloated government sector and regulations.
Check below why this is also fake?
I believe recent drop is only because many highly educated young people moved to Germany, Austria, Canada, USA, Australia, UK. We have around 20k newborns per year.
Mostly young and higly educated people that moved from Slovenia in the last years speak trully horrific story. I know many that moved.
People that left country:
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
1.930 1.969 2.331 3.888 7.905 5.392
Slovenians are smart people.
We are not smart - maybe compared to the rest of Balkan (if you check IQ by nation), but we are highly socialistic country, people are still taught communist ideas even in universities. I am an anarchist and I have not yet been able to encounter similar people in our country.
You don't see much binge drinking in Ljubljana.
Bullshit - totally opposite is true.
Amongst the students, 23.1 % were hazardous or harmful drinkers.
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/sjph.2014.53.issue-3/sjph-2014-0027/sjph-2014-0027.xmlhttp://www.sloveniatimes.com/slovenia-ranks-5th-in-alcohol-consumption-in-euThey're the people who make you believe in Europe.
Hehe, that's is true. Let's not forget that our grandfathers killed around 200k people after the WW2, just because they were political opponents (mainly Serbs & Croats) of communistic ideas. We are for big unsustainable ideas.