PHOTO: Day in Photos – February 21, 2009

As a snow storm went rampant in Serbia, Croatia took part in a festival of traditional East European cuisine.

Three people died and dozens were stranded on a Serbian highway on Friday as heavy snow and severe frost hit large parts of the Balkans, causing travel chaos and power cuts across the region. Sections of highway linking Belgrade and the southern city of Nis were closed, and remote central Serbia villages remained cut off for a third day. Roads linking Belgrade with Romania's border were also shut. 

In the eastern Serbian town of Pozarevac an elderly couple froze to death in their home, and a man died in the mountainous Sjenica region in the southwest, police said. Temperatures fell as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius.

Blanka Vlasic’s victory and pork festival 

In the meantime, Teams from Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania took part in the annual pork festival in Balvanyos, about 250 km north of Bucharest. Pork features prominently in traditional East European cuisine and the slaughter of pigs is a thriving cottage industry in the countryside during winter.

Somewhat later, Croatia’s best athlete Blanka Vlasic was winner of the Slobodna Dalmacija high jump competition in front of 14,000 spectators in the Spaladium Arena in Split. She jumped over 2.02 metres, which is also the competition’s record.

See the photographs that marked the day in the photo gallery Day in Photos – February 21, 2009