>Oh I knew you knew. I was just pointing out the serious bits of it. Some years ago I worked for a short time for a builders that specialised in insurance repairs to properties. Back in 2000 we had terrible rains. This dumb farmer had ploughed his downland field with the drills going down the hill. So there was a mudslide that inundated several houses. I saw one house after the mud had been cleared out, with just the tide mark all through. And I water jetted the high-mud marks off the exterior walls. THAT was bad enough!

Most of northern Serbia proper is low hills, you can actually hear them rolling :). Anyway, a lot of people just clean out part of the forest (on the land they inherited or bought), and then you can just wait for erosion to take its course. The one meter or so of fertile top soil rests on an impenetrable layer of clay, in most of the places, and if you remove the trees, the water just goes down to the clay and lubricates it.

"House on sale, low mileage..."