Easter in Budapest

Friday:
Talking about spontanous. Easter is coming up and I go to lunch with Anja at the mensa. First of all we had to find one which is open, cause of Easter holidays. The mensa was never that empty before! Anja told me she made her final decision about going to Budapest. And she was going.
Later that day she wrote me on facebook, that Daniel and Carol (the other two interns left here) decided also to go. That was around 6 pm. So here I am with two choices:
a) going to Budapest and spending my last savings from this month on that
b) or staying in Belgrad with basically everybody gone as the Serbians went home to their families for the weekend.
So I was thinking and then finally packing!

We took the night train around 9 pm. We got a train compartment with two ERASMUS students from Budapest and we tried to sleep. I ended up at the floor at one point as this was the most comfortable place - Seriously! It was pretty hard to sleep cause there was always somebody coming in: Serbian controller, Serbian passport control at the boarder, Hungarian passport control at the boarder and then Hungarian controller. They are very serious people and kind of scary - Passports!!!! One of them really liked the Brasilian passports.


Saturday:
We finally reached Budapest around 5 am. We wanted to get a map at the tourist info, but it was closed. But I was actually able to remember all the ways around the city :-). We were looking for a place to eat breakfast and the first place which came to our mind at this time: McDonald. Problem: we were at several and they all would open at 7 am. And we had a new ides: a Mc Map. For all the Mc Donalds in towns with opening hours ;-b.

So we spend some time walking around the tourist streets in the city and at the market hall and then we went to search for a hostel. Which was not that successful. Four hostels later it seemd like all the hostel were booked or reserves at the city and a hostel employee was very helpful then and booked a cheap hotel for us incl. breakfast.

The hotel was at the Buda site up the hill close to the Gallerthill. So after checking in we climbed up the Gallerthill. And enjoyed the beautiful sight. Afterwards I was chassing Daniel and Carol around the city so the could see all the important places :-D: Gallert bath, fashion street, market hall (eat a studel), St. Istvan Cathedral, Andrasy utca, Heroes Square, City park ...

We wanted to meet Anna, who picked up her boyfriend at the trainstation, what proved to be very complicated as our cell phones were all not working that well. Later we found out we were probably at the same meeting point at the same time, but we didn't see eachother.

At the city park we were laying down in the grass, enjoying the sun and resting our feet.
Afterwards we took the tram to Deak ter to go to a supermarket just in case nothing would be open on Sunday, to buy some water and for me some things to bring to Belgrad, which are soooooo good in Budapest.

The shower in the hotel felt very good that night and we fell in our beds.

Sunday:
Actually Saturday was the day of the sun (really hot and me getting red again) and Sunday the day of the drizzle.
The breakfast was great and then we had to check out. Which ment for my pulling my suitcase behind me for the rest of the day. **** - I will never again go away for a weekend with a suitcase. It was not heavy, but that it survived that day made the Brasilians think about buying a German suitcase. German Quality ;-b.
Still we went up the castle hill with lots of other people that had the same idea. Still it was nice. Afterwards walking through the city again, checking out lots of souvenir shops and stopping at one of my favourite restaurants with this great garlic soup :-).
And then walking all the way to the train station to check when our trian will go. It didn't go earlier then we guessed - it went a 11.30 pm. Arena plaza (the big shopping center next to the trainstation) was kind of open. So we went to the food court there and I went to watch a movies, as I didn't want to wait 4 hours without doing anything. I watched "Limitless" with Bradley Cooper - was pretty good.
6 h later and lots of controls again, we arrived back in Belgrad.
GREAT weekend! And I have to say I really missed Budapest and I think it it a beautiful city!

Global week

Global Week:
Last week was about internationality. After being invited to a Global Village, that was then canceled due to the wheather, their was another one. We actually thought that it was the same one, but then we learned that there are actually two Global Villages as there are three AIESEC LCs in Belgrade. It was really confusing.
But we went to the Global Village first from the LC where Carol is. This LC was having a project with high school students "hands of the world" or sth. like that. So they asked as to join them for a Global Village for the closing of the project. Not expecting to have a Global Village at all I was actually not having any German stuff anymore. But I had my flag, some flip charts and I bought some gummibears and "Kinderschokoloade". But they didn't really tast like those you can buy in Germany. So I also had some flipcharts and some German music as I want people to know that there are other German musicians as Rammstein and Modern Talking.
One of the students really came up to me: "You should meet my friend, he really likes Hitler." I really don't want to meet his friend and I was starting to talk with him about, why I do not like Hitler. But some people really were interested about Germany and I had some great talks.

The second Global Village was the next week. Or was supposed to be. It was canceled then at the place as it was in a city park and the LC had the allowance of the government, but they would have also needed the allowance of the city. So instead of the global village we were just chatting with the members of the LC, drinking energy drinks and enjoying the sun. Afterwards we walked around the city with an intern from Mexico, who was there just for one day (her host LC was LC Novi Sad). We also went to the bohemian quarter. This street is full of Serbian restaurants with music at night and the walls are painted with colors so that grey walls look like the most beautiful buildings.



The last things that happend in between was the Brasilian night at the interns appartment. I made some "Kässpätzle" so it was also a little bit a German night. Everybody liked it a lot. And we had really great Caipirinha.
Zelko brought his guitar so we were also singing and he is really an amazing guitar player!

Afterwards we went to one of Lazars friends that lived close to drink some homemade Serbian Rakja. It was really strong!!!!! I drank two and decided not to drink a third. Afterwards I crashed at the interns place as I didn't know how to get home at that time of night.


Saying Goodbye:
It was also the week of goodbyes. Petar went home to Croatia. That was really sad for me as he was the only intern left in the hostel besides me. Now I was the most of the time alone in my room and caught myself starring at Lindas and Petars bed and missing them.

And then Mirsini and Alana came back from their trip to Bosnia and Croatia. And Mirsini was leaving the next day for Greece and Alana would go also to visit her there. So I met them at the hostel, they got some food and we went to Kalmegdan to enjoy the sunset.



Food, Flute and other things:

Anja and and the fluete search :-D! Her boyfriend plays the fluete and also collects this instrument. So she was looking for one for him as a consequence she was getting help from our Serbian teammates and talked probably to all the flute players in the street. (News: Today she got it finally 29.04.2011).


And the food in Serbia. We went to this famous place for tourist. The questionmark. We were sitting outside and then finding out that Carol and Daniel were sitting inside :-D! This restaurant is in a really old house which used to be just a normal house and not a restaurant. Very nice atmosphere.
Besides that we went to another restaurant after the first Global Village. This was really funny. The waiter was such a clown. He was making fun of everything! In the end he cleaned our table with a hand vacuum cleaner :-)! We got sooooooo much food! Danile and Carols meet was still sizzling and Anjas soup was more a soup bowl for a whole family. Yummy!




There was a demonstration at the last Saturday before Budapest. The opposition of the current government demonstrated and lots of people were walking throught the streets for hours. Directly passing my hostel and they sounded like elephants. So I waited till the afternoon to leave the hostel.

And on Sunday after the Brasilian night we went to Ada Island. That is an island in the middle of the Sava river with a huge park with everything: restaurants, golf, football, baseball fields, paint ball, beach, waterski, ...
Daniel and I drove around the island with some rented cars and Anja was reading something on the beach.

Anja and I also started to go for lunch in the mensa. And I have to say though the food looks strange - I really like it. I'm especially fond of Schnitzel with a kind of almost "beansoup".

And to end this blog entry: my search for suncream. When the sun came it was sooooo warm and I got red - like a lobster ;-b. So I tried to buy some suncream, but I couldn't find any. I guess Serbian skin is not that light as mine and they start to need suncream much later.

The iron gate and - humans or pigs?

Marketing Focus:
April really has it here! The wheather is changing within a snip. And I'm sick - AGAIN. *** A new girl from Ukrain arrived last week and we went to drink a coffee at the river bench. That took us pretty long as the waiters were ignoring us - scared, cause we spoke English. But we finally got something in the end. In the evening we met with the teammates from Marketing Foucs (the project im working on) in a students domitory. The studente domitory is huge and there are trees in front where a bunch of birds are breading.
You have to give your passport or ID to the guy at the entrance, so he knows who is visiting whom. Kind of weird! The reason seems to be, that they don't want to have people randomly sleeping there illegal. They have corckroaches - Ihhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
How does it look like in a Serbian domitory? Well they usually share their room. So this room was shared by three girls (but one of them doesn't really live there). And each of them has a bed and a desk. The bathroom is made of plastic - the whole room.
So we were there and tried brasilian "tea" and some candy. And we just had a great time talking, eating and drinking.

The next day: Monday. Instead of having the meeting at the university we went to a cafe. They had a drink called "helga". I thought that was really funny, so I drank it - and it was delicious.

The mensa and reception:
We interns are supposed to get free lunch at the mensa here. But it doesn't really work as we have to upload money on our cards and you can only do that at a specific place and none of us intern knew where it was. Then one of us knew and we went there on Monday, BUT it was 1 to 2 and at 2 the thing closes :-(.
Then today (Thursday) we went with guys from the project, but they had an IT failure. It is doomed! But we ate in the mensa and today the food was actually edible.

The iron gate:
On Tuesday we went on a daytrip to the iron gate. That's a huge canyon the Danube forged into the "mountains". And there is a nature park where the Danube stands as the border between Serbia and Romania and there a lots of old castles, caves, ... on the way. It's just beautiful. They even habe this big stone head in the wall of an old king.
So the view was great, BUT .... BUT ... we only saw everything from the bus :-(.
The plan was to go by bus to this place in the middle of the park and we were hoping that there would be a boot, a walking route or anything to see the iron gate. But there the woman in the tourist information told us, that we would need a car. And so we went on with the bus instead and saw the iron gate through the windows of the bus. We got out at a stop a woman told us to get out and that was a boring place. I think she just wanted to get rid of us. There was kind of like a camp, one store and a very strange restaurant. So we went hungry as the store only sold chips, cookies and chocolate - NO REAL FOOD.
So we spent two hours being ironique and sarcastic - enjoying the sun.
Then we had to get back in the bus and the woman there could only speak German and told me that the bus would come at four. It didn't come on time and everybody was starting to freak out: in the middle of nowhere and maybe missing the last bus back to Belgrad. BUT I was totally calm - yeah, take that stereotypes ;-b!
So it was a nice day, but not as great as expected. The next time I'll go there with a car or bike.

In Comparison and Co

Last evening with Linda
Linda went back to Germany last Thursday. So Wednesday night was hers. We went to a palacinca place: yummy! And then to drink a coctail. In comparison to Germany, they are below happy hour prices ;-b.
Also one of these last days of Lindas we have been at the park next to our hostel and there was this homeless dog. There a lot of homeless dogs around here. They seem pretty happy laying in the sun or at the grass, but still sometimes I wonder what will happen to them. Will they enjoy their freedom, what the heck do they eat, will a mean man catch them and kill them (cliche) ...

In Comparison
From Friday till Sunday afternoon I was in Bonn for AIESEC planning days. Being in Germany for some days and coming back is the chance to see what is really different.
So on Friday I went to the airport by bus. This is the airport of the capital city and it seemed like that the most flights go to Munich and to Paris. My flight went to cologne. And duty free shopping is not really cheap in neither country.
The airport in Cologne is much bigger then the one in Belgrad and there are much more stores. But the one in Belgrad currently has more interesting stuff to buy ;-b.
Communication is different for me - as you can imagine. People in Begrad don't always understand me, so I use my hands a lot (imagine me explaining w/o words that I need a spoon ;-)) and I look a lot. In context I understand a lot of things, as nonverbal signs here are about the same as in Germany. So understanding suddenly everything in Germany was (again) weird.
Also in Germany you just can see that we have money. Everything is renovated, clean, there are more bigs stores ... In Belgrad there is just a lot of grey houses, which would need paint. There is trash in the streets and sometimes flying through the air (I saw a plastic bag from the window of the hostel). And I always feel bad, when I have another plastic bottle from the store and I throw away a plastic bottle w/o recycling it.
As we went shopping for food in Germany the guys from my team carried everything in their hands, hoodies, pockets ... so they didn't need to buy lots of plastic bags.
Back in Belgrad I felt like a piece of meet and the taxi drivers were attacking me. But I took the bus again!
And yes, there are some buildings from the NATO bombing still standing. But that was just like 10 years ago. And I think having that in mind and that their economy is not the strongest, the city and its people are really great and make the best out of it!

This week:
This week not so many things happend. The conference (workshop and lecture presentations) of my project happens, but I kind of got "uninvited" as everything will be in Serbian. So I have free time. I went jogging along the river bench the other day and that was just beautiful! They have so many nice cafes there and the view is incredible.
And I went shopping at the shopping center. I didn't by that much, but I found out that they have laser tag there. So now I hopefully will play that with the other interns ;-b!
That's it for now.

Stories from the city

Being different, going back from today to the days before ;-b.

No Change
If you ever get to Belgrade and you bring Dinar from Germany. Try to get the lowest notes possible (200, 100, 50, 20, 10). People here just don't want to give change. The consequence in restaurants ist, that you can never pay separate and in a big group you try to manage that everybody only pays, what he or she is supposed to pay.
Today I was really angry. I went to the Lilly ( a serbian drogery store) and wanted to buy some facial cream. At the cash register I couldn't pay and left without any things. The reason was simply that I had only 1000 dinar notes and she didn't have change. 1000 dinar is like 10€, so not lots of money and not having change in the store and thereby not serving cutomers is something I don't understand. Especially since there are felt a thousand banks across the street where you as a store manager or employee would be able to get change.

The couple
Another intern arrived in Serbia, who will be working on my project: Daniel from Brasil. And he brought his girlfriend, which is doing an internship at another LC here. They are always together and holding hands - so we usually refer to them as "the couple" ;-b. There are also insider stories about beds, rooms, ... :-D.



The tower
Linda has a friend from Serbia and he took us to a tower on a hill at the edge of the city, where you can see kind of the whole city.
So we went there by bus and it took us about 45 min. The city is really really big, though the further you get outside it looks rather like small villages then part of Belgrade. Also there are the new build houses.
So we went out at the busstation and walked up the path through the forest. Or I should say, we always took the shortcuts. At the top there was the tower: it looks like a rocket.
It has a great view yeah, but only through windows :-(. A balcony would have been way nicer. In summertime they also have a restaurant up there. At the other side of the hill, there ist the tomb of the unknown soldier (the for sure have something like this in every country). This one looks really impressive with all the black marble and sitting on the "stairs" the view was great!


Beggars
Linda (another intern from Germany) is leaving tomorrow. So I was walking around the city with her, so she could get some gifts. And we were also looking at St. Marco Cathedral since she didn't see that one till then. In front of the churches there are usually (at least all the times I have been sigthseeing in the churches) beggars. So she felt bad a gave when we went back out a small boy some money. He then called his sister, which was sitting in the parc next to it and she tried to get something from us. As that didn't work he followed us along the street we walked to get more.

Earlier that day we were sitting in the parc next to our hostel, enoying the sun, writing postcards, eating some frutis, chatting ... Then a beggar girl came up to us and showed us a sign. We couldn't read it as it was in Serbian. But we then gave her a banana and a pear and she went away.

The other day: getting lost in another part of the city
Tuesday we went by bus to a part of the city across the river where you have kind of like a hill with a church and a great view over Belgrade. But we couldn't find the way.
First we walked along the river since supposedly it should be close to the river, then we went back and asked somebody who told us to go in the opposite direction ;-b. We didnd't find it and we went back to another street to walk again in the wrong direction. I was already before saying that it has to be in the other direction, but well ...
Then we finally went in the other direction, almost the same way we went before and just some meters further to find the place (in the direction I thought it would be).
But the view was really nice and the sun was at that point better for pictures. So it kind of worked out.

Kalmegdan at night
Later on Tuesday we then were sitting around Kalmegdan at night and took pictures. But we also had bear, wine, chips, "Pistazien", nuts, ... with us. It was a really nice evening.

Supermarket
As you might expect that this is a supermarket. Well you are wrong. It is an kind of interior design and clothes stores with a restaurant. Just one of the most creative places I have seen in a while. And the food was also really great. Check out the pictures!
This was Monday evening and afterwards we drank coctails for about 2,50€ in a pub :-D!

Novi Sad, No Voice and the Zoo again

Zoo:
Since the wheather was so nice I joined the other interns in the zoo. I was not sure about the zoo the last time, but now I know from the reactions of the others, that I'm not the only one which thinks that that zoo is kind of depressing. The animals just do not have enough space.

Alana from Brasil told me a great story about something, which happend at the zoo. There is a statue of a dog. That's because once an animal broke free and the dog fought it in order to protect an human. The dog was killed, but the human was able to capture the animal. So sad :-(.

Oh, we found also that they have white hedhogs. And the worst thing we saw where the alligators. They were basically laying in a bathtube. There was not really room for them to move.

Petar was fond of a lamb that was "mähhhhhhing" all the time. Next to its cage were the lions - and there were driven crazy by the lamb. Maybe it was making fun of them: "Can't get me!"

Oh I guess there was feeding time, cause we had the pleasure to see the birds eating dead chicks and dead mice.

Novi Sad:
Tuesday evening we had been in Bistec. They had Karaoke there, but with a live band! So we decided not to sing this time ;-). First we have to learn the lyrics as for the lack of a screen it is hard to read the text.
The amount of policemen in the city and around the hostel increased that night, but in the morning there were policemen everywhere. That was because Putin was visiting Belgrade that day and the would not allow anybody on the street and also block the streets for him.

So we had to "flee" to Novi Sad in order to get out of the house.

We went by train. Which took a while. It even took a while to get out of Belgrade as we were stopping and going slow all the time. Eventually we made it to Novi Sad, which ist the second biggest city in Serbia and is located north of Belgrade. It has a really nice city center and a huge fortress called "Petrovaradin".
It's located at the Danube with a great view on the city and in the back on the mountains :-).

We drank a coffee up there. The waiter was really a confused one. He didn't really understand English, but Petar was always translating for us and he still didn't get that I ordered a "tea" and not an "irish coffee" - Does this sound like the same?
Well - never mind.

When we went back through the intercity the firemen were running into one of the cafes at the street. The funny thing that the people outside were not reacting at all. I don't you get what you have ordered if your cafe is burning.


We went to eat a pizza. I ordered Magaritha since I thought I cannot do anything wrong with that, BUT they put mushrooms an all their pizzas :-(. And the put even ketschup and curry on it! Mirsini said she doesn't want Ketschup and still got it. The problem is that the tomato sauce on the pizza ist also called Ketschup. So you can eat it with double ketschup (real ketschup and tomato sauce).

My voice:
Coming back from Novis Sad I lost my voice completely. And that would go on for several days. The next day at the meeting with my team, they were making fun of me - as I couldn't talk at all. I tried to throw a paper plane at one of the guys - I failed. He comment: "And that's German engineering." ;-b

The Hostel and Bad Wheather Days

As good as the wheather was the first days - as fast it changed: Rain and Cold.

Some of the other interns left. So we were hanging around the hostels: drinking, playing games, gut chatting, celebrating a birthday ...

Always involved: Popcorn. I think I ate never before so often popcorn. It's everywhere here.

But basically we were not doing much over the day - just hanging around.

And I got sick. Though not the only sick one. I guess the fast changing wheather was a problem.

So since not that much things happend I tell you a little bit about the hostel!

The Hostel
So the hostel is basically located in the middle of the city - 5 min from the economy faculty, where my project is.

I think it has about place for 20 or so people. My room has six beds ("Stockbetten" = 3). At the beginning all the beds were full. Now with Peter, Linda and me in there. It is still full. But with stuff :-).

The reception is ocupied 24/7. So the night shifts are usually done by students. There is a room with a chillout louge and a small kitchen. Small means that there is a sink, two plates, a fridge and a microwave.
Besides that there is a TV with a DVD and a Playstation. TV in Serbia is totally interesting. They do have a lot of programs which show German, English, Spanish, Croatian ... movies, series etc. just with a subtitle.
When there are big groups the room is just too small. That means that you usually try to stay in the room or get out of the house as fast as possible. Third option stay the whole time at the place you are sitting at otherwise you will loose your place.

The hostel has two bathrooms. The first one is not that good. The shower there looks at the first sight pretty luxurious: there is water coming out from the top, from the sides, ... but then again it is hard to regulate and it also reminds me of a Dixi toilet, which wants to be a shower.
The other bathroom is just normal and better. And there are also the washing machine and the dryer. So if you want to wash cloth: put in your cloth and ask somebody of the staff to turn it on for you.

Yesterday the next big group arrived: people from Spain. We are just waiting for getting for a note, that we have to change hostels. The rumor is that we have to leave the 23rd of march. That would be tomorrow. So we will see.

So today the wheather is better again. So we are planning to go to the zoo and tomorrow we are probably doing a trip to Novi Sad. The second biggest city in Serbia.