Why Serbia? This was maybe the question people asked me the most often. Why not! I had never been to the Balkans before and was really interested in seeing how people live there, and, of course, it was summer. These were the reasons that convinced me to choose Belgrade for my internship, aside from the description of my work there. This job description was pretty bare-bones, I only knew that it was an institute for microbiology and endocrinology: Something familiar and something new. Perfect!
When I arrived in Belgrade at night, I immediately started suffering in the heat. I took a taxi to my hostel, because it was too late for one of the volunteers to pick me up at one of the central places described in the information letter. The taxi driver could speak better English than I expected and transformed the drive into a sightseeing tour. At the end I paid for it…a lot.
The hostel was huge, seemed more like a dormitory. There were only four-bed-rooms and I was in the room with one Spanish girl and, later, two other German girls. There was not much space and the bathroom was only a little cell with some ancient equipment, the shower basin was broken and so the water ran into the bathroom after each shower. Lucky you if you brought flip-flops. Later my girls and I noticed dozens of little worms coming from under the shower. Chemical Mace needed to be called into action. There was no kitchen and no washing machine.
But this was not the most annoying thing: The internet connection seemed to be not just ancient, but prehistoric. Internet was only available down in the lobby and it worked only approximately 20 % of the time when I needed it. I can’t remember being that desperate in my life before.
IAESTE cared for us. The IAESTE office was in the building of the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy (ten minutes from the hostel on foot) and the people working there were really friendly. You might say that! All trainees got a ticket for bus and tram, so we didn’t have to pay anything for public transport, which was great. But busses and trams were often pretty crowed and at 40°C you felt like you were in a cattle truck. And the way Serbian bus drivers drive is also peculiar, not to say rough. You should hold on!
On the same floor where IAESTE office was, was also the canteen. We could go there for lunch from 12 till 5 pm. For breakfast you got a sandwich with “eurocream” (black and white nutella) or a sandwich with ham and cheese for dinner, it was your choice! But after 2 weeks I was not only sick of the sweet sandwiches, but also of the lunch itself. Meat, meat, meat. As vegetarian the cards are stacked against you. Stew with beans or green peas and meat with mashed potatoes nearly every day. You could pick the meat out or sometimes they had veggie food like peppers with cheese, but sometimes they brought you stew with “no meat”. But having a closer look showed that this was a lie. The saddest thing, however, was that no one showed understanding in the canteen, not even for religious people like Muslims. That really sucked! In secret, pizza became your best friend…
At the end of each month all students got 4000 dinars (about 40 euros) from the office. We didn’t have to pay the rent for the hostel in advance like it was written in the information letter. We didn’t have to care about anything. The 4000 dinars were a good pocket money, but were not nearly enough to survive. I spent around 500 euro in 2 months for food, traveling and souvenirs. Food is pretty cheap. They have many German products in the supermarket as well as in other places. Serbians think that Germans have the best quality in many things. That’s funny to hear. By the way, clothes are as expensive as in Germany, girls!
My work started a few days later than it should’ve. But I was not the only one; Serbians seemed to be a little bit less precise than Germans. On my first day one of the volunteers accompanied me toVinča, the Institute of Nuclear Sciences. The institute area was huge and was surrounded by woods. First I worked in a little laboratory together with around 6 people, many of them young PhD students. They told be about me their work and said I can watch them and ask if something was unclear. So far, so good. But after one week I was bored to death, because they were not doing much and did the same things every day…Western Blotting. After two weeks nearly the whole institute was dead due to a three-week vacation, and I switched laboratories and worked now together with my German roommate. In the new lab they were also doing Western Blotting, but also a lot more. They worked with rats and investigated protein expression after treating the rats with several types of stress. We could watch the rats being operated on and tissue samples being taken from their livers or brains. Not for the faint of heart! My roommate lost her consciousness once. We also watched people in other laboratories doing research on cancer cells. All the people were really open and dedicated to talk about their projects and invited us to come and see them work. Tina and I could do some approaches on our own to practise handling the equipment. On two nights we went out with our co-workers and they invited us for bowling and dinner, really welcoming people! We had a lot of fun.
On the weekends there was much time for traveling. The IAESTE volunteers organized a lot of activities and trips, for example excursions to Budapest, Novi Sad or a rafting trip in the mountains of Monte-negro. Train tickets are not that expensive. I went to Montenegro on my own for four days and paid 2000 dinars (ca. 20 euro) for the train one way. Also during the weeks there was much going on! We partied with the volunteers down at the boats on river Danube, in the students’ club or in the jazz club on the roof of an old paper factory.
And not to forget the fortress! It’s the most popular location especially for young people at night to hang out, drink and enjoy the amazing view. We spent almost every second night there together. No time to sleep!
All in all I absolutely didn’t regret to choose Belgrade for my IAESTE internship: Great people, great weather, great parties, GREAT CITY.
