A visit to Belgrade and ISWiB

In the summer of 2012, I, a curious ISFiT representative, travelled by train as a true environmentalist to Serbia. My destination was Belgrade and the International Student Week, ISWiB (www.iswib.org). I had my ISFiT-glasses on, and was expecting both to learn a lot and have a lot of fun. After a two day's train ride I arrived at the Belgrade train station where ISWiB representatives met me and took me to the dormitories where we were staying. Most of the other participants were already in place, and I was put in a room with three beautiful girls. The place was also swarming with ISWiB volunteers in yellow t-shirts.

The first day was kicked off with some games to get to know each other, and as we were creating a map of Europe with everyone standing in their home country it became quite clear that most of the participants were from the Balkans.

My workshop was called “Business and Marketing Kindergarten”, and was led by students from the marketing institute at the University in Belgrade. As a part of the Information Section in ISFiT I was hoping to learn some new tricks to bring back with me, but I mostly learned about Balkan culture, and especially drinking culture.

My workshop went on several excursions. We got the opportunity to go sightseeing in Belgrade, we visited the stadium of one of Belgrade's football teams – FK Partizan – where we talked to their PR manager, and we visited the National Bank.

In the middle of the week we had a day with something called a Country Fair, where all the participants had their own stand with flags, food and drinks from the different countries. This was definitely my favourite day at ISWiB, and in the scorching heat I got to taste exotic sweets, and there was also a broad diversity of liquors from all over Europe at the Fair. The Norwegian brown cheese was surprisingly enough very well received, and people kept coming back for more.

Being a vegetarian in Belgrade was not an easy task. We were served the same fried vegetables for every single meal, and on the one night we were out to a restaurant to experience traditional Serbian food we were served fried eggs and french fries, because “what else can you eat if you don't eat meat?” I expect that ISFiT will take the challenge and serve some proper vegetarian food.

During the week we really got to experience the summer night life, Belgrade style. On the river that runs through the city, every night club with some self-respect have a party boat during the summer. With boats reserved for ISWiB, we got to party and dance, and some even got to know each other quite a lot better on those hot summer nights.

I left Belgrade one day early, and unfortunately missed the closing ceremony and the flag parade through the city. I had a really fun week, met several great people and got to know Balkan in an entirely different way than I'm used to from the news we get here in Norway. So if you don't know what you are doing next summer and you are curious about Belgrade, then ISWiB is definitely worth a look!

Katrine

Leader of the Information Section

ISFiT 2013