Serbia

On Friday I left raining Zagreb, to find a also raining Belgrade (for those who are interested to know in Serbian its called Beograd, which means white city).

In the first night we went clubbing near the river, a very cool place and on Saturday afternoon we did some sight seeing. I had the best guide tours, Alex and her brother, Velimir.

From what I’ve seen, in the last five years Belgrade is making many efforts to overcome the destruction and abandoned of its heritage during the last decades. It is possible to find a lot of influences from Turkish, a little bit of Hungarian and Austrian, and also still some from bombing. It’s a different city and I would characterize it as a city that is alive, you can find so many people in its large streets, cultural events and the traffic is more chaotic and crazy than Zagreb.

And I also heard that Serbian people are a bit crazy, and I understood what those people meant…

I could find this sign in the fortress of the city, Kalemegdan, and I thought it meant "Please, don’t step in the grass". It actually means that "This is the invisible tree that can read your mind" in Cyrillic.

In that night we had fun at home with the Sangria that I’ve made and in the next day we were ready for more sightseeing. So we went to Zemun, which is in the other side of the river where it was possible to find a beautiful view over the Danube river and Belgrade.

In this last day in Belgrade all people that are going to represent AIESEC Croatia in the International Congress 2007 in Turkey (where I am going next) arrived, therefore we start preparation. I had the opportunity to visit the MC office of AIESEC Serbia and also the LC of Mihajlo (for those who know him, will understand how funny that has for me). To finish big we went just to relax in a cool coffee bar, enjoy Alex’s mother cooking’s and to buy very cheap cigarettes for some Portuguese people that requested heheh.

I will see you in turkey :)

Slovenia

My trip to Slovenia is definitely worth a post…

The beauty about being in the center of Europe is the following: Saturday, 29th of July, in Split speaking with a Serbian Girl who had an internship in Slovenia:

- So, where are you going after Split?

- Oh, I’m going on Tuesday to Slovenia and I leave from there on Thursday to Italy. And you?

- Well, I don’t have any plans.

- Do you wanna come and meet Ljubljana? You could come with me and on Wednesday we can see the city because one day is really enough.

- Yes, why not? Let’s go.

The possibility to go to another country, to pay less than 20€ and to take less than 3 hours. How great is that? So you can imagine my excitement, I even forgot the passport and we had to take another train (“European Union People” my friend would say).

About the city, it’s a small city but it has some magic I must say. There is this river that breaks into two and then joins again giving the city a tough of Amsterdam appearance, with bridges and lovely buildings in both the sides. The castle from the top of the small hill remains very well preserved and gives the opportunity to the hundreds of tourists to see the entire city (people from Croatia and Serbia would say that it’s possible to see the whole country, because they are always making fun of the small size of Slovenia).

This photo is from this place called the 3 bridges.

A view from the Castle tower

And… Even if Slovenia didn’t have anything else, I believe that only for this it would be worth to visit this country. Imagine, walking around and to see a lot of signs saying that! Because in their language Cona means Zone… I don’t think I need to say more…

Well, it was great, I loved the feeling to go to another country is so short notice and the city. Thanks Bojana and see you soon.