It is today 4 years ago that I took the plane to Serbia to live there with my Serbian wife. A year ago I wrote already a blog (see here) about the mixed feelings and the questions popping up when you move too another country, relatively close, but still far away from your family and friends in my old home country.
In this 4 years I developed a hate-and-love relationship with Serbia: I love the nature, I love the people, I love the food, the drinks,the music, the humor and many other things. I hate the trash everywhere, the bureaucracy, the chaos in traffic, the inefficiency… But when I was in a unpleasant situations, there was always a Serb with a smile and the famous “nema problema” (no problem) sentence: at the end everything will always be alright. Fortunately there were many more funny, nice and pleasant situations which let you forget the negative ones.
Serbia and its people give me so much inspiration to write many beautiful, but also nasty stories. I truly do feel happy here when I am driving for example through the beautiful Serbian landscape on a crappy road to visit my family in law, friends or a beautiful touristic spot. It are the small things which you have to learn to appreciate in this country and there are many of those things.
I still need to learn many things about this country and its customs, but many I already discovered. Mostly they are pretty funny for a foreigner and I have the intention to write them all down one day. The publicity below from “LAV” ( a beer from Serbia) has it all : they are celebrating “Slava” (a religious celebration of the family saint) and the foreigner here tear apart the T-shirt from the host…. You don´t do this during a Slava, but you do this when you celebrate that somebody became father and then you tear apart the white shirt of the father… and no, I was not in such particular situation, but sometimes I thought “what the heck…”
Serbs are an amazingly friendly people and very hospitable to foreigners, I repeat it again. Yes in these 4 years I also discovered nasty characteristics of Serbs, but he, nobody is perfect? And you definitely can´t generalize of course. The main conclusion is that I am very grateful to the Serbs to do their best to make me feel home: my family in law, friends, colleagues, unknown people in the bus, the shops or elsewhere. But most of all: Hvala draga (=Thank you my dear) that you are always there for me : to be patient when I am inpatient; to listen to me when I am talking nonsense, to be with me at the MUP (=police) when I want to explode for missing a form which they did not told me to have it with me; to translate conversations when I am lost in Serbian language; to help me to fill in incomprehensible forms, but most of all to love me for who I am. Hvala draga, hvala Srbijo !
