Experience: Kelly Smits, Serbia

Dober Dan!

In the summer between my bachelor and my master, I wanted to do something fun and educational since I had plenty of free time. My boyfriend went to Craiova (Romania) with AIESEC the summer before, and he had the time of his life, so I was motivated to do something similar too. Another reason was that I have always wanted to study abroad, but it had not come to that earlier due to several reasons. So this was my chance!
I went to AIESEC Tilburg for some more information and to ask my possibilities. I was extremely enthusiastic, it was exactly what I wanted! After I was accepted by AIESEC Tilburg, I could start searching in the database for a cool internship. I was already sure that I wanted to go to a country in the east-side of Europe, because I had never been there and because they have a good reputation for internships.

One of the first projects that I noticed was Life without Borders in Serbia. It was a national project that would take place in 9 cities in Serbia. I had two Skype interviews with Nemanja from Life without borders Novi Sad, and I was accepted! Life without borders was a 6 week during project, where we had to give workshops (about Tolerance, Health, etc. but also English teaching and sports) to children. I was really happy with the project, and I thought it would be a great summer! Several weeks before I went to Serbia, lots of things still weren’t arranged by AIESEC Novi Sad, but I kept on saying to myself that it would be fine and that I was probably just used to the strict Dutch scheduling.

The second of July it was time to go! I couldn’t wait to go there. When I arrived it was immediately cool, everyone was really nice and helpful. The only thing that was a bummer was that they promised us one big house for all the 14 international interns, but we were divided in several apartments in the city. But, while it was a pity, we still had a great time! The first 3 days, everybody arrived and we got to know each other by hanging out in the city and at the beach. After several days we went to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, for a conference with all the Life without Borders students of the nine cities. This was a great experience to meet all the people from all over the world, learn some practical skills and to explore Belgrade of course. Especially the global village at the beach the last day of the conference was awesome! After sharing our food and thoughts, the party went on, everybody was dancing like crazy. At a certain moment everybody was dancing at the famous Dutch song:“ik heb een toetoetoeter op m’n waterscooter”.

Because the AIESEC people said that our project would start in week 3 and it didn’t need any preparation (which I already found weird) I went to Bosnia with my 2 polish friends Maja and Natalia. We discovered Mostar and Sarajevo, two beautiful cities with a great mix of cultures! It felt like we were in the Middle East instead of Europe! The nature in Bosnia is very pure and beautiful, it’s a country I can recommend everybody to visit!!

After our 3-day trip, the party went on, because in our home town Novi Sad was a big 4-day during festival called EXIT. It’s really famous in the east-side of Europe and artists as Avicii, Guns ‘n Roses and Duran Duran performed. I really had a good time with the other interns and the people from AIESEC Novi Sad those 4 days!
Eventually, after two great weeks, it was time to start with the reason why we had all come to Serbia: the Life without Borders project. On Monday morning AIESEC Novi Sad mentioned that they didn’t have enough paying children, so that the project couldn’t start yet. All the interns were quite upset and disappointed. When we asked them something about the project in the first 2 weeks, we never got a clear answer: they said everything would be okay. As a solution AIESEC Novi Sad said that we would postpone the project for a week, so we could prepare our workshops in that week and promote our project in the city. That week I worked on a workshop about tolerance with my Turkish friend Zafer, we worked hard and we made a good workshop. The time that was left during the day, we were handing out flyers in the city center and at the beach. At the end of the week all the interns were ready to start with the project, because we really wanted to do something, but we had our doubts too if there would be enough children.
 Finally our project started! But at the opening zero children showed up, at the first tennis workshop zero children showed up and even at our tolerance workshop there were no children. We were really disappointed and mad at AIESEC Novi Sad, because they didn’t promote the project good enough. They knew it all the time that there were no children, but they didn’t really tell us, they only told us the whole time that everything would be fine. Nobody took responsibility either, which was really frustrating for us interns. After two days of being sad and disappointed because we didn’t have a project, we decided to make the best of the time we still had in Serbia, because we had a great group of interns and it should be a waste if we were sad the whole time. Some of the interns decided to go home earlier, because they could make themselves more useful in their home country. I decided to go home 1,5 week earlier. So I spend 5 weeks in Serbia instead of 6,5.

The last two weeks we had some goodbye parties, we went to several hometowns of our Serbian friends and we were enjoying the Serbian culture, cities and food. Suddenly AIESEC Novi Sad had arranged some places where we could do workshops with children (after 4 weeks!!), because if they didn’t offer us an alternative project, they had to pay us money, which they hadn’t. So after all, I did 4 workshops with children. After all those weeks I was really glad that I could actually do something!
After 5 weeks it was time to go, the goodbye was really hard because after 5 weeks I became really good friends with most of the 14 interns and some Serbians! Even though we didn’t have a project, I had the best summer ever. I learned a lot too, but in a different way than I expected. I learned a lot about myself and about other cultures, and the best thing: I have friends from all over the world now!