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| Festival's Tent 'City' in Novi Sad |
I've been kind of busy these days and this summer in general. The Internet connection was pretty limited, or better say limited for a long-term private use. Currently I live in a hostel among other people and I have no space or feeling of writing more than 140 signs on Twitter occasionally. So how is it going here so far?
Here are some flashlights from the summer 2011. Firstly, upon my arrival here I did some volunteering at Exit Festival in Novi Sad. The whole festival experience was pretty new to me as I never was on a music festival before. This experience included meeting masses of drunk and happy people, waking up every morning in a field of tents, swearing on the sun for being so hot (45 C is not something what can be enjoyed for an unlimited period of time), accidentally meeting current EVS volunteers in Novi Sad, lying on the beach and doing nothing (which kind of annoyed me, but there were not many other options available during the day) and enjoying great music at night (Jamiroquai, Editors, Portishead playing live on Exit this year). I also enjoyed being among the volunteers on the Silent Disco stage that made me feel like being a part of the festival organizing team. However, after being seven days in the nature and at full disposal to the sun I decided to move on to Belgrade.
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| Hostelworld of Belgrade |
I escaped to the city for which I felt longing for a pretty long time. I arrived late and my potential host in Belgrade did not give any signs that he's alive, so I spent a night in a hostel for 15 Euros. Weirdly enough, I managed to have an argument with the receptionist about usefulness versus uselessness of volunteering and different views on money, so I didn't like him much or better say - his views on life as such (later on I realized that it is a major tendency in thinking).
The next day I went to look for a job in a hostel as I was suggested by a number of Serbian friends. They said that it could be a good option for a foreigner in terms of finding a job in Serbia. In most cases, it would not be a legal work though. I checked a few websites like booking.com and hotelworld.com and wrote down the addresses of around 25 hostels in Belgrade to start with. I thought it will be enough for one day. Then I took a map of Belgrade and placed all the hostels on the map, so that I could make a randomly organized city tour and visit all the hostels that are situated nearby. It was midday of 14th July 2011 when I went on my 'hostel tour'. I visited 5 or 6 places that I placed on the map, skipping some which seemed suspicious or scary to enter (by now I now that hostels in Belgrade hide in random ordinary houses). In one of those hostels that I went to ask for job opportunities I was lucky to meet the boss of the hostel in person. He offered me a job of a 'Tourist Attractor' or in other words a person that promotes the hostel and brings people in. The deal was easy - for each tourist I bring I'd be paid 2 Euros, plus I get a bed to sleep for free.
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| Inside Belgrade's Train Station |
Accordingly, the place that become my second home and my office at the same time was Belgrade's main train station, where I could share my never stopping longing for the international trains with other people with similar unwritten employment contracts, as I observed later. The usual waiting hours were from 6 AM to 10 AM and then from 6 PM to 11 PM, also worth mentioning is the fact that the trains on average were always late, ranging from 30 minutes up to four hours, so in average numbers two hour delay was a normal expectancy of the incoming trains in Belgrade.
Of course I'm not the only one, who was promoting a cheap place to stay in Belgrade. There are around eight other people offering hostels. Although we all are competing between each other when it comes to getting a customer on a spot, the day by day working [read: waiting] on the same common ground, we became more or less friends - sharing useful or interesting information, enjoying the happy or feeling for each other on not so happy days. I especially got friendly with a girl named Teodora, we even established (like a joke) an unofficial band 'Cekaci' [Waiters], as by accident in the period of our cooperative working everyone proved their singing abilities. However, the friendship was shortly interrupted at the moments when the trains finally arrived... then everyone tried to draw the attention of [sometimes pretty scared] backpackers to themselves. I have a little bonus as well as Teodora does - we are not considered dangerous, as can't be always the case with men offering a hostel.
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| 'Hostel Staff' |
Actually thanks to my new competitive 'friends' after working 6 days in one hostel I took an offer to team up with the promotion forces of another hostel. The new hostel was in a better location and offered better conditions - I call it 3 in 1, meaning a job (same pay, plus extra for every extra day a tourist stayed in the hostel), a bed to sleep and finally also a registration. The price for the hostel bed on their leaflet was also a convincing argument. Who'd think that an offer that is a few Euros cheaper plays such a huge difference in determining the success of the hostel business, but it does.
The most competitive hours as I've noticed are in the evening, when all the 'always late' international trains finally arrive, however if I'm capable to wake up at 6 AM and take my half-asleep ass to the train station the chance that I'll meet other hostel promoters is very minimal (though not excluded). In the first three weeks I did so, but later on it got pretty tiring. There is also another lucky hour which doesn't have an exact time, but it happens during the day while you're out doing other stuff and by accident meet someone with a backpack and invite him/her to check out your hostel. I call it 'Easy Catch'.
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| Inside Belgrade's Train Station |
The tourist season paid off pretty well. Thank God and InterRail. If speaking specifically about the latter - InterRail this summer does all the major job to introduce the Western Europeans to the Balkan region. By my unofficial statistics, the countries of origin where most backpackers were brought from to Belgrade were mostly from Denmark (also the number of natives of the Netherlands, UK and France was very high among the visitors of Belgrade), and as many of them replied when asked what brought them here, was InterRail. They also mentioned that there are not many promotions of Balkan region in their countries, except the Croatian coast which is well-known tourist destination. The idea of InterRail is simple - you purchase a ticket for a fixed price and you are given a fixed period of time that you can use trains that support InterRail to travel all around Europe. You can also reserve yourself a seat on the train for 2.2 - 3.5 Euros or a sleeping compartment for around 10 Euros, or just enjoy changing landscapes of European cities and towns as they pass by on a running train without the need of standing in a cue to get train tickets. There is something similar available in Serbia, called BalkanFlex but usually not many local people can afford it.
So that's how my summer went - meeting new people, sharing tourist information, living in a hostel, meeting a few soulmates, having lack of privacy, having no time for myself, gradually becoming very tired, having an emotional crisis (maybe a culture shock), and getting good again, having happy moments with happy people. If you ask me what I have seen from Belgrade or Serbia in this period of time I'd say nothing yet in terms of new places, but I've got a good insight on the life and challenges of people that shared with me the most of my 'office' hours. The life goes on. The tourist season is over and that requires extra nerves and energy to focus on looking for something else as unfortunately no Alchemist ever invented a formula for free food and accommodation. So, at the moment, the tourist-oriented industries shut down for a while (so do many hostels as well by closing their doors).
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