Typical Day in The Balkans
Here’s the real beauty of study abroad, especially one as short as a Dialogue: there is no such thing as a typical day. We haven’t spent more than two weeks in any of the cities we’ve visited thus far; our classes are so rarely spent in classrooms that I almost feel strange calling them classes; and most of all, we’re in a foreign country. One of the most amazing things about traveling is that it allows you to do everyday things for the first time again — there’s nothing quite as exciting as your first day in a brand new place, everything new and untouched to your eyes.
But if I have to give a rundown of what a so-called “typical” day might look like, here’s how I’d break it down:
First: wake up and head down to breakfast, which has been steadily growing at every hotel we’ve stayed at. We’re now at Hotel Prag in Belgrade, where breakfast now includes not only fruit, yogurt, cereal, and pastries, but now also crepes, eggs, sausage, bacon, omelets, French toast, fish sticks (for breakfast!), polenta, mini chocolate pastries, and fried eggplant. The meetings we have generally begin around 10, so our leisurely breakfasts begin around 9, and we linger (European-style — everyone’s starting to get used to it!) over coffee and pastries before running up to our rooms and grabbing anything we need to start the day.
In Belgrade, we’ve typically been taking cabs to meetings, because the city is so much bigger and the public transport much more crowded (not to mention — bringing 23 people on an already-crowded bus? That just makes you the worst). We’ll split up into groups of four and pile in, group by group, while our TA Mladen tells our non-English speaking drivers where we’re headed — in yesterday’s case, our morning meeting was at the U.S. embassy in Belgrade.
Once we arrive at our destination, we’re led to the space where our lecture or discussion is taking place (or rather, in the case of the embassy, we’re led to the entrance, and then through security, and then escorted into the room where we were to meet the ambassador). This is where the coolest parts of this trip have been — speaking to diplomats and government officials, hearing them talk about their positions and what the challenges they face are, and what they see as the issues the country and region as a whole face as they develop in a fast-moving world. Of course, each talk we have is tailored according to who’s giving it, but most tend to hit the same topics at some point in their talks — far from being boring, it’s been fascinating to hear so many different perspectives on the same issues.
Our meetings are always followed up with plenty of time for questions. This, too, has been an enriching part of the program — though most of the students on the trip are international affairs or political science majors, there are some who are business, other social sciences; even one who’s an electrical engineer. Everyone has a different background or lens through which they absorb the information, and it’s been great to hear questions from completely varied spheres of knowledge and getting to hear answers to questions I would have never thought to ask.
Once our first meeting is done, we typically have time to head back to the hotel and grab lunch before running off to the second (and possibly third and fourth) events of the day. My standard in Belgrade has been to run to the pekara (bakery) just across the street — I get two fresh breadsticks covered with some kind of salted cheese, and I’m out sixty cents for lunch.
The second meeting we have of the day follows the same pattern as the first — cabs (unless the people we’re meeting with have offered to come to the hotel, in which case we gather in a conference room), arrive, lecture, discussion/questions. Yesterday’s second meeting with the EU delegation for Serbia, a committee that works on the process of Serbia’s hopeful eventual accession into the EU.
Following our second meeting, if we don’t have any more, there’s generally some time left before anyone’s hungry enough for dinner. Were we still in Sarajevo, this would be the time everyone would congregate in the lobby; in Belgrade, there is no such universal hangout spot. Instead, this becomes the time to do homework, catch up on reading, take a nap, or do some more wandering. I’ve taken to walking down the length of the pedestrian walkway to the old for that overlooks the meeting of the Danube and Sava rivers when I have the free time.
We’re generally split off into groups of five or six for dinner (at this point, everyone has their group of people that they tend to spend the most time with) — usually somewhere within close walking distance, but sometimes we’ll just wander and see where we end up and what looks good. Dinners are long — if they begin at 7 (a bit early for my taste), we’ll be wrapping up by 9, and then deciding whether to turn in for the night if we have an early morning, or to head out to the local music scenes to keep the night going. Usually, the choice is to head out — after all, how long are we in Belgrade for? From there, it’s easy to let the night slip away, since unlike Boston, nothing here closes at 2. Sometimes the choice is dancing, sometimes it’s a more relaxed setting listening to live music; no matter what, it’s always a satisfying end to a long day.