Summer University Kragujevac, Belgrade, Tuzla, Sarajevo 2014

It’s not easy to write a summary about these two weeks. It was such a perfect holiday that I really do not know where to start.

It started in Kragujevac with Milos, Tomo, Dragan, Vanja, Ivana, Danica, Nikolija, Milos, Andela, Snezana and a lot of other organizers and friends. After the four days in Kragujevac, we went to Belgrade. A participant arrived at the hostel, Elisa Chieregato. She was late because of her exams. So everybody was in the common room of the hostel, except Elisa. I found her in a room where she was sitting on a bed, and I asked „Why don’t you come out and drink with us?”, and she said „Of course I will, but it is so strange. You look like a family, I mean, only four days passed and it seems you have known each other for years”.

I can remeber the lighter, and when we refilled it, instead of buying a new one for the half price, and the Christmas lights all over Bosnia. Then we sang a„Geburtstags” song to Sophie Consuela in Sarajevo and the police came and said „It’s not allowed to sing in the street”.  We had the best parties ever in Belgrade, on the boat and in Klub Studenata Tehnike. At the same time a taxidriver got lost with the spanish participants and they tried to give him  directions in Italian. I can remember our first treasure hunting in Kragujevac, the long walks until we finally found the memory park. After three hot days we went to Jezero lakes where we could enjoy the first thunderstorm, but everybody swam to the other side of the lake anyways.  I remember Daniel and his selfies and „bothies”as well as many group pictures everywhere. Everyone loved the serbian-bosnian „5 minutes” , which is minimum half an hour. I can remember the five-hour-long bus ride from the mountains to Sarajevo, and it was one of the best parties on the bus because we did not want to exclude any nationalites, so we had to drink rakia, wine, jägermeister, beer…while listening to  90’s music. We arrived to Sarajevo with the loud music, and met the organizers from Sarajevo. We went to a kafana every night, we broke glasses, sung about the bridge in Sarajevo and tried every single kind of rakia…I could write pages and pages full with memories.

I do not think we could have had it much better, the whole SU was so perfect thanks to the organizers. They did not just organize but they did everything from their whole heart. They were with us, ate a lot of ajvar with us, they drank a lot of rakia with us, they showed us what a kafana is, how to dance „kolo” in the middle of the night in the rain, how to love every single lonely jackey (dog), how to really relax while smoking sisha, how to make a houseparty in Sarajevo, how to visit Mostar under umbrellas, how to sing a traditional bosnian song about love and how to say volim te, hvala, ziveji.

For me, before this summer, Serbia and Bosnia were just two countries, but I met a lot of people, whom I really love. I know it is almost impossible to get the whole group together again, but some of us will meet again somewhere in this lovely Europe. Thank you guys. Thanks to Milos for making  the whole, solving all of our problems we had and for walking under the umbrella in Mostar hand in hand, thanks to Tomo for organizing everything and for the dance we had in Belgrade, thanks to Ivana for cooking hungarian meals on the European Night together. Thanks to Vanja for crazy nights in Sarajevo,thanks to Thomas for being the soul of the group, thanks to Elisa and Roxi for the long converstions we had. Thanks to Jakub for spending a lot  of time together in the bathroom and on the dancefloor. And thanks to everybody for everything. This was the best Summer University ever.

 

Written by Zsófia Anna Tóth, AEGEE-Budapest