Hand-made condoms!?!?!?

Cross-posted from http://peckopivo.nomadlife.org/

when you are coming from a small eastern european country, and especially from one that is not perceived so well in the world like Serbia is (so basically that little that people usually know about us is crap), then you are not surprised about different steretypes and prejudices people might have about you or your people.

- Some of them think that Serbs still live in communism (most of them don`t know that even when we were a communist country, we were in far better situation then other countries from the "eastern bloc");

- Some of them think that Serbia is still completely destroyed from bombing and that we still (!?) have occasional gunfights in Belgrade (I wonder whom did we try to shoot at in Belgrade - unless they think about WW2);

- Some of them think that we hate everything and everyone, especially muslims (a guy from the dorm where I live here in Istanbul actually asked me why I came to Turkey if we hate Muslims so much that we hunted them in Bosnia and Kosovo!!! - I laughed and told him to watch not to turn his back to me, or else... :));

- At the airport in San Francisco they checked me thoroughly and even used those little papers (which are used to determine trails of gun-powder in your luggage - usually by rubbing your suitcase) on my hands!!! - it`s ok if they think that we are a terrorist threat to the US, but do they really think we make bombs with bare hands? we have technology, dude! :D

anyways, I could go on listing all the stupid things I heard about my country and my people, but I guess you get the idea already... What this post is really about is what I heard last night from one german trainee here in Istanbul...

So, her friend was traveliing Eastern Europe and he told her about this weird thing Serbs have - old ladies in the streets are selling "hand-made, self-knitted" CONDOMS! And not only that he heard about it - he actually saw it! Well, WOW! I was trying whole last night to imagine how "hand-made, self-knitted" (whatever this means) condom looks like, and no luck... (can you imagine coming to an old lady in the street, taking off your underwear for measuring, then choosing the model from the catalogue etc. :D)

But good to know that my country is not only famous by Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, but condoms too... Durex, beware of the Serbian Grand-moms!

Am'dam

Originally posted at http://bORIS.nomadlife.org/

Last week I went to Amsterdam again. I attended ABN AMRO training course about Turn of the cycle and Early Warning Signals [Risk related mainly for people involved in Credit Portfolio Management and Risk Management within the bank] and it wouldn’t be enough to say that I’m satisfied with it because I’m more than that. The course came in the right time for me, on the start of my career in this field and the knowledge I’ve gained there is really useful. Furthermore I was the most inexperienced one [logically] and it was a great opportunity for me to meet and get to know better people doing more less the same job in different countries [the Netherlands, Italy, Kazakhstan, Poland, Germany, France, etc.]. It’s my pleasure to note that all of them are quite nice and interesting people! By the way, the course lasted two days and it was held in Duin and Kruidberg – amazing place [take a look at the picture].

After the course, on Friday afternoon, a colleague of mine from the Netherlands gave me a ride to the ABN AMRO headquarters where I met Zoka and bunch of other people already familiar from AIESEC, at the moment working or having their traineeships in ABN AMRO Amsterdam, and I was quite surprised because I had no idea that some of them were there. It felt really good to see them again. After the walking tour through the buildings we had couple of drinks in the bank [as I understood every Friday afternoon there is a drink in a garden of the bank] and it was good. Later in the evening we went out to some karaoke party and afterwards to café tour through the city. You should have seen Zoka performing on the stage – she was really cute! Nevertheless it wasn’t just Zoka, because when one of the ABN AMRO trainees is singing, all the others immediately join and make the crowd goes crazy and singing with them :)

Of course I stayed over Zoka’s place. She has been living in a really nice house with beautiful view from the living room and in the safe neighbourhood. There is a lake nearby as well as plenty of parks with nice bicycle and jogging paths. Saturday was sunny and it was a perfect day for Amsterdam by bicycle tour, arranged by ourselves. We were cycling the whole day through the city, having coffee breaks and enjoying live conversation with each other after more than two months. It was great! I didn’t want to, but I had to go back to Brussels in the evening…

Serbian community in Benelux countries is definitely growing :)

Ziveli. Bravo!