I’m Marjus Ceveli, an Italian Civil Peace Corp based in Belgrade-Serbia.
I arrived here just at the beginning of a not so cold typical Belgradese November. Unfortunately climate change is having effects also here probably.
It was everything unexpected for me as I was selected for another project that wasn’t launched and I was contacted in the last minutes about this opportunity in Belgrade.
Here I’m, in the heart of a Balkan capital city and, in the past, capital city of the former Yugoslavia.
Here we are coordinated by the Serbian NGO “Fosdi” and from Italy by “Amesci”.
It’s already more than one month that I’m here and I learned some basic Serbian words.
Serbian language is not so easy and in the same time people here in Belgrade speak English very well. This makes it more difficult for me to concentrate in the learning process of the language.
I had also the opportunity, with my other colleagues, to visit some rural areas in the mountains in central Serbia. It was an opportunity to see how people are maintaining their traditions in this areas. There the local people are living with the remuneration of their work planting fruits, vegetables, raising animals, collecting mushrooms and other herbs in the surrounding mountains and least but not last making rakija. Some farmers are used to drink rakija in the morning to make their body warmer as it’s really cold there during winter.
Coming back to Belgrade we had the opportunity, with the help of Natasa and Jovan, to discover a bit the city. The city is crossed by two rivers, Sava and Danube, and there are many beautiful places where to sit and enjoy the view.
Here there are many opportunities to spend our spare time as well. I and my colleagues are also lucky to live in the really city center and this makes possible to fully enjoy our spare time.
Belgrade has definitely a lot to discover and during this year I will have the opportunity to write more about the places that I will see and how I’m spending my life here.
At the moment I can definitely say that my favorite neighborhood is Savamala.