International activity – 7 June
Saturday morning, 8 am, it was very peaceful in ethno village, everyone was still asleep. Igor mannaged to hop out of his bed first and ordered coffee with Turkish delight. Marcel was sitting at the room balcony and joined him very soon. In a few minutes everyone was at the reasturant but this time we all drank the local coffee. Our guests were surprised because they didn`t have headache from overabundance alcohol and we explained them that it is normal when you drink homemade rakia. For breakfast we were served serbian pie (gibanica), ham, salami and yogurt.
We had to leave the ethno village soon and we were very sad because of it. During our trip back to Belgrade we went to monastery Soko grad near Ljubovija. The monastery complex had left a good impression on all of us, we visited the church, museum, lake.. The photos of the refreshing water from the stream will remain in our memories for a long time. Without a hurry we went back to our cars and started continiued to Belgrade.
On our way, we stoped at village Tekeris where we saw Tekeris mausoleum of Serbian soldiers who had won the first Allied victory in World War I – Cer battle.
We gave a history lesson to our guests about the role of Serbia in the Great War and about friendship with France that followed at the end of the war.About 5 o’clock we arrived at Belgrade and took our guests to their accommodation at hostel B & B in Zemun. Guests thanked us again, because they did not expect great furnished three bedroom apartment, where everyone has their own room. The word we were hearing most often and which guests learned upon arrival was “Hvala (Thank you)”. We are once again left speechless because we are not used hearing so many statements of gratitude and we wonder why they were so grateful. Once again we were asked whether we had anything in our mind to do, and we replied: “Get some rest and we will continue on …”. At 8 o’clock we were all in kafana (Serbian restaurant) Čuburska Lipa but this time other Club members who were prevented from traveling with us to Ljubovija joined us. Guests asked us: “Are we going to eat and drink again”, and we answered: “What else we can do.”. Dinner is served, and once again we had traditional Serbian cuisine: gibanica (cheese pie), white cheese, kajmak, salami, ham, barbecue. Rakia and great local white and red wine were served also. Once again, we had to say someting when our guests told us famous word with a very strange accent – Hvala (Thank you). Traditional kafana music was at our table, we ordered the songs and very soon everyone climbed on the chairs and started to dance. We translated them words of some songs, and they could not believe what is the message of our song, most of the songs were sad, but there were some cheerful songs also. We all agreed that it is not necessary to understand the lyrics to feel the message the is saying. We used socializing in kafana to give them a plaque of appreciation for coming and bringing the humanitarian aid to Serbia. Beside a plaque, our guest were very happy when we give them gift – a bottle of our Club`s plum rakia packaged in a beautiful white box with engraved emblem of Rotaract Club Beograd Dedinje.
We continued our socializing at the disco Blaywatch. It was big surprise for guests when red carpet waited them at dicso entrance, also Nikola Stojanovic provided us the main table at the club. We continued our fun with foreign and domestic clubbing music, and at 3 o`clock in the morning we all went to our homes for a rest, because tomorrow was a new day.