I came to Serbia for the first time in the summer of 2000. At the time, I was studying at a Paris business school which happened to have a few Serbian transfer students. Like alot of people at the time, my opinion about Serbs and Serbia wasn't very positive as it was fuelled by all the negative views brought about from the news about Kosovo, and the wars in ex-Yugoslavia. Much to my surprise, the Serbian students at my business school were very friendly and very eager to change people's opinion about their country. It wasn't long before I became very good friends with one of them. His name was Borko. Even though we had completely different backgrounds, we became inseperable and eventually became flat mates. During the summer of 2000, Borko invited me to visit Serbia (which of course back then was called Yugoslavia), I thought to myself why the hell not. In those days Yugoslavia was in very bad shape. It was a country crippled by heavy economic sanctions which battered its economy for 20 years. Of course it had been in two wars which gave a very bad name to the wonderful communistic dream that once was Tito's Yugoslavia.
I was ready for the adventure of a lifetime. To be continued....
