Last days in Serbia – my learning about business and culture

So here is it. 2 monts are over and I am about to leave Serbia – again with lots of learning and new experience:

Culture

People – nice and helpful. The best is to find smart people who will help you to understand the culture (Thanks a tones Vlada and Sandra)

History – Turks till 19th century. Tito. Milosevic. War in 1999. Murder of prime minister in 2003. Montenegro bye bye from Serbia in referendum last year. Kosovo question – still somebody who does not let Serbian`s sleep.

Kosovo - you still have to have permision to go there. Anyway you would not. Anybody goes there unless they have still some family relatives there. Albanians bought almost everthing during last years and Serbians do not have almost any rights there. It is dangerous for Serbian people to be there, to travel trough Kosovo and as it seems there is no way back to have Kosovo as real part of Serbia.

Sea. Serbia "lost" sea by "loosing" Montenegro. Nobody cares. Opusteno.

Living standards. Nobody cares. Yet. People are happy to work and earn money – 300 – 500 Eur – normal salary. Renting a flat in 300 000 city – 200 eur. People will start to take care about living standard in about 5-10 years I think. Today it is enough just to go to the work, back, sometimes out to kafanas and bars and sleep during the weekend. And have summer holiday.

Kafana – best place in the evening. Outside, live band music that everybody knows.
Environment – lets talk about something somebody built in the past and now nobody cares so much.

Sport – Tenis in time of US open (my honour to Serbian players)

Serbia is in Balkan and those of you who know Balkan have to love it. Relax, no hurry. Exactly this is mirrored also in business.

Business (case of the big company)

• Still mind of “state-owned company” even it was privatized – you CAN leave at 4pm. There is NOBODY staying after 4.
• To make a list of customers (kind of CRM) or to have HR department is luxury – does not bring a money so why to have it?
• Things are more promised then delivered (“you can not say NO to customer” attitude)
• If company is not known – not easy to cooperate with potential customers without previous experience of some of their friends
• Aluminum business – hard but potential for the future
• You can not sell without knowing and trusting the product you sell (invest your time into get to know every small detail of product you will be selling and build the trust into the product first)
  
  THANK you SERBIA, NISSAL and AIESEC in NIS for making my life richer!