SERBIA! It’s hard to believe that I am already on month 7 of this crazy adventure. I have not traveled more than half way around the world and am in Serbia now.
Serbia is a neighboring country to Romania so it was only a short 24 hour trip to get to our ministry location. It’s funny how 24 hours of travel is now considered short!
We took a train from Tagru Mures to a city called Vrsac in Serbia and then jumped onto a bus. On the train we got our passports checked which was a short process because I don’t think they really cared.
Serbia feels much more cold war like. Basically what I expected to see after all the books I have read about the World Wars. Serbia has marks of war all over it. The people are even more “Russian” like than in Romania.
The city we are in is called Zrenjanin. It is a small city in the north part of Serbia with a population of about 50K.
The thing that makes it the most cold war like is the run down trains, buildings, and graffiti that mark the city. There are definitely some nicer places, but generally the buildings are pretty run down. The apartment buildings remind me of the what the “projects” were in Hardball.
The exchange rate here is the lowest we have seen since the Philippines at 83 to 1. This is weird because a lot of the gypsies in Romania would come to Serbia to work and then send money back to Romania, but in Romania the exchange rate was 3 to 1 suggesting that Romania’s economy is better than Serbia’s. Clearly not the case.
