Thursday, October 2

Pros and cons of staying in Sarajevo

Pros and cons of staying in Sarajevo
Pros
It's cheap.
I know a few people there now.
I know a place to stay
The IH school there is looking for teachers and sound pretty flexible about contracts and whatnot
The school provides accommodation to native speaker teachers.
Otherwise i'm told i can rent a house in the centre for 150euro a month, and don't need a whole house and i don't need to live in the centre.
I haven't seen all i want to see there.
It's easy to ride the trams for free...
It's pretty, despite the communist concrete and war damage, which rather add considerably to its charm.
There are dozens of second hand clothing shops in Sarajevo.
I might actually learn some modern history
The people i've met are all interesting and interested.
It would be interesting to live somewhere where people my age remember war so clearly.
Bosnia Hercegovina is a beautiful and very confused and confusing country.
Such a huge percentage of the population left during the war, and a lot have come back, which means a lot of people have travelled or lived in other cultures. Even as refugees, this gives then a different viewpoint to that which i have seen in most of the rest of the Balkans.
I'd have to learn a slavic language...

Cons
I'd have to learn a slavic language...
Sarajevo gets pretty damn cold and snowy, i think. And i bet there is less heating around than in canada...
I wouldn't be able to wander about europe as i have been. And there are still festivals i want to go to, although not so many in winter.
They might want me to start soon, which would make my vague plan of going through italy to malta difficult.
They might want me to work full time! Gah! Though i did ask about part time and they said they were very flexible.
There's that whole extremist element who beat up queer festival goers last week. Living in the same city as people like that could be interesting.
More than one local warned of that Sarajevo is not such a safe place, and that i should watch out for pickpockets etc.
Didn't i want to live in Romania? And learn romanian?
Or do some sort of volunteer thing somewhere? Why an i looking at a real job?
I would end up saying 'super' in regular conversation. Probably when speaking any language, too.

1 Comment:

elvi said...

No. Come back! We do have heating here! :-)