When I worked for Namics, I was sent to Belgrade to set up, develop, manage and manage the nearshore branch. My family and I lived abroad for about three years from 2017 to 2019.
I wrote this blog post after three years in Belgrade, just before we moved back to Switzerland.
Three years have passed since we discussed our move to Belgrade, and we are on the verge of retiring. Time flew by… I almost wrote that we would be moving home soon, but then I stopped and asked myself: Are we doing this? Are we going back home? What is Switzerland and what does Belgrade mean to us?
That’s really a good question – not only for me, but for my whole family.
My younger daughter Noa, for example, spent more time in Serbia than in Switzerland. She is now a little over three years old and we have been living in Belgrade for 2.5 years. The same applies to Malea, my older daughter. After an initial period of settling in, she has settled in very well in Belgrade. She now speaks Serbian fluently and enjoys ballet lessons. She even took part in a ballet performance. Both love their kindergarten with all their friends, all the cool kindergarten activities, their amazing teachers and the exciting birthday parties. They have become Beograđanke (Girls from Belgrade).
My family in the Belgrade office
In those years, the two grew up with Serbian admixtures, and sometimes it’s crazy to see how Serbian they are. At least they look Serbian to me, and my colleagues from our Belgrade office are no longer surprised at how well Malea and Noa speak Serbian. But they started making fun of me and my non-existent Serbian.
For my wife Elena, our Serbian experience was a bit more difficult (you may have read this in my previous blog). Noa and Malea found out on the children’s path – very different from the two of us. I came here to work, and Elena quit her job in Switzerland to support me. Finally, she used her time in Serbia to build her own company. She has worked a lot on it and will start soon. I’m very proud of them and it’s going to be cool!
And I? Now… My time in Belgrade was very intense. But I liked her very much! I fully identified with the task and did my best to be as good as possible. It was very difficult to take responsibility without a handover and have two jobs at the same time. Once I got used to the new situation, I focused on designing our office and developing it in the right direction. For the last three years, it has been my baby, so to speak. I tried to get fully involved and did everything from finding new offices to restarting servers to assembling the sofa on the ninth floor. But above all, I fought for Belgrade concerns, tried to improve cooperation between the locations and expand the office without losing our positive spirit and culture.
I’ve found that moving between two cultures is the hardest thing to do. Believe me, there are cultural differences between Switzerland and Serbia. Sometimes it was hard to mediate between these two. It’s just not a question of right and wrong – the cultures are just different. Having experienced the situation between two cultures, I really believe that it would help us (not only at Namics) if we assumed even more good intentions. We all want the same thing – more or less – and we have so many things in common, only the details are different. A little more tolerance (on all sides) would greatly improve the common understanding between the different cultures.
A second lesson I learned the hard way was not to take everything personally, even though our office in Belgrade was something like my baby. It was very hard to see colleagues leave. It still is, but in the beginning I took every single resignation personally. I almost had the feeling that someone was breaking up with me. It wasn’t just about the people who left. It was about everything that had to do with Belgrade. Positive and negative things. After a while, I had to learn to be a little more distant. Otherwise it would have been too emotional a roller coaster ride. And I had to accept that it’s just not possible to control everything and just accept some things, whether I like them or not.
I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t have been a job at Namics that would have fulfilled me more. Here in Belgrade, I had the full scope of running a location or even a company. The responsibility was very wide-ranging, and I liked that. Still, the unit was small enough to be very close to our Belgrade staff. And that’s the part of my job that I really loved. I tried to be there for each and every one of my colleagues in Belgrade. Whenever someone approached me, I was eager to support him or her. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but I really enjoyed being there for her. With 60 employees in the office, that’s quite a task. It takes a lot of time, but it’s worth it. I am sure that our Belgrade office deserves only the best. We have so many great employees, they are smart, open-minded, inquisitive, welcoming, supportive and positive. You can’t imagine how much I will miss her. 🙁
It was and still is difficult to maintain the balance between private and business life. The workload is enormous and never ends. As soon as one task is completed, two new ones appear. And the time in Belgrade now ends as it began: with two jobs. History repeats itself: One of our HR employees from Belgrade is on maternity leave and will soon be on maternity leave. But it’s not just about the workload. Some decisions – especially when employees are affected – are difficult to cope with and burden you even after work and at night. Some decisions were right, some wrong. It is always easier to judge when you know the result of your decision. In any case, I made every single decision to the best of my knowledge and belief at the appropriate time. Apart from these job-related qualities, Namics is the only reason why my family and I are here in Belgrade. We have become a Namics-centered family. Namics was everywhere, and this fact made everything even more intense. Don’t get me wrong, it was very cool, but sometimes I even forget that there is a life besides Namics. Most of our private relationships in Belgrade are based on Namics, which is great! But Namics was very dominant. Nevertheless, I really believe that we have found friendships here, and I hope that they will stay forever.
Welcome, Didi!
A few weeks ago, someone asked me about the funniest story I’ve experienced in Serbia. It was hard to answer this question, but one thing became clear to me: every crazy story I could think of was from my first year in Serbia. I guess we have become Serbian to a certain extent. 🙂
Some new funny stories concern our newest “family member”. His name is Didi, he is 18 years old and comes from Germany. Didi is the car we bought after our first year in Belgrade. Didi showed us different places in Serbia. We started exploring more than just Belgrade and saw the north, south, east and west of Serbia. With Didi, we learned that there are different types of diesel. How did that happen? Well, we filled up our car in a village about 80 km outside Belgrade. That was the first time we filled up the car and we just went to the first gas station. When the gas station attendant asked us: “Which diesel?ˮ, I didn’t understand. Now it makes sense. I opted for the cheaper diesel (why should we buy expensive fuel for an 18-year-old car with all the fancy extras? My car could no longer go faster than 80 km/h. I could no longer use the 4th and 5th gears. It just didn’t have enough power anymore. It was ok in the city, but it was really uncomfortable on the highway. After this lesson in refueling, I learned that not all fuels in Serbia are of the same quality. You should only refuel in Belgrade or at larger gas stations. Smaller gas stations can have quality problems, but our Didi survived this first mistake. Ok, the black exhaust cloud was huge for a month. It was a bit embarrassing, but ok, fair enough.
We also learned that Google Maps shouldn’t be trusted too much. In Belgrade and on larger roads, everything works, but our last trip to the east of Serbia ended on a gravel road. At first the road was reasonably fine, but it got worse and worse. It was completely washed out by the rain and almost impassable without an off-roader. Luckily it went downhill and at some point we realized that it wouldn’t go uphill anymore. If we had turned around, we would have gotten stuck. We somehow made it to the next real road. But psssst, we’re going to sell the car to my successor and he shouldn’t know all the details;)
As I think about these stories, I can think of another one – even if it’s not funny. But I’ve never experienced anything like this and it wouldn’t be possible in Switzerland either. We had many protests here in Belgrade (#1od5miliona) this year, where many Serbs demonstrated against the Serbian president and for more democracy. I think it’s a very positive sign that such protests were possible. But at some point, the president organized a counter-protest to show how many supporters he has. Hundreds of buses brought tens of thousands of people from all over Serbia to Belgrade to demonstrate for the president. Most of them were paid to participate in this counter-protest. This huge event took place right in front of our office and we even had police officers on our roof. They cordoned off the entire city center to make this protest possible. Everything was completely blocked. We were in Ada Ciganlija that day and wanted to go home by car. What a great idea. Even several hours after the counter-protest, the entire city center (where our house in Belgrade is located) was still completely cordoned off. There was a huge traffic jam and not a single road that was open. We had no other choice and had to leave the car a little outside the city center to get home on foot. You can’t imagine how many buses we saw and how crowded the city center was. Simply crazy.
Where is my home, sweet home?
Let me return to the doubts I explained at the beginning. Where is our home and what does Belgrade mean to us?
Even before we moved to Belgrade, we happened to see this video (sorry, non-German). Just like Avicii’s song, the video says: “One day we’ll be old and think of all the stories that we could have told.”
We thought a lot about these words before we moved to Belgrade. I would trivialize things if I said that we moved to Belgrade because of the song. But one of the reasons why we – and especially Elena – answered yes to the question about Belgrade was that we didn’t want to think about the stories we could have told. We wanted to experience new things, not just think about them. We were curious to explore a life outside of Switzerland. We didn’t want to tell you that we almost went to Belgrade and that we almost experienced living abroad.
In the last few weeks we slowly became aware that our time here is coming to an end. And one thing has also become clearer: saying goodbye to Belgrade will be very emotional for us. For example, Malea began to ask if we really need to go back to Switzerland. Belgrade has truly become our home. Belgrade means so much to us. And we are so happy about it. It shows that we all felt comfortable here, that we had a great time in this exciting city. And that’s the trick to the initial question. Are we moving home again? Yes, in a way. St. Gallen and Eastern Switzerland will always be our home. But at the same time, it doesn’t. We are not only moving back home – we are also leaving our homeland. We had our ups and downs, we had crises and great experiences, but on the whole we enjoyed it. Do we want to go back to St. Gallen? Yes, but we don’t want to leave Belgrade either. It was simply an honor to be Beograđanin (Serbian word for a person who lives in Belgrade).
After our Serbian experience, we will continue with our Australian experience. Before we return to Switzerland, we will be in Australia for three months. We will travel around the country and enjoy our sabbatical. I am glad that we will spend this time with the family. It will help us close this exciting chapter in Belgrade and prepare for the next one. One thing really changed while we were in Belgrade: we can imagine living abroad. That’s not just my résumé. All four of us are on the same side: we will seize this opportunity again when we get it. It’s just great and incredibly exhausting at the same time, it broadens your horizons, it gives you new perspectives, it lets you have new experiences and it enriches your life.
And it is – of course – time to say thank you. First of all, with my beautiful wife Elena and my wonderful children. Thank you for throwing yourself into the adventure, for being curious and for loving me. Secondly, to Namics, our management and Mika for your trust. I really enjoyed our cooperation. We had many interesting, good and intensive conversations and I always found a sympathetic ear when it was necessary. Thirdly, to Sämi. Thank you for our very cool and close cooperation. I’ve called you more often than Elena 🙂 in the last 3 years I have never felt alone with my Belgrade challenges. You were a great support! Fourthly, to my local management team with Mina, Marija and Milijana. Thank you for keeping our Belgrade office running! You do an amazing and often underestimated job. Fifthly, to the local leadership team with all local coaches (Milena, Emilija, Ana, Tamara, Ivana, Dusan, Sava, Nikola, Marko, Ivan). Thank you for helping to shape our office in Belgrade, thank you for asking questions and thank you for trusting me. Sixthly, to all Belgrade employees (the list would be too long). Thank you for being a part of Namics. You make our location in Belgrade what it is: Great! And last but not least to Phillip. Thank you for taking this on. I know my baby is in safe hands! And if not… I know where you live and I kept one of the apartment keys! 😉
Before I end this blog post, I just want to add one thing: It was a privilege to be part of the Namics office in Belgrade. Hvala lepo! I love you guys! You are great and just keep up the good work!