16.03.2016 //
It may be challenging for Øystein Rustenberg Hveding, trainee at the Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade, to grasp Serbian domestic politics and some Serbians’ strange habits, but he finds it all interesting and important in a certain sense.
Øystein got an opportunity to get to know how the Embassy operates on the inside. His six-month long internship at the Embassy includes a variety of tasks from administrative routines and different reporting to case handling and organisation of official visits. This means that every day is different, which makes the internship all the more interesting and challenging.
“A lot of what I have been doing here is writing about simple things and things I know very well but I have to write it to someone who doesn’t know it and I have to explain everything. Finding the essence of things and making it interesting and readable, that’s challenging,” he says.
He also comes at an interesting time when Serbia is due to hold general and local elections in April. Therefore, Øystein is now busy reporting on the elections, trying to figure out which parties are going to make lists together and why they are making lists together. “The politics here is very different from Norwegian politics and other Western European politics. It can be very confusing, but also a lot of fun because there is so much things happening every day and there are very colourful politicians as well,” says Øystein.
He wanted to come to Serbia as one of the few places left in Europe that are not part of EU and NATO. Working with European integration is also something Øystein finds very interesting.
Besides big politics, it is no less important for his future career that he is getting used to the whole office situation. “The interns have been following politics for years, so Serbian politics is easy to get into compared to the whole regime of reading emails, making outlook events, and all these small things they did not do before.” For all the Embassy work, the trainees are offered a compensation to cover the basic food and living costs.
Like previous trainees, Øystein enjoys the Belgrade lifestyle — friendly and relaxing atmosphere where one can drink beer in a park and smoke everywhere. “The nightlife is also much better and less pretentious than in Oslo”. When it comes to food, he likes some Serbian traditional dishes but it seems that the only thing he is missing from Oslo is proper Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese and other international cuisine.
One of the strangest things Øystein encountered so far is that people say goodbye when leaving the elevator and men wearing sweatpants outside.
For more information about the traineeship, click here.
