The last four days just went by so fast, that I can hardly believe that today is the last night in Banja Luka. It was an interesting experience to get out of the company building and see a completely different part of Europe. I never have been to the eastern Europe before, so I was surprised how well developed and western-orientated Bosnia and Herzegovina, but especially Croatia are.

Florian and I took the plane from Stuttgart and arrived about an hour later in Zagreb from where we continued our journey with a rental car to Banja Luka. Tomorrow we will take the same way back, but take a new external co-worker with us.

I do not want to write a long travelogue about my time here, therefor I will concentrate on the important part: with each journey you take you will gather experiences and learn...

What I learned about IT

  1. It is possible to work prolific with just a laptop and a desk.
  2. Skype will replace calling cards.
  3. I will never get excited about theoretical features and techniques until I know for sure that they actually work.
  4. Outsourcing only applies to code monkeys. Hopefully! :-/
  5. Camtasia Studio is a great tool.
  6. I just can not talk about programming the whole day long. Especially not for four days...

What I learned about Bosnia and Herzegovina

  1. Bosnian radio stations, which are cool, play the same songs as in Germany. And in every other western country I guess...
  2. The people are really hearty and prove to be great hosts.
  3. The food is very tasty here: so much meat! :-)
  4. Traffic lights blink green before they switch.
  5. A tip of 10% is usual.
  6. All 30 Cyrillic letters can be mapped 1:1 to latin ones.
  7. German cars are so favored here that you are not allowed to take a rental car of German brands into the country.

What I learned for life

  1. Germans still have a good reputation. :)
  2. There are geeks in every country.
  3. My (spoken) English is much better than I tought.
  4. Germany is not the only country in which cars are a status symbol.
  5. There are actually Irish Pubs that do not offer Guinness or Cider!
  6. Germans are driving and parking much better than they appear to. This is even true for people from Cologne!