When he was still at high school, Danijel Živković fell in love with a Czech student whom he met due to cooperation between a Brnovian and a Serbian school and he started to learn Czech. His excellent results helped him to obtain a scholarship from the South Moravian Region so that he could come and study a year-long Czech course organized by the Department of Czech for Foreigners at MU. Now he is 24 years old and in his fourth year of dentistry studies at Faculty of Medicine in Brno and he helps new Serbian students who come to study at the Masaryk University.
The Government of the Czech Republic supports students from developing countries by scholarships. Thanks to this scholarship, every year twelve of the best and most talented Serbian students have the chance to come to the Czech Republic. "Approximately one hundred of Serbs apply every year. The selection procedure is not easy – besides providing a letter of motivation and a school report, the applicants also have to pass a psychological test and an interview," describes Živković.
The beginnings are the toughest – a foreign country, a foreign system, a foreign language. "We mostly study in Czech. And even though we are also Slavs, the language was the reason why I almost gave up several times," admits Živković. Together with his friend Miodrag Milovanović, a PhD student at the Faculty of Science, he tries to make the arrival as easy as possible for the new-comers.
Overall, several dozens of them study at the Masaryk University. "A few study at the Mendel University or the Technical University. We are all in touch. We often organize various events – film and music nights or sport events. In April, we collected humanitarian aid for victims of floods in Serbia and elsewhere on the Balcans worth more than 20 thousand crowns," says the student.
Their Facebook group Srbi v Brně had originally about 50 members, but gradually people from other countries of the former Yugoslavia joined as well. Therefore, they changed the name of the group to Ex Yu u Brnu. “Now there are more than three hundred of us. We don't dwell on the past, we don't have prejudice against each other. Brno brought us together," claims Živković.
After graduation, many Serbian students remain in Brno, but Živković would like to return home. "I want to work here for a few years to thank for the scholarship. But then I will go back to Serbia and pass my experience on. I'm also considering a political career," he adds.
A Serbian-Czech party
The Serbian community plans to organize the first Serbian-Czech party in May. “We invited a Serbian folklore group. We also want to introduce our shared history, culture as well as examples of our cooperation," says the student. He is preparing a presentation about the life and mostly unexplored works of the Czech monk Sava Chilandarec who lived and worked till 1911 in a Serbian monastery on the Greek Athos peninsula. “Not many people know about him which is a pity," he says.