Help us DIY this old house into a sustainable space to live, work and create art at, in the center of Belgrade, Serbia

Infos

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  Description

  Hi, I’m Žarko, born in Belgrade in ‘96 and been living here since. Up until recently it’s been a priority for me to travel as much as possible, so I used to organize my life accordingly. A year ago I returned from a 4 months long trip around South America, with a conclusion that I do love to travel but I also have a need to really be part of a certain place, a community, to really participate and try to shape it as well. For me, it turns out, for now, that place has always been and continues to be the city I have lived in all my life, Belgrade :) With all it’s dysfunctionalities and a very wrong recent model of development, I still believe it’s possible to have a beautiful microcosmos within it, maybe grow it, and make the whole place better by doing so. The effort you’d be contributing to is dealing with the question of space in this evermore expensive city. Though current solution is temporary, it’s worth the effort.
  
  For the past four years I’ve been renting this hundred years old house in the center, a very special place where I live with my girlfriend Maša, and I sublet the rest of the rooms to my artist friends Aleksa and Lola, who use it as working space and an art studio. My currently very affordable and interesting living conditions here in this house I owe to the hole I discovered in the gentrification process. Due to various circumstances I can fix and use the place the way I want, for a period of time. Much more on that on some other occasion :)
  
  We have recently started renting and fixing a whole other part of the house that wasn’t originally on offer, and there’s a lot of work needed to make the most of it on a very limited budget. We’d be recovering materials, fixing doors and windows, making openings in masonry walls, building some lightweight walls, hydro insulating a bathroom, getting the floor as nice as possible for no or little money, making some kitchen cabinets and other furniture, doing some simple electrical installations, water and drain pipes, and we’ll also be organizing my attic workshop, and doing finishing touches to the very room you’d be residing in. The small room is a piece of work I’m really proud of. It has been used by couchsurfers and random guests before, but now for volunteers I did some additional work to make it suitable for a longer stay. Some features are left to be designed and done by users themselves :)

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  Types d'aide et opportunités d'apprendre

  Bricolage et construction

  Aide à la maison

  Entretien général
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  Objectifs de développement durable de l’ONU que cet hôte essaie d'atteindre

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  Qu'est-ce que c'est ?
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  Echange culturel et opportunités d'apprendre

  Si eres un hispanohablante sin mucho conocimiento de ingles y lo quieres aprender te puedo ayudar, ya que hablo ambos idiomas.
  You'd meet something of a subculture here in the house and by meeting my friends, not a specific subculture with a name, but I definitely wouldn't say we are the average specimen of Serbian culture. Anyway, local culture and how it shapes everyone including myself, is something I think about a lot, and I believe I'm able to introduce you to it, with some historical background and a freestyle analysis :D
  On the other hand there's a lot to learn by working if you don't have much experience with tasks I was mentioning.
  Also, work is flexible and we can make the schedule so you can have more free days in a row to take a trip to another city or even better some natural wonders around Serbia. I can give you the info on some of the less known sites I've been to.

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  Aide

  I'm looking for someone to help with all the DIYing i keep getting myself into :)) as none of the people I've mentioned is free to participate regularly. If there is something to be learnt from you on the matter even better, but it's no requirement, I just need you to be present and committed for few hours a day, and to be physically fit enough to lift and carry some furniture with me, climb the ladder, and do those "hold this while I do that" sort of stuff.

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  Langues

  Langues parlées
  Anglais: Courant
  Serbian: Courant
  Espagnol: Intermédiaire

  Cet hôte propose un échange linguistique
  Siempre me gustaria practicar español, ya que no hay nadie en mi alrededor con quien puedo hablar. Principalmente puedo ser lento, pero diria que una vez que se abre, me sirve para mas que basico mi vocabulario. Somente para pessoas que tem paciencia, eu gosto de aprender portuges brasileiro, mas nao falo bem :)))
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  Hébergement

  The super small but very functional room you'd be living in is kind of a showcase of my progress in carpentry for the last two years. Initially I wanted to build a lofted storage over what was just an extremely tall hallway, then saw a spot for a lofted bed next to it, and at one point made a solution to connect it into an actual room fully insulated from the rest of the space. I also replaced an old window and installed an electric outlet in the room, the basics are there :) details to be worked on. The mattress is 110cm wide so we can technically accommodate a couple as well.
  Since I'm kind of broke lately, and I don't have time to organize affordable home cooked meals, you're on your own for the food, therefore I ask for 15 hours of work and not more. There is a small kitchen you can freely use to cook and I'll give you the input on street food near by.

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  Autres infos...

  I expect the workawayers to be able to be independent with their free time.
  The room is very small but has a disproportionately big window and it's a comfortable place to work on your laptop or lay around on a lazy day if you feel like it. Most of the days the terrace could be used the same way, or to chill with whoever you encounter there :)
  In case you wanna explore, well, you're in the center and everything is reachable. You'd meet a lot of people to get recommendations from during your stay. To begin with, there's a very cool hidden bar where Maša and I used to work right around the corner, with cheap drinks, a pool table and some open minded locals to be found.
  If you like extreme sports, try Belgrade on my old bicycle :))

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  Informations complémentaires

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    Accès Internet

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    Accès Internet limité

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    Nous avons des animaux

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    Nous sommes fumeurs

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    Familles bienvenues

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  Combien de volontaires pouvez-vous accueillir ?

  Deux

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  Nombre d'heures attendues

  About 3 hours a day, 5 days a week