Fresh from the win in Madrid, Katherine, David, and Petra flew to the "city of the future of southern Europe": Belgrade. Of course we could not fly directly to the "city of the future", we needed to stop in London for 16 hours first. But that was no hindrance to us for we were able to catch-up with Arjun, a famed member of last year's Vic Vis team. Arjun provided us with an amazing dinner of red curry, salad and cous cous. Truly delightful. The stop in London also provided us with an opportunity to collect copious amounts of english newspapers so that we could catch up on world events.
Alas our time in an english speaking country was brief and we flew out to Belgrade (very) early on Friday morning. Although none of us spoke serbian, luckily we look distinctly "kiwi" so our driver taking us to the central city was able to identify us in the arrivals crowd. The apartment we were staying in was very nice, and was a welcome chance to do some much needed laundry.
But on to the real reason we were in Belgrade: the pre-moot. The Serbians had provided quite a pre-moot, we got t-shirts, pens, and notepads for a start. We were also able to attend a conference on arbitration that included some of the biggest names in international commercial arbitration and insolvency, not to mention Mr Vis Moot himself, Professor Bergsten. Needless to say, it was a very exciting chance to spot some of these legal celebrities.
Our first moot was against Singapore early on Saturday morning. That we made it to this hearing was impressive as Katherine managed to take a tumble on the stairs on the way to the moot, but like a real team player she mooted her little heart out. Singapore are a very good team with a very good reputation so it was a great first moot. We had two further moots that day, against Rijeka and then NAU Mexico (who had travelled 42 hours to get to Belgrade!) Petra and David represented the team at the social events that night while Katherine recuperated at home, which is unfortunate because the social events in Belgrade were very well catered for!
The next morning we had our final Belgrade moot against none other than the Belgrade team! Once again the Belgrade team lived up to their reputation and it was a great moot for us. Both teams got very good feedback, with one arbitrator telling us that both Belgrade and Wellington should easily make it to the knock-out rounds, but also reminded us that the Vis moot remains a competition, so there is always an element of luck involved, and furthermore, there must also be time for fun and meeting new people! So with that on board, we took a taxi back to Belgrade airport to get to the last stop on our whirlwind tour of Europe: Leuven.
Alas our time in an english speaking country was brief and we flew out to Belgrade (very) early on Friday morning. Although none of us spoke serbian, luckily we look distinctly "kiwi" so our driver taking us to the central city was able to identify us in the arrivals crowd. The apartment we were staying in was very nice, and was a welcome chance to do some much needed laundry.
But on to the real reason we were in Belgrade: the pre-moot. The Serbians had provided quite a pre-moot, we got t-shirts, pens, and notepads for a start. We were also able to attend a conference on arbitration that included some of the biggest names in international commercial arbitration and insolvency, not to mention Mr Vis Moot himself, Professor Bergsten. Needless to say, it was a very exciting chance to spot some of these legal celebrities.
Our first moot was against Singapore early on Saturday morning. That we made it to this hearing was impressive as Katherine managed to take a tumble on the stairs on the way to the moot, but like a real team player she mooted her little heart out. Singapore are a very good team with a very good reputation so it was a great first moot. We had two further moots that day, against Rijeka and then NAU Mexico (who had travelled 42 hours to get to Belgrade!) Petra and David represented the team at the social events that night while Katherine recuperated at home, which is unfortunate because the social events in Belgrade were very well catered for!
The next morning we had our final Belgrade moot against none other than the Belgrade team! Once again the Belgrade team lived up to their reputation and it was a great moot for us. Both teams got very good feedback, with one arbitrator telling us that both Belgrade and Wellington should easily make it to the knock-out rounds, but also reminded us that the Vis moot remains a competition, so there is always an element of luck involved, and furthermore, there must also be time for fun and meeting new people! So with that on board, we took a taxi back to Belgrade airport to get to the last stop on our whirlwind tour of Europe: Leuven.
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