INEX Workcamp - EcoSlatinka

Hello my pretty readers, how you've been doing? I hope everything's fine.

Well, this post is going to be a hard one for me to write because many things happened in Slatinka during 2 weeks. Exactly, it was double time and also double people (15 volunteers), which means it was twice challenging being a leader -but Peto and I managed pretty well, or it least that's what I would say.

I just arrived to Zvolen from Banska Stiavnica's APV (it went pretty well, btw), early on 11th of August, Sunday morning. Fortunately Michele -former EVS in Slatinka, nowadays working in Bratislava-, was waiting for me to give me a ride, so I put all my stuff and INEX bag in his trunk and took advantage to buy some snacks for the volunteers before finally arriving to Slatinka.

Once there I met Peto, Janka and Dasa, who had been cleaning and arranging the place since the previous day. We discussed through some important issues about how would be our welcome day and the next working ones and then we started with the picking up of people -they looked so shy and quite that first day, aww.

When arriving to Slatinka, we showed the participants the facilities of the centre: the dry toilets, the 'high-tech' shower and their places to sleep. Later when everybody arrived we had a presentation of Organization Slatinka, our local partner, and we also introduced them some facts about INEX, together with house rules and some games like kiss killer and secret friend (great success, lol).

And after that first encounter the days followed and they are now in my head with non specific order. We had working hours (around 5 a day), and we worked in the garden and roof of the centre, cutting some grass in Zvolen city parks, clearing a touristic path from Slatinka to Zvolen and renovating the wooden bridge of the village, which needed some painting and new oiled wood. I attach some pictures, made by Sarah.

Of course, wortkcamp is not all about work. We had plenty of good times during our free time, playing card games (I specially enjoyed Uno, Russian style, everything's allowed!), creating our international dictionary or just chilling spending some time by the fire.

For me, being a leader in this project has meant a lot. During the first workcamp I perceived Dasa like an experienced support, which gave me the confidence enough to develop basic but solid leadership skills. In this time, I felt like Peto and me where more or less in the same level, which implied having to invest more energy and time for managing the group. In any case, watching the group eventually evolve and reinforce their bonds it's always nice, and I'm very proud to have taken part in this process.

For summing up, I'm a proud mamma who is very glad she met all this lovely kids in Slatinka -see how pretty we are. I think the project was amazing because of them, because they are amazing. I miss them quite a lot right now, but I have the feeling that we will meet sometime again, who knows where and when -to nevadi.

Last but not least, I also want to mention Slatinka like a magical place in the middle of nowhere. Just sitting in the morning by the river and breathing in its natural air made me feel peaceful and complete. I wish people will really be more aware about the importance of taking care of places like this -and I'm glad that's the job Slatinka's organization is doing.

That's all folks, take care and warm hugs,

Ali

PS: All pictures I used were made by Sarah. Here you can check the whole album from her visit to our workcamp.

Dishes from Eastern Europe

As you could checked in the previous post, I enjoyed my workcamp in Jasenov (for everything but specially) for the food. I learnt many new recipes (most of them with sweet taste) and I would like to write them down to make sure that I won't forget them -and to share them with you, in case you want to try.

Sweet pasta
Well, this may not seem very innovative for some of you, but for me it was. You cook the pasta like always, then when is in your dish you add butter and cocoa powder, it's tasty! Jarka, the Czech girl of my workcamp, told me it's a very popular dish for students since it's easy and cheap to prepare -she took it like vegetarian alternative to bolognese sauce.

Anyway, I think a good tip will be to use good cocoa powder brands, because I prepared last Monday and it wasn't so good like on workcamp. She used Granko -which is pretty famous in Czech and Slovakia-, but for Spanish people I guess ColaCao would be the best analog choice.

Rice with milk (Eastern style)
In Spain (and I remember also eating it in Portugal), we also prepare rice with milk and we take it as a dessert, with cinnamon on the top and perhaps some lemon or orange peel.

In Czech they prepare it other way and they eat it like a main dish (is that pict that look quite delicious of the previous post). You have to let the rice on water first so it absorbs it. Then you boil it with milk and you add raisins. Once is cooked you add some sugar and you mix it well. Afterwards you can add: Granko, cinnamon, butter, fruits' compot or natural fruits. I tried it with peach and Granko and I really liked it :)

Rice with apple (Russian style)
Another possibility for sweet rice is to cook it with apple. You don't need to cook the rice this time with milk, just with water. In the meantime it cooks you can take one saucepan and prepare the sauce at the same time. You need to use margarine (or maybe butter is ok), then add small pieces of apple prepared with a grater (rallador), and when it is more or less cooked you add a gentle amount of sugar.

When Jarka was going to prepare the previous dish on the workcamp, Alex from Ukraine wanted to also do it this way, but unfortunately we didn't have a proper grater. Anyway, when the workcamp was over he kept on travelling passing trough Bratislava, and he took advantage of my kitchen to prepare this tasty dish -he did it Monday evening and prepared so much I had it also as lunch yesterday and today, haha. Very tasty!

Kachamak (Serbian dish)
This is not particulary sweet dish. In fact is a little bit sour, but maybe changing a bit the ingredients you can also prepare it sweet (I need to check with Serbian girls). The basis of this dish is water and flour. You need around 40-50 minutes to properly cook the flour in a light fire, otherwise you will fill its texture and it's not good. After this first part of the process you take it out of the fire and add some cheese (cow cheese or feta cheese). Then you put it back to the fire again and cook it for 5 more minutes, until it's ready to serve. You can add some sugarless yogurt when eating it, it makes it much tastier -I had it for dinner and following day's breakfast, me like it a lot!

Even when is not particulary similar, when I tried this dish reminded me of a sour version of Spanish 'leche frita', that I need to learn from my grandma though I asked her for the recipe so many times -I keep losing it!

Paprikas (Serbian dish)
This is a kind of chicken soup tyical from Serbia. Around there (also in Hungary, it's like their national vegeteable), there are many paprikas and so they have this soup. You have to first fried some onions in oil, then add water and boil it for like an hour with the following ingredients: chicken meat (in small pieces), paprikas, tomatoes, carrots and potatoes. Don't you forget to add a lot of the spice of sweet paprika. It is also very tasty, even when on workcamp it was paprikas without paprikas :D

Potatoes (Russian style)
The Russian guys prepared potatoes twice: once for us and once for the feast of cultures. We ate them in the workcamp just boiled and with a side dish with oil and salt where you could dip the potatoe. In the same meal we had salad made out of fresh onions, cucumber and tomatoes and with different dressings: oil and salt or kind of yogurt-cream sauce.

In the event for the locals they prepared a kind of potatoe salad close to the version we have in Spanish of 'ensaladilla rusa'. I don't remember if it was the Armenian or the group from Azerbaijan but they also prepared in an exchange I was something similar, and they call it 'Capital salad'. The one of wormcap had potatoes, boiled eggs, pickles, peas and a good quantity of mayonnaise -but I think everybody knows about other things you can add to the basis of patatoes and mayo, I personally like it with sashimi (palitos de cangrejo).

I think I ran out of recipes. Of course Achille, our Italian guy, prepared pasta for us and it was very good, but that's not so Eastern -is it? I need to check with Alejandro this fish soup he prepared because I wasn't present in the cooking and I don't know how it's done, so maybe I'll add it later.

I hope you are brave enough to cook one of these, I'm pretty sure you'll be glad you tried -and if not please tell me why, haha :D. See you in the next post, probably after Slatinka.

Big hugs,
Alicia

PS: shame on me, I still don't know how to make gulash, really need to ask some Slovaks!

INEX Workcamp - Jasenov Castle

Finally back in Bratislava with Internet connection, flushing toilet, electrical kitchen and proper shower. Tell you a secret? I didn't miss them so much :P

From Saturday 27th of July till last Sunday (4th of August), I was living in the woods together with international volunteers that came to Slovakia to help renovating the medieval ruinned castle of Jasenov, a village close to Humenne.

The workcamp was not officially starting until Sunday 28th, but Dasa and I -because of our role of leaders- went the day before to check that everything was ok. It was in fact good that we did so -we needed a lot of time for organising many material and stuff like house rules or agenda. For sure the most important thing we realised was that the accomodation indoors was not so good as expected, and I'll explain why.

See? This was a hard living conditions workcamp, which implied living in the forest without electricity or normal bathroom -instead we had dry toilet and an improvised private space made out of canvas for showering with buckets of water. The accomodation consisted in 4 places in a small cottage (in two bunk beds) and a big tent for 6 people or more.

First night we went to sleep in the cottage (or chata in Slovak, pronunced 'hata'), thinking that it was probably the only night we would have a proper rest in the indoors space. Unfortunately for us, we were wrong. We woke up several times because of noises of animals that at the beginning we thought were country mices but once we turned on our flashlights we discover it was a cute kind of squirrel, call doormouse (liron in Spanish). Here's a sample picture from google images:

Anyway, when our volunteers arrived the following day we needed to inform them about this, and of course most of them chose to sleep in the tent ourside and so Dasa, me and Alejandro -Ukranian brave guy-, spent the night in the cottage. Fortunately it got better, not so noisy like the first night, which meant that following day we changed for the Serbian girls, and Alejandro stayed there.

Also first night after everybody arrived we had a little speech from our local partner, about the organization and the history of the castle. It's always good for keeping the volunteers motivated, so they know the background and the contribution they're going to make with their work.

Afterwards we made some name games and getting to know each other games (I specially enjoyed the 'human bingo'). We introduced the agenda of days, explained the kitchen team task for meals, house rules and decided who was going to sleep where that first night -we asked the next day for more pallets to sleep in the tent.

During following days we were working in the castle, with different kind of tasks.Most of us were clearing the area of the hill surrounding the castle from bushes, and piling up spread stones that would later help in the reconstruction of some walls -they want to use the same stones that were originally there. Sadly there were no many places where the walls are being rebuilt right now, so only one of us got to try actual reconstruction work. Finally, other couple of volunteers was busy with archeological work, digging close to the walls and looking for some historical remains.

But of course not everything is work in an international workcamp. We had plenty of great moments during our free time, sharing pictures, playing card games while having massages, playing Duh (mental speed game in Slovak, but Dasa translated the rules for us) or simply chilling by the fireplace listening to national presentations. Here some samples:

We had two special free time activities. First it came our free day, when we went together with Brekov volunteers (a nearby castle, also workcamp project within Inex) to Humenne's castle and open-air museum. Later in the afternoon we made some canoing in Laborec river, and we finished quite late, which meant we stopped by and got some take-away pizza for dinner (and for snack for following day :P). Unfortunately I don't have pictures from this day yet because I didn't take my camera, but luckily I took it for our second special day: Feast of Cultures. [edit: added some pics]

Feast of Cultures is an event where local people get to know the international volunteers by their different national presentations and dishes. We were quite surprised by the massive attendance of this event from the people of the village -you never know how many of them are going to appear. People seemed to like the food, some old women sang for us as saying thank you and at the end nothing was left in the dishes.

There were reporters who interviewed some of the participants and also the mayor said some words for the opening of the celebration -and of course Alexander, our local partner, president of the organisation for the conservation of the castle. And, of course! I almost forget! I had a revelation moment when trying plazma biscuits that girls took from Serbia, there were my favourite during childhood! I don't remember why they stopped making them in Spain, but I was quite sad for a while, and having the opportunity to tried them again really made me happy. They brought also Ajvar, paprika's paste for crackers, very nice!

Nevertheless, it wasn't the only moment we got the change to experience worldwide tastes. Everyday we had different national cooking teams, which meant great opportunity to try different kind of tasty food. Last working Friday also the locals wanted to have a nice gesture with us and prepared gulash in return. The second dish was prepared by the Czech girl. It's rice cooked with milk and raisins, and then cacao powder, butter and peach compote, delicious! It's true, I've enjoyed this workcampa lot when it comes to cooking.

For all of these great experiences it was difficult to say goodbye the last day. Within only a week we had become quite close and I noticed how people were much more talkative and smiling than in the very first days. It was a nice group and some of them live close, so maybe -hopefully- I'll see them again soon :)

And for being first time as leader I think things went pretty well. I have many factors in favor, like the group being small with nice participants and the lenght that was kind of short (1 week instead of 2 weeks, that is more common). But besides all, I had the great luck to count with the endless support and expertise of Dasa by my side. I learnt a lot about her and she kept me motivated to behave like a proper leader, kindly most of the time and more strict when it was necessary -almost never I would say, but still I had to prove myself I could do it.

Anyway, I only have few days left in the week here in Bratislava, new projects are awaiting. From Friday till Sunday I'll be in Banska Stiavnica together with Matiss to have the advanced planned visit (APV) for the exchange project that will take part in Septembert, when we'll give some more information to national leaders to get ready for this meeting.

Afterwards, the very Sunday, I will go from Banska Stiavnica to Zvolen, direction Slatinka, to get my second workcamp started. Peto will be waiting for me and we'll receive 15 international volunteers to work in this enviromental organization set in kind of 'eco-village'. It is supposed to be also a hard living conditions workcamp, but I strongly doubt that it would be harder than in Jasenov -it would be like a hotel for me, haha.

Yeah, pretty busy indeed these days, and this crazy heat doesn't put me in the mood to do anything afterwards in my free time. Ale nevadi, there's always a space for a spontaneous plan in the evening, when the sun is calmer -just have to look for it.

Everything's going well for me as you can see, pretty readers. I hope life is also treating you right :)

Loads of hugs,

Ali