Busy November II

Monday 11th
That day the EVS volunteers (Sarah, Matiss and I) stayed a bit longer in the office in order to attend a meeting of INEX's promo-team. With this group we try to get a better perspective on how to spread the word of volunteering and youth mobility among young Slovaks. We went through a list of tasks, divided some of them and briefly brainstormed about some others. We agreed to continue this communication by a Google+ group created for us. It was a funny meeting and also interesting for me -that besides my advertising background I'm rather interested in PR and general communication.

Tuesday 12th
Our dear Olga, EVS coordinator and kind of 'tutor' in the office, organized a tea-meeting about her experience in Japan. She was there for something like a month and participated in two different volunteering workcamps as a campleader: one for collecting green tea and another one to collect rice. She really liked the country -she was also telling it once she got back in September-, and I was happy to find out more specific details about her experience and about Japanese culture. Oli also prepared few tasty dishes to try out, like sushi -well, without fish but still-, Japanese green tea and some sweets with beans basis. The meeting happened to be quite a success, not only for the food tasting and the presentation, but also because of the great attendance from the public -we were all squeezed in the office, haha.

Friday 16th and Saturday 17th

This weekend I stayed in Bratislava for the farewell party we had prepared for a very nice couple of Armenian girls. They arrived to Slovakia last year and they were two of the first people I met here, very funny both of them. On Friday we went to a reggae concert in Cafe Scherz -passing before by Valhalla, kind of a shabby place, but still way cheaper than the one we were going to visit. We had a great time in both pubs, after all the important thing is the company -and it had been a while since I didn't go out with such a large group. It was a pretty enjoyable night. Here a pict of my friends :)

On Saturday afternoon and evening, the plan was to take the girls out of the house so their flatmates will arrange a party there. With the excuse of another friend that needed to leave that day, they accompanied him to the station where he 'surprisely' discovered that he had left his wallet in their place. When they reached the place back, friends from different contexts -work, other volunteers, parties- were waiting for them in a nice decorated and cosy living room. We ate, drank and laughed together like always, for me it didn't feel like it was going to be the last time I was going to see them. We said goodbye, though it felt like a 'see you later' :)

Wednesday 20th 
Wednesday afternoon we went to Presporkovo Rodinne centrum to prepare together with mother and children some Christmas gifts for the clients of Integra, house for people with disabilities. I really didn't know what to expect since it's been quite long since I don't make any handcraft gifts. In any case, we had a great time and I let my creativity take the lead for creating a puppet and a tote bag. It felt good to create something nice that you know will make somebody happy in a close future.

Thursday 21st

Due to the silly rainy weather that we were having last Thursday, this photography workshop was unfortunately not so popular like the Japanese one. Don't get me wrong, there were many people interested in coming but they finally backed up because of this. For those who were there, we learnt 12 tips that Sarah collected for us, to apply in our photographic sessions. It was nice and inspiring, it motivated me to keep practicing with my camera.

Saturday 23rd

My friend Toni, from Liechtenstein, was one of the first people I met when I arrived here. At that time, he was living in Vienna but now he finished his studies and he's making an internship back in his country. But this weekend, he wrote me that he would be back for some days in Vienna and we arranged to see each other.

Timour -who joined me in the trip- and I wanted to arrive there with some daylight to make some tourism and take some pictures, but unfortunately we missed the train -twice- and we had just the time to take few pics in Museumsquartier. There we met Toni and his friend David, who guided us to the center and then to one of the famous Viennese coffee shops -Alt Wien. We rest for some time there before walking a bit more until Karlsplatz for the Christmas market, where we enjoyed a fire show, met with a Greek friend of Toni's and enjoy a cup of Glühwein -hot wine with spices, tasty and efficiently warming you up in these days.

After the Christmas market we took something to eat and enjoyed a couple of beers in Operngasse street. It's quite interesting, because there are only 60 kms apart, you can really tell the difference between Vienna and Bratislava, Western and Eastern culture. It felt good in there, it made me wonder about looking for future possibilities in the city -I still have to make up my mind, can not decide yet what to do next.

~

These days in the office I'm finishing a lot of important documents, like the summary brochure about the Youth Exchange Matiss and I coordinated, the final report about EVS and my Youthpass -the list of competences I developed in my time here.

It's eventually finishing and I really can see the end approaching gradually. I would lie if I say I don't feel sad for leaving but it won't be either true that I want to come back and see my family and friends after such a long time. In any case, I'm currently facing the process of finding out what to do after my EVS, which happens to be a difficult thing not because of limitations but because of the great amount of possibilities.

Everyday lately the question of 'what am I going to do next year?'shows up in my mind and different paths together with it. I really need a time to sit down with pen and paper, write down the different ways I can take and start making favor and against lists. I'll find our what is really the most interesting option for me and then totally go for it :)

That's all for today, my pretty ones,
Big hugs,

Ali

Busy November

Monday 4th

On Monday I came back to the office after the week off in Poland. Surprisingly, I didn't feel so 'post-vacation depressed' like other times before, perhaps because it felt quite short and yet intense, and also because the cold weather doesn't get me in the most eager position to make long trips.

Anyway, I arrived to INEX's office full of energy and I tried to catch up with all the following events -that are not few. The most urgent one was a national presentation I arranged to do in a foster home for kids but I didn't have much information about it. That's why we contact Svetlana, from this kids organization, and we agreed to have a coffee after my working hours so she could explain me better.

We went to this place, YMCA, only 5 minutes from the office. It's a nice old building with different spaces in it. We chose a not-so-smokey bar and had tea and talked. She explained me the main purpose of the so called 'Harmonia' project, was to show the kids that there are people who can not talk Slovak and that use English instead, to motivate them to learn languages in the future, by presenting my country. She was very nice and we decide to be in contact for the details of the presentation by email.

Tuesday 5th

I don't know if you remember but I told you I was last month in a workshop about how to find an international work or internship here in Bratislava. During this event, they also promoted an illustration agency which has the office in that place, Connect Coworking, and which was looking for some interns. Since many people told me that the process to find a job takes around 2 months, and it was already the end of October, I decided to write myself in the list of interested applicants.

OWL Illustration agency contacted me before leaving to Poland, but I explained them about this and agreed to had an interview once I was back. By email we arranged that it should be on Wednesday afternoon, but then Mirka, my colleague, proposed me to go to this place -Connect Coworking- later in the day because they were projecting a marketing movie for free. I told Petra, from the agency, this and we moved the interview to that day -right before the film projection.

It looks like a nice project for me, but it also happens to be that this agency is mainly 2 people helped currently by 2 other interns, which means they can not afford any remuneration for them -it's quite a recent business, moreover. Also, they wanted somebody to joined them asap, and I still have my contract with INEX and my working hours, so it wouldn't be possible. I was interested in them and they were interested in me, but so far it was not working for this time. They said I should contact them again in January, if I still want the intern position and it's still available -will see.

Anyway, right after we finished it was about the time for the film to start. Mirka had already arrived -and waved at me smiley while I was doing the interview-, and had reserved too places in the first line sofa -didn't need to because there were 5 more people attending the projection, but well. The documentary is called 'The Naked Brand', and it talks about the need of big corporations to be transparent in the currently over-informed world -with the internets! It was very interesting, I'd recommend it to anybody interested in new horizons of advertising and PR. I'll put here the trailer, and in case you felt intrigued, here's the full movie.

Wednesday 6th

On Wednesday I was meeting with my friend Dasa. Since I stayed a bit longer in the office and the time I had was short to come back home before the meeting time, I decided to have a walk through the center in the meantime. Out of nowhere I came across with two EVS friends, Aza -who's also Spanish and living in Bratislava-, and Mariano -Argentinian living in Piestany. There was also Antonio, Spanish living and working in Bratislava who Aza had met months before. They told me to joined them for a beer in Language Cafe, taking place in KC Dunaj, and so I did.

Since I could feel I wouldn't be able to finish my beer within the 15 minutes I had before my meeting with Dasa, I texted her to pass by this place and pick me up or join me and my friends. She came and enjoyed the atmosphere, but I was also already made to the idea of meeting her privately, so we went to Ginger Cafe -the place we had arranged before, only 5 minutes away from there, and really nice house-like coffee place- for a rather intimate moment before returning to Language Cafe.

I think it is the first time I have a picture of some of this meetings, and also is the only picture I have with Dasa that is not in an INEX event, haha -well, I lie, I also have one of us from the day we met in Bratislavsky Hrad, but that's all. We had a great time -we were in the Spanish table so it was good to relax and speak Spanish with fluent people. We met Greg, from France, who had been only studying Spanish for 18 months and had a mighty good level. He suggested us a website for memorizing vocabulary, Memrise, that I checked for Slovak -and they also have courses! It's quite an useful page, feel free to take a look. Not only working for languages but for anything you want to memorize.

As often in these meetings, I was planning to come back home not so late, but it didn't happen like that. When I was about to leave Aida arrived with Simon -the new EVS in Aza's and Aida's organization for autistic people, SPOSA-, and so I thought about staying a while to meet him. The 'while' turned out into hours when the 7E concert that was scheduled to start at 8:30 pm, started at 10:30 pm for free. But I regret nothing, it was great to dance to the Coffeeshock Company reggae and funky rhythms. I left the place to take the bus at 1:30 am, and Aza, Aida and Simon still stayed for partying in other pubs -crazy funny people!

Thursday 7th

This was the day of the presentation in the foster home for kids in Modra, 30 km away from Bratislava. The presentation was at 5pm, which means it was already dark when we passed by the cute little village who keeps a rather old look -I felt like visiting it with daylight sometime.

We arrived a bit late by car with Svetlana and Maja, a colleague from the same organization, took all things in a rush and entered a room with quite wild kids, all age ranges. Since they don't speak English, Svetlana stood by my side all the time for the translations, which started with a brief introduction and an energiser they didn't seem too interested in. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was the only thing they weren't interested it but the thing is that they also had the same attitude towards the presentation.

At that moment it felt quite awful. The kids were not paying so much attention and not being silent while I was speaking and neither when Svetlana was translating. Some things I had prepared were a bit difficult for them to understand so we skipped them, but others were basic enough -they just wouldn't listen. Anyway, everybody seemed more involved when the part of the videos and music came, and when the presentation was over some of the kids came to talk with me -by my interpreter. There was even one 11-year-old boy who introduced himself directly in English, he was so cute.

In any case, when we were collecting the stuff to get in the car and Svetlana saw my long face she worried about my experience. I felt quite bad at that moment because it felt like what I've done and prepared was pretty useless, but then she explained me that some of them were interested but shy and that I should just keep the good memories and the fact that at least some of them felt inspired and motivated to start or keep learning languages. I couldn't get rid of my self-pity at that very moment but I already have. As she suggested, I've kept the memory of those kind kids who came closer to meet me after the presentation, and also those -mostly the same ones- who ran and hugged me before I got in the car. That was quite nice.

Friday 8th

Friday morning Sarah and I woke up earlier than usual to get the train to Trencin (120km from Bratislava), since we were having an INEX presentation in the 'Open Days 2013 na Úrade TSK', organized by Europe direct Trencin. It was so different, firstly because the place is normally used for official conferences and secondly because our public were high-school students -who still remained silent even when they felt bored.

We took the train at 8 am, arrived there at 9:30 and didn't have our presentation until 12:30. It was a bit boring for us because it was in Slovak and we didn't understand almost anything, but when talking with other students it happened to be also bit dull for them, since they were not so much interested in European matters. I was happy to change that when our presentation time came and we start with an energiser and a good answer. Also, we were speaking in English, so they had to made a bit of an effort to pay attention. Anyway, we made it short because after so many presentations we knew they were tired, but in general it was quite good.

After the presentation we took a bus to Priedviza and afterwards to Bojnice, for visiting the castle. With the last sunbeams, Sarah and I made a full photo-essay from the place, reporting the castle from every possible angle. It is a very nice place indeed, and also the square nearby of the little village where it is set. We took something to eat and drank coffee in a rush, for taking the bus back to Priedviza. From there Sarah came back to Bratislava and I waited a bit longer for my bus to Zvolen, for visiting my friends over for the weekend.

Saturday and Sunday 9th-10th

Since Friday evening I arrived rather late and I was pretty tired from the whole day, we just stood the night at home with Thiebaut, Timour and their 'now-I-am-a-sweet-purring-thing-now-it-is-psycho-time' kitty. Besides, party was planned for the next day when a newcommer EVS Spanish girl living in Banska Bystrica (20 minutes away from Zvolen), was throwing a party in the evening.

Finally we decided to come a bit earlier, around 6-7 pm, and join another friends for a home-made dinner. In Yuko's and Hansol's apartment, they prepared risotto with mushrooms and oven-cooked salmon, together with a glass of white wine -tasted even better than it sounds. Geez, it was so good, and specially after so long without eating any kind of fish. I think when I'm back for Christmas I'll ask my mum to prepare fish everyday, haha.

After the dinner we went to a pub called Smädny Mnich (Thirsty Monk in Slovak), drank for a while and made up a questions game to heat up the conversation. Few beers afters we were supposed to move to another place, but we stopped by for some food -kebab and fries. Unfortunately, after that most of them decided to leave already, and so only 5 of us reached another pub -the birthday girl didn't manage to join us because she was sick and feverish, but her flatmate and one more friend did.

We ended up in a metal pub with quite loud music and the mood wasn't fitting so much. Therefore, we decided to leave a bit later, since Yuko and Hansol offered Timour and me his place over -since there weren't any means of transport to get back to Zvolen at that time. We slept not so much, woke up to take the train at 9:30 am and rested a bit longer in Zvolen. It was Sunday, which means after all day lazing around I came back to Bratislava and finally had a good-night sleep, to get ready for the following week.

Polish Chronicles II: Krakow

The 31st of October I arrived to Krakow around 7:40pm -I was supposed to arrive a bit earlier but due to traffic jams we were late. I must say it's a bit confusing to get to the city from the bus station if you get through the shopping center, but I managed to do so and with a map printed about how to get to my hostel I finally found it.

St Benedict hostel is a really good deal if you're staying in Krakow and you don't ask for a fancy place to stay. It has everything what's necessary for 5E/night and even more -like breakfast included and hairdryers that you can ask in the reception. Plus, it is only 7-minute walk to Rynek, the very center.

I arranged the checking in -only not so nice thing is that they ask you for an extra fee for being a tourist, but it's like 50 cents per day-, left my stuff in the room and just when I left the place to meet with Aida and Timour I found them in the ground floor door.

They also left their stuff, made the check in and we went just to the supermarket downstairs to get something for dinner. There was a small kitchen in the hostel, so we took bought some noodles and some beer to have a rest before having a little stroll in the night.

We found our way to Rynek thanks to a map they gave us in the hostel. It is a very nice square and it looks different from morning to night. We naturally continue to Grodzka and found mighty interesting pubs, but because we were a bit tired from the trip we came early to the hostel for taking advantage of the following day.

We woke up early on Friday and change some euro to zloty before joining the Free Walking Tour in front of St. Mary's Church.  Because we arrived with some minutes in advance we took a quick look to the inside of the church, impressive! It is not allowed to make pictures, so I'll just post two from google images and you can check the beautiful colors and structure.

At 10 am the tour started. As these kind of tours, the guide normally combines historical facts with some more recent stories, always referring to the buildings in the surroundings to begin with. It lasted for 2 hours and a half and Asia -our guide-, showed us Rynek and nearby, like the Barbican, the University, the Archdiocese where the pope John Paul II used to accommodate when staying in Krakow, and then down to the Castle (Wawel) where the visit finished.

The most curious fact I got from this tour -besides being told that John Paul had a great sense of humour-, was that like the human chakras, some scientists recently discover that there are also kind of chakras in the Earth -normally in sacred-related places like Jerusalem or Tibet. Nevertheless, one of them is located in Krakow's Castle, exactly in a corner before entering the Palace's rooms. Of course, like others, I rubbed the wall after being suggested such thing -it really felt like rubbing a wall tough.

Having a great view of the river when we finished our visit, we decided to take a look to the fire-spitting dragon statue and then walk by the riverside to the Jewish Quarter to get some pierogy. Unfortunately, and I think due to Poland being in general quite a religious country, the pierogy place that our walking tour map had provided us -with all sorts of recommendations about what and where to see, eat and drink in Krakow- was closed. We decided to walk a bit further to get some zepianky in Plac. Nowy Warszauera.

After the zepianky we also sat for a while in a coffe place -I ordered some hot chocolate with a lot of whipped cream, nomnom-, we stroll a bit through this quarter. We didn't realize so much at that moment because many places were closed and there were not so many people in the street, but when we pass by the following day we could really tell is quite a modern place -hipster like in some spots, like Jozefa street.

So, as I said, after our break we explore a bit more the quarter -a bit lost even with the map-, and then headed back to the center trough Krakowska, Gertrudy and Dominikanska. Since it was getting dark and we felt a bit tired of walking all day we came back to the hostel to rest a bit before going out by night.

After a rather unhealthy kebab we found a place in Maly Rynek called something like Alternative in Polish, and we went there for a beer. It was very nice to find a place that fit everybody's interests, I totally agreed with Aida that we should take that place back to Bratislava -but not superpowers for that yet. It was an underground and some reggae music -continued for some disco one- was playing loud. At some point it got too disco, so we found another place, Indigo Pub, in Florianska. It was a rock pub but with the right high of volume so you could talk. Posters everywhere and a mini altar to Kurt Cobain, so nice -and cheap beer, even better!

We left for having some rest for the next day. Aida went to a day-trip to Auschwitz and Timour and I stayed to explore the city. We started with the bus station, in order to get our tickets for leaving the following day -Sunday. After that we just kept walking trough a not so touristic area, passing by the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus -by chance more than a planned thing- before reaching a local market -Hala Targowa.

We kept going south until reaching an old Jewish cemetery and back again to the Jewish quarter. Since we bought some fruit to a kind seller in the street, we walked for some time before lunch, when we headed to Wrega pub for -this time yes-, some Polish pierogi.

After a tasty lunch with kind of strudla for desert, we enter this modern side of the Jewish quarter, finding a kind of a small Notting Hill like street -at least it reminded me of that. We made few more pictures because it started drizzling, but still we continued to Jewish ghetto quarter by a pedestrian bridge, Eastern style -full of lover's padlocks.

We arrived to Rynek Podorgski and have a look to the very nice St. Joseph's Church -Timour pointed out that it looked like Disney's castle, find the resemblance? But besides that this district wasn't as nice as the other ones, and because of the drizzling started to be annoying we got back by taking the tram in the Square of Ghettos Heroes -google maps says that's its name-, and got a free ride until close to Dominikanska -we really really wanted to pay the ticket, but there was only one machine in the tram and a mighty long line of tourists before us, ale nevadi.

Across Rynek, back to the hostel for some afternoon break before meeting my Polish friend Michal -who I met last June for the trip Olga organized to Montenegro and Croatia. He is from a town close to Auschwitz but he knew the city, and therefore took us to really nice places like a tea house with a huuuge fat cat (Cafe Bar Magia) and afterwards to dinner in a vegetarian buffet place, Chimera -both of them quite close to Rynek.

In the evening we passed by the jazz club U Munianka -and left right over the concert because we are volunteers and didn't want to spend 5E for the entrance-, and then arrived to a random hostel place where they were having a Halloween party -1E beer leaflets brought us there. It was nice to see Michal again, but we didn't stay longer either that night. In any case, he doesn't have a problem to find party on his own -as he already did in Montenegro, haha.

Woke up on Sunday 3rd of November, packed everything, bought some food for the way and went to take our bus from Krakow to Katowice. Such a rude driver, he didn't want to open the luggage handler in the bus stop close to the bus station when we arrived to Katowice, so we had to get down in the last stop, took our things and spend some time in the train station having some snack before getting our bus back to Bratislava. The impression of Katowice wasn't so nice in a grey rainy day, with all city under construction -but still some buildings in the center were pretty.

The trip to Bratislava didn't feel so long that when I did at the beginning of my trip, probably because of the company. The rain and the heating of the bus helped me to sleep most of the time, and I enjoyed chatting with Timour when being awake and exchanging some music.

Yeah, I had quite a good time in Poland. It's a beautiful country and I was surrounded with good people, so nothing could have gone wrong. I hope some other time I can visit also Gdansk, by the see -I haven't heard so much about other cities besides Warsaw, which apparently is quite industrial, something I'm not very fond of when I'm traveling.

Anyway, it was a great trip :) Hope you enjoyed the pictures, this time I made them! But also took few of them by Timour, the ones I'm in, mostly.

See you in next posts, attentive readers,

Warm hugs,
Ali