Polish Chronicles I: Wroclaw

After VEM I took some days off to make what might be one of the last trips of the year, in Poland. My sister just arrived to Wroclaw to study as Erasmus on September and since I didn't come back to Spain during my whole EVS stay I was really happy to finally have somebody from my family to meet again. In any case, as a proper Erasmus student, she had also some plans for the long weekend of All Saints, so I decided to come a bit earlier to see her and then afterwards continue to enjoy Poland with my friends in Krakow.

My trip started Monday 28th in the night, so in the night that my bus was actually starting at 00:00 of Tuesday. I traveled from Bratislava to Katowice with Polskibus company, really comfortable -and they have toilet and wi-fi. I arrived in Katowice at 6 am and quite sleepy and with a still dark sky I found the train station to get to Wroclaw, what I finally managed by 10 am -yap, I was pretty much broken after that, but a hug from my sister in the station made it all worthy.

She came to pick me up in the station, we walked until Dominikanska square to buy a public transport ticket -quite cheap with the student fare and short-term length-, and first place she took me was the university. See? So if you're Erasmus you're probably having a great time, but before that happen you also have to solve a mountain of bureaucratic paperwork. She needed to finish an online enrolment in her university and also hand some papers to her coordinator in Wroclaw, and because the deadline was only within 2 days I got to know also this student side of the city.

We left my luggage in her residence -she was complaining so much I was really scared of what to expect but it really wasn't so bad, her room is pretty nice and it's a single one, so that's all you need-, and we went to Pirogania, a famous place for pierogi -Polish typical dish- in the heart of the city, the Rinek -which means square in Polish. Geez, they were tasty!

Afterwards we strolled by the center, then headed to the cathedral passing by the national museum and we got there just on time to get a panoramic view of the city from the top of one of their towers, with the sunset light.

 

From the top we could also manage to see a man who lights manually the streetlamps of the cathedral's quarter. My sister have told me about him and she was really excited to finally confirm that he existed. Anyway, we didn't hurry to go down because we knew we wouldn't have the time to reach him, but we eventually did -because it was cold on the top- and kept walking around a bit. We passed by this typical Eastern-style bridge covered in padlocks symbolizing love (?) and just dropped in a former train station which is a current market now to buy some fruit before coming back to the student's dorms.

That afternoon we didn't do much. We had some siesta because I was mighty tired from my trip and we had some dinner with toasts with Spanish ham and oil -hmmm, so good! Also because the two of us being together was kind of a small milestone for my family, we had a Skype call with our father.

The following day my sister had some mandatory lessons she couldn't skip in the morning, so I just walk around the city with a map. I started in the cathedral quarter because I had liked it a lot the previous day, then visit the botanical garden and then walked to another park with a church and a very nice university building -perhaps a library. This path had some road under construction and some street art in the walls. It was not so touristic but I enjoyed it.

Feeling a bit lost and checking on the map, I decided to take the tram to a place closer to the center since the day before I haven't had visited so much. I got from Prusa to Ruska tram stops and walked a bit by the river or channels (I have no idea what that water is, not much in that part anyway). I ended up in Renoma shopping center and headed to the center again, checking the beautiful buildings of a theater, a nearby park and the Opera. At that moment I had a call that my sister had finished lessons a bit earlier than expected, so I just came back to the dorms to meet her -not without stopping by a second-hand shop before and buying two thick sweaters for 6E, score!

'Why coming back to the dorm?', you'll ask yourselves. Well, I told you that my sister and I being together after 9 months was kind of a thing for my family, so I was coming back for the second Skype call of the trip, this time with my mother -anybody that knows my mother in person would realize is not her best picture but, well, is the only image capture we made.

Continuing with the student life immersion, we had lunch together with my sister's friends in the residence. Due to the fact that they share an average kitchen with all the students of the floor, they normally cook for many people together. It's nice, they organize a cooking team -with cooking skills- and a cleaning one -you know, not cooking skills-, and so everybody eats together and cleans afterwards. Smart and tasty -geez, that chicken was so good!

When we finish lunch at a rather Spanish time (3pm), Clara (exactly, my sister has a name) and I went to a park she likes to just have some time together. She told be -as I explained her my morning- that I almost have seen all worth seeing in the city and that I would enjoy this park -she was right. We took advantage of the few remaining light of the afternoon and came back to the residence for resting a bit before going out.

To have a rest before going out, or that's what I thought. But then she told me we could join some of her friends that were preparing costumes for Halloween night -just the following day-, just in the residence in front of hers. And so we joined them and it was actually true that some of them were doing this, but after sometime somebody switched off the lights and from the kitchen of the room somebody appeared with a pile of nutella crepes with whipped cream. It was so nice! I really didn't expect nothing for my birthday, but apparently my sister had a different opinion and she got her friends to collaborate in this warm gesture -I felt so welcome, thanks again^^.

After sharing the pancakes we decided to finally go out to a bar where they have live concerts on Wednesdays -Nietota was the name, I think. Music was great tough because we were a bit late we had the furthest table from the stage -ale nevadi, we luckily found a place to sit. Afterwards we got to another bar, Niebo, and there I enjoyed more the conversation -it was too loud in the first location for talking. I especially remember talking with a Basque girl, who reminded me to one of my best friends of my own Erasmus, nice girl. Anyway, after 2 Polish beers I felt rather more dizzy than with Slovak beer, and since I wanted to also visit something the next morning -and my sister was waking up at 8 am for her trip to Berlin- we came back to the residence not so late.

Next day, Halloween, I woke up around 10 -my sister had already left. I packed my things, had breakfast with her room's neighbor and headed to the bus station to buy my ticket for the afternoon and leave my luggage in the meantime. That day I didn't pull my camera out because I wanted to save some memory space and battery for Krakow, but I wandered close to the train station, then direction to the river, then back to the center to the university area and finally spent sometime in the small islands side having a tea and a walk through the parks -nice relaxed time.

Around 3 pm I started to come back to the bus station, took my bus at 4 pm and arrive at 7:30 pm directly to Krakow, where I met with other friends. But that's another chapter of the Polish Chronicles -named like this after the surprising inspiration I have today to write mountains of words out of few days. Well, they were quite intense after all.

In any case, see you in the next post -if you still can read it! :D

Hugs,
Ali

VEM 2013

Hi again!

So, as I was saying, for the preparation of the Volunteers Evaluation Meeting (VEM) of INEX, and because I was part of the decoration team, I arrived one day earlier to this misty location in the middle of nowhere -a former hunting house, just great for the horror topic we were having this year!

In the inside it was already scary with all the deer skulls and some fur of animals, but still we had prepared some stuff for make it even creepier, and here's the result -told you we made good use of that wig :D

Furthermore, we put some scary posters as decoration in the accommodation building (just next to the main one of the picture), together with some printed horror stories. Another team, the Galavecer one, in charge of a performance for Saturday night, also made the technical arrangements for projector and audio columns. Also, we used a furniture and improvised a desk to welcome the participants the following days: label, t-shirt and badge -everything was set.

Saturday 26th of October, 9:30 am, and a bus full of people arrived to Planinka. We gave them their welcome packs and they left their luggage in their rooms, ready to start with the opening session -whoever finished earlier was invited to take a picture with our brand new horror-style frame, specially reinvented for this event. And funny moment! While we were waiting that morning for people to arrive, just giving the final details in the main building, we left the door open. Guess who wanted to come in? Bambi! We tried to make him go outside again without touching him, because they warned us he had had some disease recently -anyway, I had touched him the previous night, before knowing about this rule, ale nevadi, I survived :P

Mirka was in charge of opening the event and afterwards we had some energisers and name games to get to know each other. Then we had a session to evaluate our workcamp experiences -which was quite good for me since it was the first time for me to reflect it in a group, because I missed potaborka-, Sarah's presentation of INEX messenger and, in an attempt to involve everybody in the night show, we had another session where we had to prepare something for the Galavecer. Some pictures so you can make an idea how it looked like.

Galavecer came and they played for us a video they made. A crazy story about Van Helsing killing monsters and Pierre Ceresole, the founder of the international workcamps, coming back from death to stop the masacre. See? The whole event, because of the horror topic, had this storyline that monsters (us, because we got dressed as monsters) could be turned into good. In that moment the different groups had some performance to convince Van Helsing to let go the monsters. There were poems, theater, dancing and -in my case- even singing. Here's the monster family picture :)

After Galavecer we had one more session, night games. It was very nice and specially in the atmosphere of this enchanted place. When it finished and we found 'the cure for being monsters' -tasty syrup :D-, we had some 'disco' time, but I think people went to sleep not long after it, since it had been a long day. Next day we had some presentations of workcamps by some active volunteers and one more 'gymkana' like game, where we had -in among other taks- to take a picture with the 'person in yellow t-shirt', who happened to be a quite fast runner, Mirka.

One of the last sessions consisted in different stations where we promote INEX activities. This was the only session I was part of the organizers and, together with Matiss, we talked about the tea meetings -when we meet some afternoons in INEX office and some volunteer gives a lecture on some topic they know about. We had printed some of the announcements we had for previous meetings, like the one Matiss had of prezi and public speaking, or mine about introduction to photoshop.

Before saying goodbye, we had some evaluation session about the whole event. I pretty much enjoyed it, it was good not to be so involved in the organization team this time but just relax and be a plain participant once. We had a lottery session with some very random prices and then the bus to Bratislava arrived to take us back home.

I think the idea of this event is quite nice, to gather all people that have had a volunteer experience -mainly in workcamp-, to share their learning and exchange ideas about how different and beautiful places are all over the world. When it comes to INEX activities, well, that's not new for me but I guess was pretty good to have this information in case participants wanted to get more involve. In any case, it was a nice time with nice people in a nice location, so I don't have anything to complain for -as usual :)

Now that VEM is over and we only have like few presentation's events for next days besides the scheduled tea meetings, I really feel this is coming to an end. I've learnt a lot during my EVS in INEX and I'm truly happy I was accepted in this project. But now I have two opposite feelings. First, the wish to return back home and see my family and friends again and, just in the opposite direction, the certainty there is nothing waiting for me back in my hometown.

Don't get me wrong, I love my family and friends and I can not wait to see them again and hug them for all this time we've been apart. But how is it gonna be after 2 or 3 weeks there? What's my next destination, my next challenge, my next step? Well, that's something that can't leave my mind these days, but I'll work hard to find it out. The world is full of possibilities, just need to clear the fog and realize what fits best for me. Will see -soon.

Thanks for being there, unconditional reader, hope you enjoy my adventures -feel free to comment, please! Oh, last thing, all pictures made by Sarah (most of them) and Michal (a couple). Click in their names to see full albums of VEM.

Pekny den!
Alicia

PS: Due to some problems with the flow of the communication in the decoration team, we finally had 2 scary frames for taking pictures. Dasa, my menthor, had prepared one all by herself. Here's Michal's report with this other frame, and I love this evolution of pictures together with Dasa :)

Before VEM

Hello dear sweetpies^^

Well well, it's been long since I haven't written anything, but still feels longer because of the quantity of events that have taken place. Biggest one, as I told you before, was VEM -Volunteers Evaluation Meeting-, but before that other things happened, so let's take a look.

Firstly, have I ever mentioned about how nice is our new office? Not only the building is new and atmosphere kept colorful and creative, but we also have a small garden. Couple of months ago we invited over some volunteers to help us settling in our new place and among other activities they made some gardening. Well, this kind of work needed to be done again, so everybody in the office gave a hand with it -here's all team working together. Funny fact, we planted some seeds that needed to be watered, and because of the garden hose wasn't working we needed to make it with a watering can -in fact, I made it for like one hour, and I pretty much liked it, quite relaxing.

Changing a bit of topic, I attended to a workshop called 'How to apply to an international job or internship in Bratislava'. Sounds promising, right? Well, it wasn't so much. I mean, it was good -mainly how to make your CV more attractive for recruitment companies-, but it was just half of what you would expect with such a title. In any case, now I have a pretty CV and I enjoyed a free glass of wine included in the 3E entrance price.

Moving on in the week, and just few days before VEM, things started to move faster. I prepared individually the labels for the organizers and participants of the event, splitting them into different groups for different 6 sessions. Anyway, I really liked the final result, the labels looked pretty nice. Also I had the time to collect some material from the attic, where I found this 'scary' wig that finally I didn't use -but we used it in VEM, you'll see. Finally, as part of the decoration team, I helped creating carton gravestones for a small performance the Galavecer team was preparing.

Anyway, the main event taking place before VEM was a presentation of INEX in a theater just the day before. It was in Sered, which implied waking up absurdly early to be there by 8 am. We went by car, Michal, Tomas, Sarah and me, and even we got a bit lost several times we managed to find the place to open the ceremony -a promotional event because of the European Day of Languages. Michal and Tomas were the main spokesmen but Sarah and I also talked about our experience and were translated afterwards by them.

After our presentation we stayed for few more and we had lunch in the school canteen right before leaving to Trnava to pick up Monika, another INEX volunteer, and head to Planinka, to this very special place where VEM was taking place the next day. We arrived there one day in advance to prepare everything related to decoration and so on. It was great, but I'll tell you more in the next post :)

Later, alligators! :D