Ahoj! ❤️
It is a time for a new adventure or as INEX would say it is time to find yourself in the ocean of adventures. I arrived here in Bratislava on the 31st of January by bus from Vienna. Upon my arrival I met Barbi, our INEX coordinator, who showed me the flat, which I will be sharing with two other volunteers, Anaïs and Leonardo. At this specific moment I did not know anything about them except that one of the volunteers is from the Spain and the other one is from the Italy and so it remained a mystery until the 1st of February, when I first got to meet them. 1st of February was also my first day when I went to see a bit of city center, together with Leo. To get to the city center was quite challenging for us since we were going in circles at the very beginning in Petržalka, but when we got there, we saw the main square, men at work statue and the Blue Church. We were in another country, and everything felt new.
In the first week there was not so much what to do in the office, so I got a chance to visit the city center again and attend two free guided tours, as well as to get to try some traditional Slovak food in a Flagship restaurant with other volunteers and INEX office members, who were very friendly and kind. In just within a week, we got introduced to Mirka, Monika, Majka, Mária and Braňo. On the first weekend here, we also went to see the Devín castle and the new part of the city. It was a bit windy that day, but overall, it was a nice trip, and I really enjoyed the landscapes found in the Devín castle.
The next week started to be busier because we were carefully preparing our presentations for the upcoming tea meeting, where we needed to introduce ourselves and the country we came from, somewhere in the middle we also helped to make the music instruments for Fašiangy as well as listened to several presentations about Slovakia, volunteering, and public speaking. On this week, the INEX also had prepared us a plate with typical Slovak snacks and drinks to try. Personally, this week felt a bit uncomfortable and unfamiliar to me because I am not used to being with so many people all the time. Finally, when the presentation had been prepared, the weekend came and we with Leo and Anaïs went to eat pizza in a restaurant, time flew and somehow, we spent two hours just talking in a pizzeria. On the Saturday, the Fašiangy came, where we as INEX volunteers needed to participate, so Leo got dressed up as a dolphin, Anaïs as a mermaid and I as a horse and I was surprised to learn that for Slovaks horse represents the sun. When we got all dressed up It was time to participate and we went in the streets walking in the parade, that was defiantly out of my comfort zone, because a lot of attention was drawn to us.
On upcoming week, we needed to represent our countries, to be honest I felt quite nervous if everything will go right according to the speech I practiced several times at our apartment, but in the end, it went better than I had expected and I even cracked some jokes, that I had never done before while doing presentations. INEX already told us that there would be up to 20 people, but when the time really came to do the presentation, my mind realized how many people there actually were, who came to listen to us. I also feel incredibly grateful for this experience, because I got to know a lot of people who were extremely friendly and nice.
Starting from the 14th of February we got introduced to more about our positions we applied for and filled up some documents, I also needed to make social media plan in excel and workcamp table for Monika. Truthfully, I did not know what to draw on the workcamp table, because I found it challenging to draw something nice, which the other person would need to look at for a year. We also had a bit of competitions about designs in Canva, that we later published on FB and on the 18th of February we went with some of the mentors to do a small hike in nature.
Finally, not lastly came the next week, when we secretly started to prepare a birthday party for Leo and do several tasks assigned by INEX. We needed to organize the lovely mascots and I made a sketch for a new one, later I also worked on promo materials for the upcoming tea meeting in March, the call to action and the workcamps. This week was the busiest so far, so I felt quite tired at the end of the week, but on the weekend, I managed to go on the five hour long walk and celebrate our flat mate’s birthday.
What will happen next? I do not know, but I am sure it will be an adventure…
