Hey everyone, my name is Pedro I’m 21 and from Portugal, and after graduating and having completed a short and boring stint as a part-time salesman, I decided to embrace a new adventure somewhere in Europe. I applied through the European Youth Portal to volunteer with INEX Slovakia until next December, as part of the European Solidarity Corps programme. After an interview, lots of helpful emails, and a few weeks, I arrived in Bratislava.
It was the 31st of January, and after taking a flight from Lisbon to Vienna, and a bus that dropped me off at Einsteinova bus station I met my first acquaintance in this project, Barbara. Super welcoming, she guided me through the streets of Petržalka, all the way to the cozy apartment, I’d be calling home for almost a year. Coming in, I got my first “culture shock” when I was asked to always take my shoes off, when in the house. For some reason we don’t really do that in Portugal, I guess feet are considered dirty. After a lot of unpacking, I turned in for the night.
The next day I met with Peťo, my mentor. I found out we were a perfect match, not only did we both study Geography, but he’d also spent his Erasmus days in Portugal. He took me to have lunch at Ventúrska Klubovňa, which would turn out to be an okay spot to watch future Champions League matches! Here I tasted Kofola for the first time and, perhaps due to my mentor’s very enthusiastic approach to this wonderful soft drink, I fell in love with it!
These few days were very exciting, as it was my first time living abroad. This also meant there were a few fears as well, most of them related to housekeeping and cooking, fields in which my abilities are frankly sparse. Nevertheless, considering that after a month I am still alive, didn’t get food poison, and the house is still standing, I guess I’m not thaaaat bad at it.
Despite Bratislava’s freezing February (at least for a guy from the south of Portugal), the following weeks were quite eventful. I got to reconnect with some friends that are also living in Bratislava, met my fellow volunteer, Sarah, who came all the way from France by train, attended an exquisite concert by the Slovak Philharmonic, and met Tomáš who welcomed me to play some really competitive basketball matches with him and his friends.
Next Monday I got to meet everyone at the office! Mirka, Monika, Majka and Braňo – who speaks quite good Spanish – were all super nice and funny. After a few days they prepared a presentation about Slovakia with loads of snacks, some of them more delicious than others. I still have nightmares with Sójové rezy’s taste… This month we learnt quite a lot about online and offline promotion of activities and events, a subject in which I lacked any sense of what worked or not, but with Barbi and Mirka’s guidance there were some improvements. We also helped prepare a very insightful Tea Meeting on India and Nepal.
Sarah and I got to know a lot of people from Prešporkovo Family Centre, some of whom bake the tastiest doughnuts in Bratislava. In this family centre we took part in a few activities such as tiding up the place for its 20th birthday party – in this instance we met a few volunteers from Dell, who helped us going through the tasks. A few days later we dressed up in traditional Slovak costumes and performed some Fašiangy folklore dances at an international school. Our Slovak lessons are also taking place at Prešporkovo and, despite our amazingly diligent teacher, Andie, progress has been rather slow as there are very few similarities between Slovak and any other language I know.
And, naturally, I couldn’t finish this first article without mentioning some of the Slovak dishes and snacks I’ve tasted so far. Starting with obvious one Bryndzové halušky. Being brutally honest, the pictures I’d seen didn’t look very promising, but I was surprised after trying it. It’s super tasty and I could have it every day without getting tired of it! That said, Pirohy were probably my favourite dish. I also found out about this amazing chocolate bar called Kofila, that perfectly matches some of the most precious flavours ever: chocolate and coffee.
