After coming back from Barlička, my friend Lucie, who I hadn’t met in more than a year, came from Prague to visit Bratislava for the first time. We spend the entire day together, walking around the old town, eating some very tasty halušky, strolling by the banks of the Danube, having a wonderful ice cream and generally just talking a lot.
The next day, it was time to go to office to leave all the materials I still had with me from the camp, and for a meeting with the promotion team. This all happened just two hours before getting the bus to Vienna airport. I was going back to Portugal for some holidays and to celebrate my grandpa’s 80th birthday.
When I arrived, I was a bit shocked about how critical the wildfires were in Portugal. Some of them have been active for more than 20 days, causing losses in flora, fauna, claiming houses, companies and even the lives of firefighters and civilians. Despite that, and to end in a positive note, I was really glad to be there and meet a lot of people I love again; I saw most of my family, I visited a whole lot of friends I dearly missed, and I managed to ride my bike by the seaside again 🙂
Back in Slovakia I said hello to August and to Bratislava’s rainy weather again. In the office we had a second meeting with the promotion team, and already started preparing some presentations for the post-workcamp evaluation meeting in September. The placements for next years’ long-term volunteers at INEX are already open, and I’ve been preparing some materials to promote them. I’ve been learning some new things, which means some struggles, but nothing that I can’t overcome with the help of the office team 🙂
I also went to Tehelné Pole Stadium to watch the qualification match for the Champions League between Slovan and BSC Young Boys from Switzerland. It was an exciting match with a fairly disappointing result. After 14 attempts, two of which hit the post, the final result was a 1-0 defeat for the home team.
After two weeks in Bratislava, it was time to travel somewhere. This time I went to visit Foix and Júlia in Vilafranca del Penedès, near Barcelona, for Festa Major. I spent four days there, with tremendous amounts of fun, going to concerts and meeting plenty of welcoming people. The human towers called castells are a very tense affair, especially when the grallas – a Catalan musical instrument – start playing, and the lower levels start to wobble. There a few scary falls, but when they managed to complete it successfully, the whole square broke into cheers and applauses. It all culminated on Sant Fèlix day with a procession, that ended with a big firework display, yet more castells, and music.
Stay tuned during September, as it’ll be a month full of activities at INEX 🙂
