It is hardly a year since I have been back from Russia, and already I am on the road again…out for new adventures in eastern Europe :). My EVS-European Volunteer Service in Subotica, Vojvodina, Serbia, started two weeks ago.
I spent the weekend in Budapest, where I met with two old friends. Maria Bognar, who I met almost four years ago, travelling in Peru. She is from Budapest and we stayed at her place. And Mila, a good friend from Russia, who spends right now a month in Chezch Republic in the frame of an exchange programme of the University. She came by Bus from Ostrava to Budapest to meet me there. It was very nice experience to meet these friends again. Somehow this proved to me again, that it is worth to invest in friendships, even if you don’t know if and when you are going to see each other again. Life is unpredictable and has so many opportunities… I hope that this will help me now again to have the needed energy to build new friendships here in Serbia. As when I left Switzerland for Budapest I still felt kind of sad…and homeless… To meet Mila and Maria in Budapest gave me hope. And it is probably true, what some friends said to me: “Home is where ever you have friends.”
From Budapest to Subotica it was only a three and a half hours ride.
Dejana, Olga and Oscar came to pick me up at the train station. Dejana and Olga are my tutors, responsible for me at my work in the LDA, Local Democracy Agency in Subotica. Oscar is my mentor, responsible for me in spare time, I guess. The three of them received me very kindly. I think I am really lucky! They seem all very friendly and open-minded people and I feel it is not going to be hard to become friends with them. They brought me to the dormitory for highschool students where I am going to live for the next five months (it is a nice place, only food could be better. It is much too much meet and to few vegetables and fruits :(). On the wall of my tiny, but cosy room big letters, printed on paper said: “WELCOME NOEMI”. So yes, I felt really welcome from the very first day on. The town itself was a nice surprise as well, much prettier, than I imagined. The centre is full of buildings in the style of “art nouveau”. I really love it. And there are narrow streets and small old and beautiful houses. Of course you can see, it is poorer than Switzerland, a lot of older buildings break down, there’s some rubbish on the streets and you find small shops every where, that are open until late in the evening (some thing I actually always miss in Switzerland). The toilets as well don’t have swiss standard usually…but anyway I got used to that kind of things and after Honduras and Russia, Serbia, at least what I have seen until now, seems like real Europe to me. However, I have to admit, I didn’t get to see that much until now, as I have been here for no more than two weeks and I spent the whole last week in Palic, a small and very touristic place, because of a lake, at about 10 kilometres of Subotica. In Palic, on a typical Hungarian farm actually, called “salash”, took place an international youth leaders training, called “International Bridge Builders”, supported by the European Commission. Oh, and I got a very nice diploma, confirming that I attended that training on “leadership competences of young people within international youth projects on intercultural dialogue among SEE (South Eastern Europe) countries and European Union”. That sounds not bad, doesn’t it? :) We were about 24 people from 10 different European countries participating in that training. Actually, one of the trainers was Oscar, my mentor, but unfortunately I didn’t really get to know him much better during this week. I have to admit, when I read the application form for the training I thought it would be a little more challenging, than it was, but still, it was really interesting, and I spent a great time in very good company, and won friends in Serbia, Hungary, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovakia and in other places more. I can now go to visit some of them on every free weekend :). I put some pictures of the training as well. Can’t show you any picture of Subotica yet, as, that typical for me, I forgot the cable I need to connect my cam with the PC in Switzerland and the charger as well….
Tomorrow I should really start to work for my hosting organization, Local Democracy Agency of Subotica and think about how I am going to organizing the workshops for the highschool students in my dormitory. The aim of LDA, which belongs to the association of LDAs, initiated by the Council of Europe is promoting Democracy on a local base, to support and strengthen local governments and to provide education and formation for local political so that they are able to fulfil so called European standards and values, like protection of human rights and protection of ethnical minorities, gender equality, respect of environment, and so one. So the LDA is offering a wide range of workshops and trainings for local politicians and young leaders on topics like conflict resolution, project management, intercultural exchange and so one. There are a lot of projects to promote international collaboration on local leves as well, for example in Subotica, which is really closed to the Hungarian and creation border there are this programmes of regional cross-border-cooperation. The idea is that I should work in the youth programme of LDA of Subotica and I also hope to get the chance to participate in some of the workshops and maybe later on, once I improved my knowledge of the Serbian language, to held workshops myself. Anyway, I am really curious and looking forward to coming experiences… After this training I am full of ideas and motivation, so I hope to be able to realize at least some of them. We’ll see. I will tell you how things develop, anyway.
