photo by taken Ania Druczak, on the main market square in Krakow

Speaking of our time here in Krakow requires the mentioning of Ania, a polish girl from Warsaw which accompanied us in the first 3 weeks, by taking pictures of Krakow and us volunteers. We had a lot of fun posing and once in our life felt like super models. Of course I don’t want to implify that we won’t feel like that in the future, because maybe one of us will be walking for Victoria’s secret, you never know, but let’s put it that way, that in this year the chances are quite low to be discovered by a scout, while you are laying on the main market square, taking the perfect volunteer pictures. It really was a fight to get everybody down to the floor, especially Fabian, who was freaking out about some bird leftovers, that had dryed ages ago and probably already became part of the stone they were laying on.

You know the whole shooting was fairly funny and joyful, taking those cliché pictures of people jumping, holding hands and so on. If you ever tried to jump with all the people in the same time, while holding hands, you will maybe realize, that it is not the best idea to put somebody of Pias size next to me or Theo, because if you do it might happen that, due to the height difference, you rip the arm of the smaller person off. It’s just a tip, take it or leave it I won’t tell anyone how to take their pictures but in favor of the smaller person you maybe should consider that.

One of my favorite sentences out of that time is “I want to get out of my comfort zone” said by senior Bajen, which’s name was changed in my phone to Principito, next to the Catalan Sunshine. When one is saying things like that one has to live with the consequences, meaning that you have to get out of it and if you refuse to you will be reminded, that you came here for that. Of course, it is always a joke and never to be taken to seriously, though we took care, that he left it. Making a pyramid out of people on the most touristic place in whole Krakow is just the beginning and quite boring in comparison to our future adventures, but it is the first step of getting there.
Welcome to the lesson, Professor Karl is speaking:

“If you are somewhere else where no one knows you, your comfort zone expands already drastically but if you are with the right people everything seems to be in that zone making you do stuff you usually would never do and furthermore you start to enjoy what you’re doing, even though you never would’ve done that before, thus you’ll do it more often, resulting in a permanent expansion of mentioned zone, leading to its widening in general, even when the causing factors are gone. This is described as the effect of being abroad and kind of as the effect of majoring, meaning to care less about what people who don’t know you think of you”

Hope that helped you understanding more your friends when they go abroad and suddenly return totally different than before.
As the week flew by, we prepared to get to know a new volunteer. From Spain, Zaragoza. In fact, the same city Fabian is from. We all met in the flat of Fabian and Theo to have our traditional food evening, this time for real, making crepes and caramel sauce a la Emelyn. I love our food evenings because you always talk about anything and everything, falling back into the philosopher state we like so much. This time the question if boys and girls can really be friends or not and I will say in the beginning that we won’t get into this discussion here.

Maria arrived together with Dylan and soon we realized that she is definitely not from Zaragoza, loves wine more than anything else, that she is a teacher and loves LA ROSALIA. Maria is a girl with a strong character, knowing who she is and what she wants, ready to fight everyone if she has to. She does not take your shit and if you mess with her, she can get really serious, but luckily there haven’t been serious fights yet. Already on the first evening, we laughed a lot together, while she sat wrapped up in her thick jacket with brown hair flowing down her shoulders and a tired but relieved facial expression you always have after a long trip, showing the weight which was taken away from you as soon as you reached your destination.

As the evening went on, we spoke about the next big adventure breaking like dawn over us. The On-Arrival training. Fabian, Dylan and Theo were the first ones who should experience this phenomenon and they couldn’t wait to start, while we others stayed in Krakow, waiting for news and missing our 3 boys immeasurably.

Text by Sebastian, volunteer from Egypt, participant of the project “Equal volunteering”.

The project “Equal volunteering” is organised within the framework of the European Solidarity Corps and financed by European Commission.