While Fabian, Theo and Dylan took off for their on Arrival training we tried to fill the grid they left, making it one of the longest weeks of our project, t least for me and Pia. I finally understand now how a dog must feel seeing the person he appreciates the most leaving for something to buy. You know it might’ve been only 10 minutes but for it, it feels like one week. So, this week without our three boys felt like at least a month.

During this time two new volunteers arrived. Rocio from Spain, best compared to snow-white with her deep black hair and snowish bright skin and Anthi from Greece, easily to be detected by her hair which always is put up into a bun and with her perfect nails, which she knows how to do by herself by the way. The special thing is, that Anthi already knew how to speak polish, due to studies she completed here.

If you have been attentive you may have realized that we got three new volunteers in one week, two of them from Spain, one from Greece, making Spanish now the most spoken language in the group, though they always try to speak English if we are around. If you are together with so many different people from different countries each speaking another language you have to set up some rules for the social interaction. First of all, you have to find a lingua franca, helping you to make information and personal exchange possible, in that case English. Furthermore one should try to speak as less his own language as possible when others are around, nobody has problem, when you speak in your language if it is a conversation between you and the significant other, but if somebody would like to join, don’t exclude him from doing so.

The week drifted by, tough as an old piece of gum in your mouth. You chew and chew, but it is kind of tasteless and you want to spit it out, because something is missing. Though there is a little something which makes everything a little bit happier and we discovered that on Friday night for us. She calls herself “Partying” and always comes with her best friend “booze” aka “Alcohol”. On that evening we went out for the first time, entering a certain establishment which favors especially the equality of gay and lesbian people. Guess what we had a lot of fun in there. Gay clubs are something totally different, somehow everyone is totally accepted in there and none cares about you or who you’re kissing. All of the just want to have a good time and maybe meet somebody and that is what really fascinates me about those places. The LGBTQ+ community had to fight for a long time against homophobia and discrimination, even worse it still has to fight against it, making these places a safe piece of heaven for each person. In comparison to normal clubs which treated the community quite bad back in the days, Pride takes everyone as he is, celebrating life and diversity together and focusing on a with-each-other policy, instead of an exclusion of straight people for the things they’ve done or still are doing. At least that should be the intention.

The girls and me had an amazing time there until the moment a certain smell started to develop. Out of respect for maybe minor readers let me say that it smelled like a mixture of sweat and the male private parts, perfectly synonymized by Pia as the smell of Ketchup.

Leaving the club one of the most normal urges emerged in the girls, the need to pee, letting them wonder where to go in the center of Krakow, leading to the idea to just pee next to a car, resulting in a small cultural shock for me, the German.

Text by Sebastian, a volunteer from Germany, participant of the project “reACTogether” but also the support of the project “Mobility for Solidarity”.

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