Ja Byłam Wolontariuszką

In my last post I explained to you what EVS is. I hope you remember something because now I am going to tell you my experiences of my EVS in…

KRAKÓW

A little bit about the city that was my home for 9 months and that I still take with me everywhere I go (w moim sercu).

Kraków is located in southern Poland on the Vistula river. It is the second largest city after the capital Warszawa and used to be the capital itself from 1038 to 1569.

It is a city with a lot of character and history. Unlike so many other European cities, Kraków was mostly spared of destruction during World War II and most of its buildings and structures are still the way they used to be. At least in the centre, if you go to the suburbs you can feel Russia’s influence and see its love for building houses that look like lego bricks.

Kraków is a very international city that attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, stag-party-people who just want to get drunk and come because booze is so cheap (it really is) as well as very cultured people who come because of all the culture and artsy things (which are really interesting and diverse). There are also a lot of Erasmus students here who meet the expectations of only doing Erasmus to get drunk and of course… EVS volunteers!

MY PROJECT

Name: Children and Youth Multicultural Education

Sending Organisation: Jugendwerk der AWO Württemberg e.V.

Coordinating Organisation: Stowarzyszenie Rozwoju i Integracji Młodzieży (STRIM)

Hosting Organisation: Przedszkole 38 w Krakowie

Volunteers in STRIM: 24

Volunteers in Przedszkole 38: 2

Duration: 9 months (01.10.2013 - 30.06.2014)

"Sowa Patrzy Na Ciebie" - view from my window on Ulica Dietla. The street is usually not that crowded, there was a Catholic parade to some important church.

WHAT I DID AT WORK

I worked in Przedszkole 38, more precisely in group 6 pszczółki (bees). The kids I worked with were between 5 and 7 and in their last year of kindergarten. In total, there were nine groups and 200 children between 3 and 7. My tasks where pretty mixed. I played with the kids, read books to them (in Polish..) and mostly drew owls for them. That was literally the first thing I did when I came to work the first day and had no idea what to do and did not understand a word of Polish. I sat down, drew an owly, and the kids got really excited and begged for more. The supply never satisfied the demand of owlies even though I drew at least a thousand of them throughout the nine months. I also helped the teachers and staff with daily tasks such as dressing the kids before going outside, giving them hugs when they seemed sad and giving them food when they looked hungry. Another thing, that didn’t take place so regularly, where my German and English lessons. The children already knew some English (colors, animals) and got really confused when I tried to teach them German because it sounded so similar to them. How do you explain 6-year-olds whose language you don’t speak that your language is not the same as another one they already know some words of? 

I tried a lot: ‘“Rot”, to jest czerwone po niemecku. Powtarzajcie.’ - ‘Rrrrred!’ - ‘Nieee!’

OTHER THINGS I DID, NOT AT WORK

-adopt a dog that got scared on New Year's: The poor thing apparently got separated from its humans during the fireworks. We found it walking around on its own looking very lost and immediately fell in love. I still don't know if it was male or female but we didn't really care about its gender and named it Sigmund. Like Freud. Sigmund was very well behaved and trained though he would only do as he was told in.. Polish! 'Siadaj! Dobrze Siiiigmund.' We brought him to a shelter and he was later reunited with his owners. And they lived happily ever after. :)

Sigmund psychoanalyzing a bowl.

-take care of another fluffy friend: one of my flatmates had a rat which me and my roommate took care of sometimes. Our flat was really old and kind of shitty, and the rat-person's room didn't have heating and it would sometimes get too cold for the rat. We gladly offered our help to play with and feed Damian. And to basically prevent it from freezing to death.

 'Help'

Damian in action

-learn more about the horrors of the past: Auschwitz/Birkenau is only about an hour and a half away from Kraków and of course I went. Even though I had been to a concentration camp before, the sheer size of it overwhelmed and nauseated me, not to mention all the gruesome, terrible things that happened there. There is also Schindler's Factory and a not so well known concentration camp (Płaszów) just outside the old town of Kraków.

-travel: to Warszawa, Toruń, Prague, London, Wrocław, Zakopane. It is really cheap to travel in Poland, especially with PolskiBus (you can get tickets from 1zl which is like 25ct, I shit you not). Warszawa and Toruń where the venues of my On-Arrival and Mid-Term training respectively. Me and my roommate went to Prague and London because neither of us had been there before and because we found really cheap flights. Wrocław and Zakopane are both very close to Kraków and definitely worth a visit. Especially Zakopane as it is in the mountains and very rural with a beautiful landscape around it.

-sophisticate myself: as mentioned above, Kraków is very artsy and cultural. There are a lot of different museums most of which are for free (at least on some days of the week). Kraków also has a very active Jewish community that organizes many events, for example the Jewish Culture Festival or The Night of Synagogues.

One of the best things are the free-walking-tours. They also offer them in Wrocław and Warszawa, and are about the city’s history, culture or where to eat.

-eat: the Polish cuisine is definitely underestimated. What I liked best was how obsessed they are with soup. In my kindergarten the children always got soup before lunch. And there are just so many different ones! Another delicious thing is zapiekanka which roughly translates to 'out of the oven'. There are two different kinds, one is made out of potatoes or pasta baked with cheese and the other is half a baguette topped with whatever you like. The traditional one is with mushrooms, cheese and chives. Close to where I lived was a market square called Plac Nowy with a lot of zapiekanka places, some of which are open 24/7.

The round thing in the middle is where you buy zapiekanka. There are a lot of stalls all around it. And also a lot of bars.

-yes, drink: even though people are more likely to associate beer with the Czech Republic, the Polish one is in my opinion a lot better. There are so many different flavours and brands, I didn't even get close to trying them all. Then there is wódka. I am not going to elaborate.

-buy too many clothes: second-hand shops are a big thing in Poland. And they are really cheap. Really. I bought so many nice and some not so nice clothes because they were only between 50ct and €2. I miss these shops a lot.

-organize an event for children in a café where you get tea for a smile and coffee for two smiles: me and my roommate, who was also a volunteer in a kindergarten, organized an event for local kids. We sang them songs which we composed ourselves (ok we did not compose them, but it is really easy to find new lyrics for The Yellow Submarine, and we wrote the lyrics ourselves) and played with them. The café where this fun afternoon took place is really nice. It is called Fińska and you should check it out if you are ever in Kraków.

-produce, direct and edit an awesome stop-motion video: for said project in the happy café. This video showed me and my roommate (whom I organized this event with) or more precisely our shoes trolling around Kraków. I had a lot of fun doing that :D

"Fun On a Bridge" - my shoes are the giraffes, obviously.

-try to learn Polish which is ‘the hardest language to learn’: yes, Polish is very hard to learn. No, it is not the most difficult language in the world, even though Polish people like to tell you otherwise. I think it is especially hard for people who are not of Slavic origin as the structure is just totally different, but many of my fellow volunteers who were for example from Slovakia or Belarus didn't really have problems learning it. At the beginning it was very hard for me since I didn't know anything, but over time it go easier to recognise words or patterns. It was also probably very helpful to work in a kindergarten because the language there is not so complex and difficult and the children really don't care if you can't pronounce words correctly (most of them can't themselves).

I fell in love with this city and can't emphasize enough how glad I am to have participated in the EVS. It opened my eyes and heart to Eastern Europe and has influenced me in ways I can't really describe. If I had the chance to do it again, I would without hesitation.