Open a box, open a mind.

Buna ziua guys! I’m Henri and since October 2015 an EVS volunteer in Bucuresti. In my project everything is about non-formal education, either with orphans, children in social apartments or young adults. Together with my colleagues I organize workshops seeking to improve & teach.

I spent a long time in this amazing country. I travelled a lot, I met plenty of people. Children, young people, and also older ones. I made incredible experiences and look back at the best time of my life. As the time passed by so quickly and then end of my stay came closer I thought about what I’ve learnt.

In specific I thought what I’ve learnt about Romania(ns). Besides the plenty of positive aspects I also discovered some downsides. One issue worried me the most is the lack of open-mindedness and opposition to immigrants. Pretty weird as Romania itself is highly influenced by a lot of very different cultures.

Since my project is about changing and rather than about complaining an idea popped up in my mind. By time and after advices of my co-workers and association a plan was born: I intended to make people aware of the foreign influences already integrated in their culture and life. What does it mean in concrete? I decided to start a treasure hunt in Bucuresti leading to places built by foreigners for instance. Even I became surprised during my research how diverse Bucuresti and Romania actually is.

For numerous years I do geocaching which is basically the grown-up and digital version of a treasure hunt. Check on the internet for hidden boxes close to your place, use GPS to find the exact location, search and find them.

What is geocaching?

Quite quickly I figured out that this was the most economical, sustainable & joyful way to realize my project.

So what I did (and I’m still doing, I see it more as a continuing project which I can also implement back in Germany) is the following:

Step 1: Finding the right places

I made researches about my neighbourhood and Bucuresti in general. What are places stamped by foreign influences? If so, up to which extent? Which of these places are worth to be discovered? I asked myself (and the internet) questions like these ones. After some time I had a list with various places which seemed to be promising.

Step 2: Visiting the places & checking for geocaching ability

In the next step I visited these places. Most important was to assure that I could actually hide somewhere a cache there. Very agglomerated and public corners are less suitable than hidden corners. In case that I found one of these places (which is easier said than done) I thought about the concrete place, seize and position to hide the cache.

Step 3: Placing the cache and publishing it

Surprisingly, the last step was the easiest one. I bought cache boxes and placed them at the chosen location. Last, but not least I wrote a description of the place and uploaded it on geocaching.com. Finished. It’s now accessible to the public.

 

Although it contained some work, it was a very pleasant and enjoyable project. I learnt a lot, even more than I initially thought.

Even more important though are the people. Geocaching for itself is a hobby requiring and provoking a lot of endurance, curiosity and thinking. Sounds like your last math exam? Not at all! It’s at the same time very funny and relaxing, not mentioning the feeling of awesomeness after you found what you’ve searched for. From my point of view it is easier and far more useful to learn something by doing something you like and which rewards you. Therefore, I think that people don’t see it as “lesson” or “course in open-mindedness”. They have fun and learn at the same time, in an informal and more subtle way.

Did you get curious? All it requires for you to play is a smartphone with internet andGPD. Follow for instance this link and search my first cache: https://coord.info/GC6NTA3

Read the description to figure out more about the place and the cache itself.

Here a though-provoking hint…

Enjoy it. Happy caching 🙂

Sunt din Germania

Buna ziua! Ma numesc Henri… blablabla… blablabla. Sunt din Germania.

Mentioning that I’m from Germany is sometimes interesting. Some people don’t care where exactly I come from, though for a certain amount of them it’s the starting point of a nice and instructive discussion.

So what comes up then?

Topic Nr. 1: refugees

Not only Romanians also other volunteers and people from other countries ask me about the refugee crisis. “What do you think about the refugees?” and similar questions are often asked. Mostly people are curious why we host such big numbers of them and especially what people in Germany think about them (welcoming, restrictive etc.). Quite often the conversation goes on and comes to very stupid point (refugees could be possible terrorists, aren’t they criminal?).  In Romanian I feel accepted and welcomed as a German guy living here. However, I can’t imagine the same situation if I’d be a Syrian refugee. Romania has almost no foreigners or even if there are foreigners they come from Moldova which is basically the same country (#Basarabia-e-Romania). So the majority of people here isn’t very welcoming to refugees, whereby it’s hard for them to understand other attitudes.

Topic Nr. 2: German mentality

That’s actually my favourite topic. It always becomes funny. Before doing my EVS I just read about prejudices about Germans, though now I can confirm that most of them are the most typical ones. Germans are seen as disciplined, in time, straightforward and focussed, utterly unrelaxed, working, perfect car builders, organizing  & rule lovers, polite, cold, not so sociable as others and aloof. By the way: Of course we don’t have fun or any (acceptable) sense of humor.

I do my best to fight against from images of Germany – in both ways. I mention that we have a lot of fun (which is shocking for a lot of people!) and also sometimes stop working and have a relaxed weekend. On the other hand I feel obliged to be honest. When I tell people about Cologne or the “airport” in Berlin I’m very satisfied to have destroyed their image of Germany as well-organized and performing country.

Anyway, it’s hard to generalize opinions about Germany, though I measured two main opinions (to make it easy).

On the one hand there are people who don’t like the plenty of rules in Germany which contain and prevent freedom and fun. Also they think we are very cold, don’t like people and socializing. So their image of Germany is one of a very good country regarding infrastructure and economy, though a very bad one when it comes to living and enjoying your time there.

On the other hand there are people who really appreciates a well-organized and strict way of living with a lot of rules and a solution/way for everything. Also they appreciate our mentality. We’re not seen as unsociable, but as people who are polite, not pushy and easy-going. Moreover, they are amazed how smooth things work in Germany and would like to come or live there.

Whereby we come to the next point…

Topic Nr. 3: Why the hell are you here? I’d love to live and work in Germany!

Sometimes, as I wrote also before, people wonder why I am here. A lot of them would love to work somewhere else (for instance in Germany) for higher salaries, with a higher living standard in a working state offering a future perspective. It doesn’t happen too often to me, but what should I answer then? I usually point out why I chose Romania (curiosity), that I like it here and appreciate a lot. That I also don’t really think about living here in the long run I mostly conceal.

In the end

I was surprised how many stereotypes exist about Germany. Both, the too positive ones as well as the unjustified ones. I lived for quite a long time in Germany and I know more or less how it is. For other people it’s the same than for me with Romania: Just go and see how it is in reality.

Tales of people and cats (of Istanbul)

Before coming to Turkey I had very diverse experience with the people of this country. I had a chance to meet a lot of them, in different circumstances and with different conclusions. I didn’t really know what to expect from our first trip abroad during this EVS, although my intuition was telling me to be rather optimistic about it.  And I was totally right!

Already in the bus we got to know what does it mean to be well cared of. Ok, maybe our memories from the bus aren’t the best ever, however we cannot complain about how all the people were preocupied by our well-being. The drivers didn’t speak English at all, but they did their best to communicate with us as muchas they could, checked if we are able to get our tickets, pass the border control, and find our way to make first steps in Istanbul.

Then it was only better. Our first day we wouldn’t survive without helpfulness of the people we met around. Although, before meeting anyone, we met the other habitants of this crazily big city – animals. They are a valid part of your experiance there, and their behaviour says a lot about the people’s attitude. So it started around 6 am with the dogs from a park nearby Hagia Sophia. They were a lot, and they followed us everywhere for around 2 hours. One of them tried to eat my scarf, but who cares – I can forgive that, given that they were so happy and well fed 😉 The dogs are everywhere and they are incredibly friendly – they mainly sleep in the parks and on the squares, without bothering anybody. But for me the biggest surprise were the CATS. Everybody who knows me knows also my affection for those little fluffy creatures. I suffer so much everytime street cats of Bucharest are running away from me, because they are simply afraid of people. Well, let’s say Istanbul is a different story. I was just running from one cat to another, stroking their fur with the ethernal happiness on my face :D. Cats were sitting among the tourists on the main square in the Old Town, running freely through the streets in the further parts of the city and hunting sneakily after each other by nights. I miss it already.

Make a guess…

Ok, but the cats behave this way because of the people and their general friendliness. I should definitely start of our precious host and his friends. Let’s say I could predict more or less how it will be, as we knew each other with Kaan earlier, although we couldn’t expect more hospitality than we got. We spent 3 joyfull evenings full of talking, fun and beer. The one that was particulary cool included traditional raki drinking and meze eating in the district of Kadikoy. OMG, that was something. Of course it was followed by the “afterparty” in a nice place nearby, my memories are only more or less clear, but well – I must say this part of Turkish culture convinced me the most it’s a nice place for me to live in for some time 😀 Except for that, I must admit, that probably without Kaan and the rest we would never find our way in this labirynth, we wouldn’t enjoy the seaside view in the freezy sunday afternoon, we wouldn’t get to the best pub in the town and – most importantly – I wouldn’t find anything to eat that would be suitable for me. We wouldn’t know those few words in Turkish we know now (ok, it’s not a lot, but we did our best). We couldn’t neither just lay down until 1 pm when it was needed and enjoy everything slowly. I could continue for hours, but I suppose you got the point 😉

Street seller – rambo style. making the best juice ever (at least for that moment).

However I would also point out the other people we met on our way. From the first day I remembered the most the guys from a teahouse we stepped in in the middle of the day, trying to teach us how to say thank you in turkish proper way. His version was more or less “tea, sugar and ash”. Later we’ve heard also the other options, although none of them was really helpful. Anyway, they tried, so it’s nice 😉 .The second they we met whole variety of people working on the bazaars. Most of them were only annoying and from my point of view – rather  discouraging to make any shopping. Anyway, there were 2 people who made my day. Forst of them was selling a pommegranade juice. I don’t reaow what was more convincing – his energy or my eternal love for pommegranades ;). Whatever it was, buing the juice was a nice idea, as it was super tasty. The second one was Omar, the love tea seller. Ok, it’s not THAT easy to catch my attention for more than 5 minutes, but this one managed to do this. If you would asow the perfect clerk should look like I would show you Omar. The result of more or less 20 minutes talking was few liras less in my wallet and one number more in my cell phone. I still kinda regret I didn’t make use of it at the time. Finally, the third day the most funny moment was going back to the bar we drunk too much the night before. It was a walk of shame, as Henri left there his camera, and I took one beer glass with me as a souvenir (yes, I’m confessing my sins in public – but I always dreamt about original Efes beer glass and I make a good use of it now). Anyway the bartener seemed to be really happy seeing us alive and with no bruises. We also have some small talks with the other guests, most of them having pretty impressive stories to tell about (well, if you spontaneously decide to stay in Turkey for living you have to be at least a bit crazy).

So basically for me the most important part of the trip was about people (or animals) behaviour and attitude. Although the city itself was really impressive and made me curious enough to discover Turkish culture more, it was the people who made it complete. I seriously admire Turkish hospitality, talkativeness and energy. It’s one of the best places I’ve been so far for being a guest – of people and cats 😉