Getting sunburned in Iceland

I left my Örebro home on the 14th of May, having a great work task: to go to Iceland for 2 weeks. I was perfectly aware of that there are 3-hour direct flights from Stockholm in comfortable huge planes (the ones with the personal movie screen:)), but this was not my way.

After discovering that there's going a ferry to Iceland, it seemed to be quite crazy thing to do, so I did it.
Most of the conversations on this topic were like this:
Me: "I am going to Iceland."
Person: "ooh great, from where do you fly?"
Me: "I take a ferry from Denmark."
Person: "Wow, ferry, there are ferries going to Iceland?"
Me: "Yes."
Person: "Ok, how long it takes?"
Me: "3 days."
Person: "THREEE DAYS??? ARE YOU CRAZY??? I could never be in a ferry for 3 days."

Before the first this kind of reaction I even didn't consider my plan as something crazy, rather as a great and unique experience. So I went to my trip to see, how it is in reality.

So, instead of few hours in a train and 3 hours in a plane, I did it in the old-fashioned way and my trip consisted of following parts:

• 5 hours train trip with 2 trains and one bus to Copenhagen; meeting a nice woman from italy, who hast the PHd degree, living in Sweden in my hometown and going to meet her boyfriend in Copenhagen
• One day wondering around in Copenhagen - that happened to be a lot bigger town than I expected
• Evening with my former band-mate Anna-Liisa, talking about our plans and both doing some work
• Morning trip to Esbjerg, meeting 2 German backpackers in the train, travelling together to the port
• Being surprised in the port, as we needed to pass the sign "No entry, violators will be given to the police", walk around in some strange area, check in a small container and wait in another one
• Meeting nice Danish girl and getting a new friend
• Spending 2 days, seeing only one island during that time - having time to think and watch the sea, including an amazing concert in the evening by a one guy and guitar
• Spending 8 hours in Faeroe Islands, using each hour as much as possible, leaving the islands with a lot of photos and memories and with a CD by local musician
• Going back to my "home"-ferry, everything is familiar :)
• Sailing 2 hours through Faeroes, probably one of the most beautiful places in the world
• Morning with the Iceland - yep, we arrived!
• Taking a rental car and driving whole day through the emptiness of Iceland - it is really SO empty???
• Tuesday evening 11 p.m - Reykjavik, here we are!
• Realising that the trip was one of the greatest I have had in my life:)

So, trip was good. But what did I do in Iceland...

From Faeroe Islands, 3 Swedish volunteers joined me during the ferry-trip. They had been volunteering on Faros for last 5 months and we went to visit our three member organisations in Iceland. As the situation in Iceland organisations is quite similar to the situation of the our member organisation in Faeroe Islands about three years ago and the situation started going better due to the work done by the volunteers in Faeroe Islands, then who would be better people to give advice to the organisation in Iceland.

We arrived 11pm to Reykjavik, that was surprisingly huge place compared everything that we had seen during our 10-hours trip in Iceland. 8 am we were already sitting in the meeting in some nice hotel conference room. The meeting was in Icelandic and we were told "just to look good on the photos". I could understand that they have a project in Iceland, where parents in schools have groups that try to do some prevention work that their children would not drink or use drugs. Next to looking good on the photos, we had also our breakfast:) Anyways.

The first real meeting for us was in the evening. Before that we had no idea, what’s happening in the Icelandic organisations. The meeting made us feeling really good about Icelandic youth, as they have few, but very motivated young people, who were ready to do everything and who were very interested in organising activities. During next days we gave the Icelandic organisation information about what is Active and what kind of opportunities they have, why they should look to Active web-page. We gave information about the EVS program and about all the further activities in Active.

I had the feeling, that with this visit, the local club got more motivation and the feeling of belonging to the international organisation, which hopefully gives them motivation to grow into bigger and stronger organisation. 3 Swedish people left after the first week, but I stayed for another one.

Next to the meetings and writing several applications, I became friends quite fast with all the members in Iceland youth organisation. So I was driving with them on a motorbike (I was on the backseat) and I had a tour in Reykjavik that you could never book from tourist office; we were climbing an Esja mountain; cooking hamburgers every evening - I already miss those:); biking Reykjavik (and discovering that they have a white sand beach, very warm weather - yep I almost got sunburned and also some trees); doing the golden cirle tour and having an Eurovision party:) They are these kind of people with who its easy to communicate for me and I really enjoyed their company. In general, Reykjavik is a very fun town, full of tourists with the super waterproof hiking gare while locals walk in t-shirts:)

I am missing Irises enthusiasm and interest to do any kind of crazy sport and activities; Gusti' s personality and this small smile and how he was playing with a small dog and of course his motorbike driving skills and of course Elva, to whose place I moved in for about a week, even if She had seen me only for 2 meetings before that - we had fun evenings with playstation 2 (even if in the first evening I tried to learn the movements and buttons of this control thing) and days with her child and some duck cartoons that melody I still remember (I guess we watched those more than the child :)). And the muffins:)

Anyways. It's good to have a job that doesn't feel like a job. Where you can travel and meet great people. And it's great to travel with some aim and meeting the local people and getting new friends. I have more than one reason to go back to Iceland.

And yes, the volcano has stopped the activity and no, all the Iceland is not under the ash.

:)

Janika

A Conference and a proper dеfense!

Last weekend (07 - 09 may) I was attending a Conference in Budapest. The topic was "Alcohol and youth" and it was organized by APYN. I was representing Active there.

At first it was a great feeling to go to a Conference and to meet 8 other people that are representing some of the member organizations of Active. That lead to having 9 people from the same umbrella organization, among a total number of 21 participants to the Conference.

We had a lot of discussions, presentations, workshops, as to any other event. Personally I think that it could have been better if we focused a bit more on specific issue and work on it, than just to talk about more problems that are concerning us and finish with our ideas of what we personally, our organizations and our governments should do. But anyway, maybe they have a long term plan of activities and this was just a beginning. At least we had fun.



What was more fascinating for me was the possibility and the running of the discussions.

One thing that is famous about Active people is that we talk. YES we talk a lot and that is good! We always want to express our opinion, which very often is different than the opinion of the majority. And that was noticeable also on the Conference, even though all organizations there had similar goals.


Especially on the last discussion, we had one guy that was presenting the work of his organization in Budapest that was offering help to addicted people to make them feel better, hoping it will lead to lowering the amount of drugs they are using. In the same time, while talking about addictions, he compared the coffee with alcohol and other drugs. After his presentation was over and the time for questions and comments came, I could see the hands only from the people of Active. It felt good! We all started commenting and expressing our totally different opinions. The other participants were being quite, while the guy who was presenting started to feel uncomfortable. Suddenly the prep team interrupted our discussion and didn’t allow us to ask any more questions or add comments. “We don’t have any more time” was their answer, but right after that, one of them had a short speech when he explained that sometimes we can be very critical, but no body should get offended because we live in an open society and we have the right to express our opinion.

My reaction was What?!?! Should we be sorry if we have different opinions?! Should we be quiet?! No! It is our personal obligation to stand up and say out loud what we think. How are we going to change something, if we don’t have other perspective?!

One famous philosopher, Karl Popper once said

“You can never learn something from a person that only agrees with you!”

I use this sentence very often and I agree with him.. =)

However, I enjoyed the discussions. I liked the thing that people from Active were on the same thought and I hope we managed to influence other people as well.

And YES, we had fun!


Sanja

WELCOME!

This is our new blog :) And we are the current volunteer staff at Active office in Örebro: Janika, Sanja and Alari. Here you'll find updates about our activities and what's on our minds :)

Örebro is a nice town in the middle of the Sweden, some hundred kilometers from Stockholm to the west. And mostly from here we will post about what we do and think and on volunteer life.

Active is a youth organisation gathering young people from all over Europe to promote (and not limited to) sobriety, friendship and peace, as our full name says. We're here at the office to help it make happen, taking care of the daily administration tasks, organising events and campaigns.

Of course, we're not all alone in this office, as we have our boss here, also known as Kristina, the one who keeps the things together. As in the heart she is a good person, we'll expect "guest postings" from her also to give the blog some other perspective.

Here are some pictures of us, so you'll know whom are you dealing with:

Sanja from the sunny Macedonia on the left, Alari from the cold Estonia on the right and the Swedish spring in the background.

Janika, who is kind of a senior volunteer now, and therefore she'll have her own separate picture looking wise. We have a strict hierarchy here on these matters (or not :)

Unfortunately, we don't have a picture of Kristina, who is out of office again but we promise she'll get back here and the picture shall be published.

So stay tuned, we'll try to hold the blog updated as often as we can and have something to share with you =)


Alari