by Svenja
In the end of January I started with my estonian Friend Merit a small trip to the eastern part of Slovakia. After staying one night in Košice we went really early in the morning by bus to Užhgorod in Ukraine. We were waiting really excited 2 hours travelling in the coldest and smelliest bus I have ever been in and arrived finally at the ukrainian border. The slovak officers were really happy to be able to practise their german with me and were wondering what we are doing at this small border. Then the big and fat ukrainian officer woman came to me and asked me something in russian- I was luckily that Merit speaks a little bit russian and could translate for me: Where are you going? What do you want? When are you coming back?... and so on. This whole border procedure took us 2 hours and we were late for our meeting with the Ukrainian couchsurfer Artem. He was quite nervous that we lost so much time and showed us around in the local shops and helped us with everything! Alone we would have been totally lost in this city where nearly nobody speaks english. Explaining us everything really fast and helping us with buying the most important stuff, we moved on to his small but nice flat close to the city center. There he had already prepared typical ukrainian food wich we had for lunch. After we went horse back riding in the surrounding of Užhgorod, visiting the city and we went to russian bania :) Really relaxed after that we cooked some pasta and went to bed totally tired from all the new impressions!
The next day- our last day in Ukraine- we visited the really nice orthodox churches in the city. Unfortunately we already had to leave, back to the cold bus and again the 2 hours procedure at the border. This time the slovak offiers were so happy to see us and we communicated in slovak about all the stuff in our bags. Merit had to empty her whole back and the officers made fun of her swimming suit :) Checking the customs, the officers didnt really want to see my bag- stači!! And they asked: čo je to? Vino? - Nie Vino, Vodka Vodka!!
A čo je to? - Jablko...- To je jablko? Je velké Jablko!! - To je granat!
Well anyway the officers had a lot of fun and finally we could move on to a small town called Michalovice- there was really no connection to Košice. In Michalovice we saw the probably most modern train station in whole Slovakia- and it was really nice to feel the bilingual side of Slovakia: hungarian and slovak. At night we arrived again in Košice and met the other volunteers again!
The next day we went on to Jahoda to our midterm seminar. Not far from Košice in the mountains it was really really cold, but everybody was happy to see each other again! All the people changed after the 5 months of EVS and it was nice to exchange experiences. A lot of volunteers were not satisfied and some were really happy and we got a lot of information about new projects. Also we made evaluation abour our projects and made some slovak activities, went skiing and hiking and swimming and everything that is nice :)
After this wonderful seminar in Jahoda a few of the volunteers went to visit the city Rožňava in the south east of Slovakia. It was really nice to visit the other volunteers flat and spent the weekend together.
I hope to see all other volunteers again soon and hope to become a lot of visitors in Trenčín!
