Well, two months after my first post I’m back here. There are not a lot of excuses I could give about leaving aside the Blog, but the truth is that it’s been very busy out of the office, and I was there!
On my last post I was expecting my first big festival, well now I can say that I’m a festivals expert. One month and a half and 5 festivals! That was all madness!
Lots of people, new friends, music, sun, rain, tiredness, joy, emotions and indeed CONDOMS…those are the words that could describe my life for the last months.
Well I will explain you a little bit what where all the festivals about:
Gentse Feesten:
A 10 days street festival, the whole wonderful city of Gent full of concerts, performances, shows, stands and of course…people, lots of people around.
The Condomobiel was standing next to the Salsa Bar and in front of the Chocolate Bar, so…salsa, chocolate and condoms, a sexy combination!!!
I was there three different days in which I could meet some more of the Joetz volunteers. I found this kind of festival a great opportunity to really interact with the people; it was not just about selling condoms but also about knowing the people, answering their questions and learning from them. One of the nicest things that I heard there it was something that a gay guy told us:
– Maybe you already saved my live, because when I was younger I felt too ashamed to go to the pharmacy and buy the condoms, but the way you do it makes it much easier. Thanks!
It is very nice to know that your work is really meaningful!
Another of the things I learnt there, and that I would shout in all the following festivals, was a sentence in Dutch:
- Tien condooms voor twee euro!
Lokerse Feesten:
Another 10 days festival, but this one more about music!
I was there just for one evening-night, and actually it was not a success, the rain made it too difficult! Rain is something you always have to take into consideration when talking about Belgium I guess.
Feest in het Park:
My first camping festival and a good memory about it. Three days and nights of music, people and cold food!!
What started as a mess and finished more or less in the same way, gave us lots of fun in between!
Because a misunderstood with the organization, we couldn’t set our tents at the crew camping so we were installed at the regular camping, what does it mean? Not a lot of sleep for the Condomobiel crew! And long lines for the showers also! We were 4 volunteers but just two of us were sleeping at the camping, the other lucky two had their own beds close by.
It is not a very big festival, so at the end of the weekend almost everybody knew about the Condomobiel and its volunteers around the festival area, and it was a bit like building a big family.
I left the festival on Sunday at 9 p.m., even though the party was still going. And at 10 a.m. a call woke me up from my comfortably sleep in a real bed to ask if I was there when at 4 a.m. the police and the fire department had to evacuate the camping site because of the flood. Then I was not regretting anymore about missing the after-party for the crew!
Pukkelpop:
One of the biggest Belgian festivals together with Werchter, and this year it was even more special because of its 25th anniversary.
This time the Condomobiel was standing at the camping site. We got there at 8 a.m. the day before the official start of the festival. After moving from one place to the other because the organization was not sure about where we should stand…finally we put the Condomobiel in the NGOs corner, where we had our private camping spot facing to the regular camping site.
It was amazing to see how the tents where growing as mushrooms in an enormous empty field till we couldn’t see the grass anymore. 54,000 campers ready for four days of music, party and delightful madness!
After the fist rainy and cold day, the sun was shinning for us the rest of the week, something that made everything much easier!
65,000 festivalgoers from 51 different nationalities with the energy of the music running through their veins together with liters of beer!!! Music lovers, crazy outfits and people looking for a good time, that’s how I felt the festival while standing behind our counter.
Something amazing is that nonetheless a lot of people had time to stop at the Condomobiel and have a nice talk about sex, condoms and youth sexual lives with us.
Enven though the Condomobiel was opened till 5 a.m. a couple of nights, I could manage to have also another life at Pukkelpop, the festival life!!! A great opportunity to meet nice people and see some amazing concerts (Blink-182, Placebo, Kate Nash, Kele) and to learn about the great music that Belgium is making (Black Box Revelation, Selah Sue were just wonderful).
Something I will never forget was that closing concert with 2manydjs, loud music, fireworks and thousands of people singing and moving as if we were just one. That wonderful feeling that overwhelmed me, and finding myself hugging some people that I just meet a couple of weeks ago but I felt as I knew them forever. I think that then was when I understood what being a festivalgoer means!
Crammerock:
Right after coming back from a short visit to Spain I had my last festival till today.
Crammerock is not too big and like Feest in het Park a little bit more familiar, so after a few hours inside the festival area we already knew a lot of the people there and some of them just came back from time to time to have a nice talk with us. Still we could handle to have good sales during our night there and hand out all our free condoms.
The bad side of this festival…the cold and that the van was standing really next to the loudspeakers, so the noise was too much and made it difficult to talk with the people.
The bight side of it…as we where just two volunteers, we where sleeping inside the Condomobiel (even though that was not very easy as we were standing inside the festival and the music lasted too long).
As you can see, it has been busy here!!! I hope you enjoy reading my adventures as much I enjoy telling them to you. Keep checking because soon you will have more news about what’s happening at Joetz.
Diary of an EVS: #2# The adaptation
Hi everybody, here I am, back after one month with some more news… This past month, my “adaptation” period, has been quite important for me.
Normally, when you start to live in another country it‘s always hard at the beginning. New people, even new weather, another language, other meal times, in fact, many things which are different compared to your home country.
For myself, the adaptation was not so complicated or difficult. I already knew some people before I arrived and my buddies at office created a nice working ambience. What was hard to get used to for me was to take lunch at 12:00 or carry my umbrella wherever I go… But I think these are the kind of things you can change in your person and adapt. Another thing I found totally different are the people. I come from the south of Spain and everybody there is friendly, warm and speaks loud
Here I made new Belgian friends and they are quite nice people, of course they are friendly and warm (they don’t speak loud) but it seems to me that maybe you need more time until you feel that that person is really open to you (in a good way). After one and half month here I feel that I am managing my life as I want to and that my period of adaptation is finished. Of course I still have to learn a lot of things about Belgian (and non-Belgian) culture but that is what I feel right now. I am starting to have control over my life.
I guess that the end of my adaptation was marked by my “on arrival training”. Since I am here, I have met a lot of people, some of them employed, others still students, but I really felt the need to meet other EVS, with whom I have something in common and perhaps share some aims. This moment came a week ago, where 25 new EVS came together to have an initiation seminar, and were later joined by another 15 EVS who did that kind of seminar months ago. In general those 5 days I spent with them were great, everybody was friendly and tried to get to know each other better, I mean, nobody felt left out of the group. The activities were ok, some times we spent too much time just talking or doing something a bit boring, but another time we were doing really interesting things, especially when we had to do our own project. There, for the first time, I met Gianluca who will be my project mate for the next months. Gianluca and I also heard a lot about festivals, different activities and interesting topics. At least I had EVS surrounding me J
Of course I did quite a lot of other things, for example a trip to Holland and Germany, some bike tours, but I guess this is not so important because what I really want to communicate in this blog is how I am changing over the time here, my expectations, my fears… In this blog I don’t really want to focus on parties and so on.
Next week the festivals are going to start and a new part of my EVS starts too. You will have news from me as soon as possible, Joetz EVS life is busy