 |
| The Shining Youth (from the left): Carles, Eliise Luigi |
Buna! I'm Eliise from Estonia, I just graduated from the university where I studied finno-ugristic. Before going to master's programme I decided to take a year off and here I am now!
We have been living in
Bucharest for one month now. It has been full of new experiences and suprises,
especially because I didn’t know much about Romania or its capital before. I
knew some basic facts, a little bit about the history and some Eurovision Song
Contest songs. Acctually this is the main reason why I came here – to get to
know a region I didn’t know much about, where I probably never would have
travelled for a holiday and where not many of the people I know have been to.
I didn’t have many
expectations about my year before coming here and because of graduating from
the university and writing my final thesis I didn’t even have time to read
about the country much. So, I came here as a blank white page, or – as it
seemed to me – as a stupid ignorant foreign who had no idea about the place she
was going to live and work for the next year.
Although I didn’t have
any prejudices before coming (acctually I did, of course, but knew they
probably weren’t true), my family and friends kept telling me what a weird
choice I had made: It’s full of gipsies, you know, they’re going to steal everything from
you, or Don’t be outside alone when
it’s dark, the stray dogs are going to eat you. or my favourite: Oh, you’re going to travel back in time for
like 20 years, are you sure you have internet connection at home?
I have to admit, it
wasn’t all totally wrong what they said:
also the locals can’t get over about the gipsies on the streets when they
talk about their country, there are really many stray dogs and our internet
connection at home as never been very stable. Nevertheless, I’m positively
suprised about the city! It’s full of contrasts and that’s what I like. You can
never get bored of it. The moment you think it’s just a place full of blocks of
flats and ruins from the communist times you discover an area full of dream-house-like buildings or the Little Paris part. Also, when you feel
that every driver in the city wants to run you over and every person you see is
mad that you’re on their way, you should go to some of the many-many beautiful
parks, sit on the grass and enjoy conversations with locals who are truly
interested in you and your county, not to mention your Romanian language
skills, of course. Everyone wants to hear how you say mulțumesc
or
covrigi with your weird accent.
Acctually the Romanian culture is just one of the many to get used to and
to learn from this year. We are working and living in a multicultural
enviroment: there’s a Spanish, an Italian and two Turkish boys. It’s very, very
interesting to get to know people from different countries, but at the same
time it’s also difficult, because we’re so different. Besides having to get
used to living with four boys there’s also different sense of time (five
minutes can easily mean half an hour), work ethics (you can start working now
or wait until the deadline is almost there), food (pasta-pasta-pasta or
potatoes-potatoes-potatoes) and so on. It’s sometimes hard, but that’s one
point of doing an EVS: broadening your view on the world and becoming more
tolerant about different cultures.
All in all, I’ve had an amazing first month full of fantastic people and
experiences and I can’t wait what the future has in store for us!
Eliise
