Hello everyone!
As you may remember I’m the new EVS volunteer from Scotland, and since it’s been nearly a month now since I first arrived here in Zagorje I thought I’d give you all a little update on what I’ve been up to! So I guess the best place to start is my arrival.
After months of anticipation and excitment and 2 delayed flights later resulting in me having to run to the departure gate in order to catch my final plane from London to Ljubljana, and this is where these feelings became a reality and the fact I was about to fully embrace the amazing opportunity of being in a different country for two months was about to begin!
Rdeči revirji:
I arrived at the perfect time, because that was the time when ”Rdeči revirji” festival started. From what I understand this Festival means something like ”Red Miners District” and the 3 towns involved were previously miner towns. This for me already felt like a home comfort as parts of the U.K are also ex mining towns, therefore I can relate on the aftermath of this in current times and I loved that there was a festival to celebrate/remember this.
The first night of the festival, not long after my arrival to Zagorje, there was a screening in the main square of the ”Under the same Sun” project that was made by some EVS volunteers, who were hitchhiking around Europe to show that can infact travel very cheaply and how to do so. This was really nice to see as I learned a lot from it, and also got a chance to see what other EVS volunteers had been up to.
The following day I had my first official day of my EVS. It felt so lovely to be back in the Mladinski center again (I was a participant last year for the Healthy’n’Wealthy Youth Exchange last summer), and returning brought back a tidal wave of some amazing memories I have attached with the MC ZOS, and of course it was amazing to be reunited with some familiar faces too.
Then after some rest to recover from the tiredness from travelling it then headed to the main square for the next night of Rdeči revirji. This time it was a big jam session night. I absolutely love music and even more so like how much it brings people together uniting through one thing no matter their age, gender, culture etc. Therefore it was amazing experience to meet some of the locals of Zagorje and play some music with them!
On the Saturday it was the final day of the Festival. It began with a choir called ”Miners girls”. I really enjoyed listening to the different songs despite not completely understanding every word of it, and due to the U.K. having ex mining areas it made me feel slightly emotional and some of the songs reminded me of a miners song we have back home called ”Bread and roses”. There was ”Food not bombs” which was proven to be really popular where there was some yummy soup for everyone to enjoy while they were watching other acts of the evening such as a comedy act and some really cool jazz bands.
Lindsay Webster
