Euroweek

I apologize for the lack of text. Friday in Euroweek was amazing. It was the last day for one of the groups, they were receiving their certificates and even gave all the volunteers something to remember them by.
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This week has gone by so fast and there has been a lot going on and tonight I will be heading to Warsow for a week for my on-arrival training. More about that later, I need to pack (once again).

Along the way; Berlin, Dresden, Prague

Photo Attack time.

Berlin  16.10. Tiergarten

It was my last day in Berlin. I spent it well. Next morning I took a bus to Dresden.

Dresden 17.10.

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of Dresden, because at one point I left my camera at the hostel. The old town was absolutely beautiful. There were a lot of tourists at that day, The weather was beautiful and I just enjoyed walking around. But the real action was happening on the other side of the river, new town, filled with hipsters, bars and a lotf of parties.

Prague  18.-20.10.

Light. Move. Festival. 2013

Bridge Band, Charles Bridge

Along the way; Berlin part 3 - Teufelsberg part 2 (and some simple things in life)

One is red, two is yellow, 

three is green, four is purple...

There are some days when it doesn't even bother you that you have to listen to the same 1st grade chant about colours and numbers you already heard 30 times during that day and probably a 1000 times in general. Days when just lying on the floor with the children and helping them to draw numbers the right way round is just enough activity to keep yourself happy. ...five is pink, six is orange, seven is brown, eight is white, nine is black, here comes ten...

...let's go again!

Back to Teufelsberg (Click here for part 1)

Finally getting on the other side of the fence got me thinking that I haven't played videogames for months. I don't miss it that much, even though in Finland it was a daily activity for me. Here I have all the time something to keep me occupied. I felt like I walked into the graphic world of Fallout in this place and I was so fascinated and running around like a child in an amusement park. 

After a while of walking around and everyone else listening to the guide talking about something interesting (I was the only one non-german and the only one who came there alone) we got to the tower and took the first stairs to a level with walls built for graffiti art. There were some amazing artwork and I spent a lot of time there not even realizing for some time that I can actually continue up also.

The stairways were dark and on every level I found something different. I was kind of sad at this point that the guide didn't speak any english for I had so many questions. Like, what has actually been going on in this place for over 20 years?

From where do all these stories on the walls come from?

This is one of my absolute fauvorite photos from there

So I finally got to this level, what I think was maybe the fourth floor. The balls used to work as satellite dishes for intercepting satellite signals, radio waves, microwave links and other transmissions by the americans and the british during the Cold war. The place was abandoned in 1992, after which it has served no real purpose, even though there has been some people wanting to buy the place.

At this point the tower rises up at over 100 m from sea level. It was quite windy and they don't have actually anything to secure people from falling. Before I went in I had to sign a paper; it was in german but I assume it was for agreeing that the guys I paid for aren't going to be responsible in case I fall. I did go as close to the edge as I dared -the view is amazing. But if you're going to visit this place remember to be careful for the staircases and the floors aren't very trustworthy everywhere and if there's water on the ground it can get very slippery. Generally just look what you're stepping on. From the picture under you can see the platform I started my 3-hour journey from in the last post. Again the distance doesn't seem that bad in the picture, but also this huge tower looked so small from there.

So I got all the way up to the globe on top of the tallest tower. It was one of the scariest places I've ever gone to. It was a sunny clear day outside, inside the ball it was almost pitch dark with only one stray of light lighting the space slightly. Due to the shape of the globe the acoustics make every sound you make comes back to you -loud and from every direction, bouncing of the walls again and again.  And really I don't know what kind of voodoo activity has been going on in there but it gave me the creeps.

It's really hard to get the right image of the place from photos so fortunately I took one bad quality video to give you some better perspective on what I was experiencing.

 So after being totally traumatized we started heading back down. Still enjoying the view and here you can also see the "fence" protecting us from slipping and hitting the ground.

I really recommend this place for anyone who might be interested in such places -the area is actually huge and it's a pity that the only option is to take a tour which only gets you to this tower. You can also try your luck and climb over the fence. It's for sure on my to do -list in life. I have a lot of pictures from here and I will probably make on photo post later and include some there.
So after I left the place I didn't again have no idea what direction to go to. Everyone seemed to take the big road so I went to the other direction and into the forest. I was kind of surprised to find myself on a real road after under 15 minutes. Even as I found one abandoned house that I just had to explore - only later I wondered to myself if I should improve my survival instinct a little bit.

And finally my fauvorite piece of urban art ever. The brick I had to go all the way to Berlin to see.

//edit: I have to add that all this got me thinking about the times when I was younger and my mom wouldn't let me to go to the ferris wheel in the amusement park because she was afraid I would fall. And now I'm here doing all these things all by myself but I know that she still wouldn't let me go there.

Along the way; Berlin part 2 - Teufelsberg part 1 (and something recent)

I received another survival package from Finland. Actually I received it already last week to the office when I was away. I didn't even know I had something coming, just my roommate told me today that she thinks I have something on the postshelf. Once again the essential; Fazer blue chocolate, salmiakki, magazines and some finnish hard rye bread. On top of that; some sweet warm (finnish made) mittens. Thank you a thousand times babcia.

Today we had a volunteers meeting at the office (sorry for the high quality pictures). All of us long term volunteers got together and made some presentations about the subject What have I done during my EVS -project in Poland? It was nice to see what all the others had been up to, but mostly just to get together with everyone.
We also saw a theatre performance made by the Youth Exhange group in Długopole Zdrój. It was put together by people from 7 different countries (i.e. Greece, Armenia, Poland, Italy, Romania...) and included traditional dances and a lot of physical effects. Little fancy artsy, but I liked it. In the end they even tought us a traditional armenian dance. After we had some dinner (volunteer's rule number one: free food is good food).

I'm slowly getting a grip on the normal week routines again. Polish lessons are cancelled this week, which makes me kind of sad, because I wasn't able to attend last week. Also I finally received some information about my on-arrival training (which is kind of frustratingly amusing, for I arrived a while ago...) and I will be spending next week in Warsow with 30 other EVS -volunteers around Poland.

Berlin , 15.10.

Teufelsberg, literally “Devil's Mountain,” a hill reaching 114.7 meters above sea-level, made from an estimated 12 million cubic meters of war rubble (apparently about 400,000 bombed houses) pushed together in the north of the Grunewald forest in West Berlin.USM 620 Kilo, as it was also known, was part of the worldwide Echelon spy network. Each radome globe contained massive 12-metre satellite dishes and the most sophisticated spying equipment for the time, enabling the western powers to intercept satellite signals, radio waves, microwave links and other transmissions, before interpreting and analyzing their findings. (source)

Staying loyal to my style of travelling, I just did some quick googling and checked the neirest train station (which actually wasn't that near). Still staying loyal to my style of travelling I walked in circles like a idiot for a while until I realized that I was walking on Teufelsseestraße. I did some quick 1+1 in my head, felt like an idiot again and started walking along away from the train station. I walked for what seemed like forever just deeper and deeper to in the middle of nowhere. Finally someone walked past that I could ask for directions. A sweet british lade that was, and she got me directed to this place. As I saw the stairs I was quite sure I got to the right place. Well, it wasn't the exact place I was looking for but beautiful none the less. I sat down for a while and had a little picnic.

I also could see my point of destination from there. From this point of view the distance doesn't seem that bad, but the fact is that the tower built on a huge hill in the middle of nowhere. Optimistic as I am I decided to just get down and start walking straight forward from here -for sure I would get there in no time.

After awhile as I was walking in the forest with not even the slightest idea of a) how long i had been walking and b) in which direction, I felt like a treasure hunter finding all these cool (at least to me) places and things in there. I stopped every once in a while just to look around and take some pictures. Sometimes some lone wanderer also passed me by; and this is one of the weirdest feelings ever, when you're actually just walking around in the middle of nowhere and around yourself you can see just an endless bunch of trees and trails leading nowhere, above not the sky, just the branches of the trees and then someone just walks by, maybe a quick change of looks and you continue to different directions. These moments made me paranoid about if I'm actually going anywhere, because everyone else seemed like they know exactly where they are going. I had faith in myself and my journey so I wasn't bothered about it too much and just continued going.

Finally I bumped into a fence. I still didn't see the tower anywhere around, so I just kept following it until I finally got to the entrance. To get in I had to pay a rip-off price of 7 euros for a guided tour. They told me it would start in 15 minutes at three o'clock and I realized that I had been walking in the forest for 3 full hours. I was so proud of myself that I finally got there that I wasn't even so mad about having to take a tour, even though as i expected it the guide was speaking only in german...

 To be continued..