Dorbiner Messe

Ok, I know I haven´t been faithful to you, I forgot about Blogging for a long time, but now I´m back. I don´t know if I should explain a little bit what I have been up to the last month but I will start with what I did last weekend.

There´s being a huge event here in Dornbirn and I was there, helping the people from Europe Direct and representing aha (and EVS of course) Dornbirn HerbstMesse

We spent 5 days explaining to young Austrian people about EVS and going abroad in general.



There was a little bit of everything from Vorarlberg and Austria in general (cheese, milk, pumpkin seeds, cars, beer, decoration, pools, restaurants, political parties, radio stations, TV, entertainment, social issues, etc)

We had a fishing game for little kids.

Luino -Lago Maggiore-

Ok, last wednesday we spent the day in the North of Italy, the weather was perfect, the journey quite pleasant, and the food unbelievable.

Let´s start with the journey, we went throw the mountains of Switzerland, with great landscapes and still melting water from the snow.

When we arrived to Luino there was market day, so a great market was all about the town, and we had a walk around.

We had lunch in an incredible restaurant with a sunny terrace (it has a medieval column from the XIIth century) and I could finally had some funghi porcini (I missed them so much!) Then we went near the lake, we bought some postcards and had a real italian icecream before coming back to Austria (I had an ananas "granita"!!!)

Here I am with the French volunteer in Ravensburg, Helene.

Hiking in Dornbirn

Last Sunday we organized a hiking day for the volunteers around here.

We went up to the mountain with the Karren and we walked until Staufenalpe, where we had lunch. While we were walking there we found cows that are taken there during the summer.





Then we continued until Rappenlochschlucht, that is an amazing natural cavity between mountains with the river beneath them.



It was a great day, and I will come back to this wonderful place soon!!!

On arrival Training Day 3: The show must go on

We continue explaining proyects, opportunities the EC offers, speaking about EVS, Europe and Austria.

It was a great day so we went out, to the sun!

We had a break to eat ( we ate soooo well!!! I think I ave 2 more kilos than when I left!!)




This night was movie night and we watched some of the short lenght movies joined by Lars von Trier abot Europe some of them were interesting but most weren´t very good. We also spoke a little bit about our own countries.

On arrival Training Day 2: Lost in the City

Day 2 was really funny.


We had to do some tasks in the city center and take photos.








So we split into 3 different groups with 3 people in each one. They gave us a map and we started the City Surf!!!








Then we had to go to a certain point and buy food to make lunch!!! We had typical austrian recipes and it was delicious!!! We had liptauerbrote, Käseknuffle mit steirischem, bauersalat and apfelstrudel. We made the main course: Käaseknuffle, typical from Vorarlberg.







I think it was a great job, we all had so much fun, we ate a lot and we learned about typical food in Austria, and typical ingredients!!!

The best apfel strudel I´ve ever tried!!! (it´s like the third one but still, amazing!!!)


A night in the opera

That evening we had some free time and I wanted to go to the opera.

I manage to capture the russian speaking comunity! ejejej (they were Inga, Katka and Vlad)






We were very lucky as we could see Le nozze di figaro from a perfect place (though we were standing, but 3,50 euros, what else can you ask for!!) We only waited for one hour to get the tickets. And the opera had even subtitles!!! (English and German)





We were standing there!

On arrival Training Day 1: Getting to know each other

Vorarlberg Volunteers

After a long long train night (10 hours) we finally arrived in Vienna and met Inga (who was on the same train but couldn´t find us earlier)


As we had still time (we arrived at 7,30 in the morning) we decided to have a walk through the town (the others hadn´t being there yet) so I was guide once more!






They can speak by themselves but I think we had a great time (at least I had) and we covered the main monuments in Vienna. Then we had a coffee break at Coffee Museum and we went to the meeting point in Europa Haus.





It´s quite far from the center but it´s an amazing place!!! We had our meetings in the schloß (castle) and when we came in it had all the original furnitures and even Sissi´s paintings! We owned the China Room for those days.




That afternoon we tried to know each other a little bit better, we were only ten volunteers so it wasn´t so difficult. We spoke about where we came from and about our proyects.

Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon

Ok the photos thing is getting better. Though is still wrong...


Now I´ll tell you about my day off. I went throw the town (Dornbirn) and I had a walk to the river, Dornbirner Ache, and I had magnificents views over the mountains.



So I continued walking towards the center of the town, thou I didn´t really know how to go from there, and I found what it appeared to me as a food market. I realized soon that it was done mainly by arabian people. There were teashops, kebab stores, and even some places with clothes. I tried something like a crepe with spinach in it (and a lot of spices) I really loved it there. I took a lot of pictures, as you can see.




Everything was done in the tradicional way, and when I continued my way to the center, I realized it was something organized by the islamic center (maybe the mosque, I don´t know if it´s both)















They even had arabian homemade sweets!! That of course I tasted, and I have to say they were delicious!!

So what I mostly did on my day off, was eating!!!!