By Anna Koch
Two years….
It had been two years since I had my EVS in Romania. It seems like a long time, but then again: Any amount of time seems like a long time when you’ve changed a lot.
Taking part in that EVS two years ago has been a very spontaneous decision. And, oh my, I was not ready. I was confused, overwhelmed, exhausted at times. Me, a sworn defender, servant, prisoner of rationality taking part in a project called “EV- yeS to emotions”!
Against all my expectations, somewhere within those two months I had finally realized, understood – without even noticing – how irrational it might be for a human to rely only on rationality and rationality alone.
That being said:
Two years… two years had passed.
An EVS doesn’t just end once you get home. For me it was like a power switch to start being alive, to take more control over my life, to express myself and my wishes. A lot, a lot, A LOT of things have changed: Friends, hobbies, goals, my worldview, even career-choices.
Expecting to do an EVS, then just getting back and moving on with your life as you had planned – well, that is probably rarely how it goes.
So, when I met part of the team again, I was expecting to tell them all how I have transformed, how my life has metamorphed into something completely different yet strangely gorgeous. I was expecting to have everybody point out how much I have changed; how much I had grown in those two years.
I was expecting it to be kinda awkward at first – after all there hadn’t been thaaat much contact for an extended period of time. Well…. Expecting…. I was wrong again. Again.
Irina asked me about how it was to meet part of the team and now, after getting this far, after introducing myself a bit, avoiding what I was ment to write about, I have now arrived at a point where I can’t but admit… that I… don’t know how to do that.
How should one explain, how it feels to meet people, that have influenced your life that much?
How could anybody convey in words how strange it feels to have friends from a totally different part of Europe that you met only by change, that became friends through being kind strangers without even knowing you.
And how can I possibly write about how it is to meet people without whom your life would be totally different?
In what words should I, a mere person, describe what kind of calm and still strong sense of connection it is to know, that there are people, thousands of kilometres away, from a different country, with different lives, with different stories and struggles. People that you can rely on – that think about you, that care about you, that have been there for you, simply because you where part of their life for a couple of weeks – which also just happened because they decided to invite strangers over, which just so happened to be you.
There are people in your life that have been, are and will be there with you in your biggest moments of glory, that have walked with you through the darkest caves of despair and that will continue to do so. Those are the people that are with you during your most special moments.
And then there are people that will turn moments into something special just by being in them.
Most of the time these two categories overlap. The people I had met on my EVS definitly belong to the later.
It is… like …. Seeing the first rays of sunlight after a night out partying. That’s the feeling – for me. It might it will probably not be that exact same feeling for you. But for me, it’s that.
And yes, I know I am being dramatic. But my mind is made to be dramatic, to speak all the colours others usually would politely tone down in order to not step out of the frame.
Borders are a strange thing. They might be very useful to govern people, to organize our lives, to give us some kind of clear structure, maybe a sense of belonging…. But I don’t think humans, at least young ones are really made to stay within them, that’s just not in our nature and in days and time like these it is not intended to be. Belonging has hardly anything to do with borders anymore. For those few days there was a place in Salzburg, seemingly countryless where we could all be just what we are: People. And it made me feel alive.
Life can be made an inexplicitly precious as wonderful thing, through ourselfs, through others and in the best case: with others. Those are the times when something is built together, experienced together which could neither be seen nor exist if everybody was on their own.
And it is hard to convey what I mean by that.
I am just a student in a train, typing, trying to convey to a unknown stranger what such experiences can mean. I can not give you the experience itself.
You gotta go and see for yourself.
You gotta go and feel for yourself.
Anna
