Traveling made me a better person!
03.05.2020
During to COVID-19 circumstances, most probably you had a trip canceled these past weeks, or one in the near future will not happen. And I am sorry! Hopefully, you find a way to make up for the people you couldn't see or the work you couldn't get done. Meanwhile, you can use some of the time these days to look at photos/videos/materials of past trips 😊
I always liked to share my experiences and I will do the same here with bringing up some of the trips I had in the past 7 years, and with that, I will list of the institutions I visited there — maybe you find something interesting for your personal/professional development. It will be brief though, as there are more than 70 cities in around 30 countries, and most importantly if you know me, you know that my trips are always a combination of work and fun, so the stories would be endless - maybe some of them not to be told ever again. 😉
If any of the trips brings memories of us there, or sparks curiosity for you to know more on the programs and/or cities, please let me know 🙏
Training Course in Subotica, Serbia, in 2015, was my first ever trip alone. I only could buy a ticket from Tirana to Skopje, and the rest was more like “wish me good luck”. It took me +36h of buses to reach the hotel, after also facing some weird attitude of the police in the customs, but I escaped from their assumptions after some good 40min documentation check and phone calls. Unique Junior Enterprise was the organization I was representing: https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/european-training-calendar/training/do-enterprise-training-course-on-enterprise-spirit-creativity-and-innovation.3364/
The same year, July, 7 days after I had a minor surgery, I traveled to Adrasan, Turkey, for another Training Course about non-formal education and how to work with youth by using methods in outdoor activities. I swam with big turtles at dusk and swam some good km to reach a hidden beach. This time, I was representing Youth for Social Changes, another Albanian NGO. The host organization was http://www.lidosk.org/index.php/en/projects
August that year, another trip took me to Prijedor, Bosnia Herzegovina. It was an Advanced Planning Visit for a future Youth Exchange on “Cartoons and graphics fighting racism and xenophobia”. These trips close to Albania were teaching me about how similar we are and how helpful we could be for one another. Also, without knowing, these trips were preparing me for longer distances. The first time during this trip that I slept in a hostel ever, it was just for one night in Sarajevo, so the next day I would get the right bus for Prijedor. In there I found a scarf, that I still use — its dark blue with red and pink shadowed hearts. I had a double-sim Samsung phone, and the photos were tiny. See for yourself below 🤣
These stories are taking more time for me going through memories, rather than writing :)
….
….
….
