Week 1 – the journey and getting to know the new environment
I packed for my trip one day before leaving for Poland. I travelled by FlixBus, boarding the bus at 1:15 a.m. We drove without any stops all the way to Austria, where we made our first stop before continuing towards Germany. At the German border, we were stopped by German border control, but they found no irregularities, so we continued our journey.
We arrived in Munich, where I waited for an hour and a half before changing to a bus to Berlin. There, I had a longer stop of 3 hours and 40 minutes. Everything went smoothly again, and I was able to continue my journey all the way to Szczecin. When I arrived, the project’s co-coordinator was waiting for me and drove me to my accommodation. On the way, she told me where everything was, but because it was late and dark, I couldn’t see much. She accompanied me to the apartment, gave me the keys and introduced me to my flatmates. She also told me that I could take the following day off, which I did, as I needed to unpack everything and get some sleep.
The next day was more relaxed. I had some introductory conversations with my flatmates and got along well with everyone. The day after that, following the coordinator’s instructions, I went to the office with one of my flatmates. There, I met the girls who work in the office. We had some good conversations, and they explained what my tasks would be and how everything works. To finish the day, we had an hour of Polish lessons.
I discovered that Polish is both difficult and easy for me. Some words were completely unfamiliar to me, while others were very similar to Croatian and Slovenian.
Friday arrived, bringing another day of getting to know the work at the office. My colleagues and I went to Villa Lentz, where we were welcomed by children from a school. While they attended a guided lesson about the history of the building, we had an hour of free time and explored Villa Lentz ourselves. After our independent visit, we joined the children and helped them tie poems to strings, which we later hung on a tree. This marked the end of my day and my first working week.
I used my free weekend to explore Szczecin a little and visit the nearby park, which is just across the street from my accommodation.
