What are two Italians, three Spanish, one Pole, one Basque, one Albanian, two Turks and two Georgians, doing in Katowice, Poland?

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Discovering this underrated region, of course.

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We all came to Poland for a European Voluntary Service project in 2018 and stayed here one year, suffering the cold winter and the way nicer summers, enjoying the forests and history of the country, working, having new experiences and making new friends.

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We came with one task: finding a way to promote foreign tourism in the Upper Silesian region, and that’s not a small task! Silesia is full of attractive places, but has the ‘misfortune’ of being sandwiched between the way more famous Krakow and Wroclaw.

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At the end, we decided to go and ‘monitor’ some of the most attractive cities in the region and then create a website to guide young foreigners like us during their discovering of Silesia.

 

But we didn’t do just that, of course.

We promoted volunteering as a life experience and went, every Friday, in different schools to talk to young Poles about our countries.

 

We played with children and cooked for them. Went at the other part of the country to have one of the most amazing weeks of our live with six marvellous children in a fairy tale forest.

 

We taught our own languages and learned Polish (enough to order piwo and pierogi!), and then created some events and workshops for the locals and then ourselves.

 

We’re just nine,

but this year we lived the life of at least thirty people.