It's weird when you come back home. People we know all along having the same conversations and discussions, and opinions about the same subjects we forgot. Maybe not everything, but lots of things stayed the same. Your mom goes to the same bakery. Your friends go to the same bar. People seem to have the time of their lives in places they already been a hundred times. In places where, before, we thought that maybe life could't get better than that. And it might be true for some of ex-evs people.
But still, i'm sure that everyone changed even for a bit. Not only because we traveled. Not only because we were in a different culture. But mostly because we were living there. Going to the same bakeries, the same bars, the same restaurants, having discussions lasting for months. The difference was that, we were in the middle of possibly nowhere, talking with a french, a dutch, a cypriot, a portuguese, because the english girl broke two dishes. Or things at work were shitty. We were having routines fucking far away from home, and we didn't notice that until we got back. Or at least, i didn't.
I was at a youth center in Kavadarci, Macedonia (i love greece, but i can't call it fyrom) for 9 months. Kavadarci ain't big, 20, 30.000 people. Kids there were from different generations, and our main work was being, playing, having activies with them during our shifts. Yes, those kids are used to a multicultural environment every day. And we are talking mostly about poor kids, because the rich ones usually don't think that big about the center. I can guess why, but i had to talk about some problems in the country. Maybe another time.
The thing is: lots of stuff that turned out to be routine for us, aren't normal for our friends and family from home. This seems a very simple judgement, but i couldn't see clearer in my evs: i was just doing the usual things- speaking little macedonian with the kids. Going to Skopje to see people, to the old bazaar and eat baclava. Being almost the only one dancing at the clubs. Getting drunk in the kafanas. Having dinner with local people. Speaking little macedonian everywhere. I was in Macedonia, but this can be applied to every country guess.
Also traveling. Being stopped by the police in border controls. Seeing how people live and think, and being like "fuck my country isn't that conservative, why we are always complaining?". Then explain this back in Portugal, where i'm from. For me, being stopped by the bosnian or macedonian, or serbian control isn't that weird. For people here it seems like a distant planet or a different dimension. Because they weren't living there. Usually they don't know local people from our evs countries. And lots of people see us as exotic travelers, crazy dudes who just went nuts by accepting to go to middle of nowhere for some months (i guess even people who did evs in big cities can relate with this).
Thinking those times were normal and coming back realizing immediatly they were not - for everyone around us. Fuck it, they ARE normal. Why going to Skopje or Belgrade isn't normal? I've been there sometimes. I had fun. I had too many beers. I don't get lost in the center of both places, and i know how to ask the basic things. I know people living there. I want to live there!
Why? Just because it's far away? Well it's not. It's just taking the bus from Kavadarci and be there around 2 hours later in skopje. 8 hours for belgrade. It's easy to go there! And that's the thing isn't it? I guess when you come back your home doesn't feel like home. Our problem now isn't about getting out of the comfort zone. Is about going back to the comfort zone we created ourselves.
