Projectplanb’s Weblog

Coming up soon!

Coming up soon!

And it was morning, early morning. Ad tertiam horam! The dark black sky mingles with the first speckles of daytime grey. After energizing massages the day commences and Gloria looms. Frantic finalizations, last minute changes, even inspiring new creations. Filled with Wheeler’s wholesome midday treat we embark on a journey through the triste forest towards civilization, towards the focus of our day, of our last week, towards Gloria, towards the culmination of all our workshop efforts into one final presentation. Gloria. This name has been mentioned oh so often in the bygone days. How will it be? We find a place with flare, a place with style. Is it a theatre, is it a concert hall? Are we in an American diner? Or is this a raw martial feeling emitted from every corner? Whatever this place is, whatever thoughts it provokes, for this evening we will stamp our own special mark on it. As we swarm into the building there is the din of the sound check, art works scaling the sides and a whole new, surrealist country emerging to cover the back wall. Eyes twinkle and smiles rush over the lips of these young people as the feeling covers them that the work of the past week has taken shape and is starting to pay off.

Bit by bit everything comes together and the time is rife for a little sustinance. First impressions are, as so much of our life, wrong and this cafeteria-cum-restaurant surprises. The garlicky salmon convinces even the most adamant of fish haters and the beef in pepper sauce could hardly have been better. To top this all off, a young man finds that piece of himself he knew was missing, he manages to discover it on this dark Helsinki evening: he tries the HP Sauce and all else falls to utter insignificance. These delicious dishes way heavy in the stomach accompanied by the crispy fried potatoes but duty is calling and so to Gloria we shall return.

Quickly, quickly passes the time. Soon we are all seated firm in our seats prepared for this most special soirée, accepting that hardly any outsiders have braved the darkness to join us. 118 minutes later the spotlights fade for the last time. From a crawling start of country presentations, it can only get better. And it does. How diverse these different acts were; the world of cinematography shows its facettes in two very different but equally well produced short films, an amazing animation and an interesting and so special documentary on this beautiful country’s nature accompanied by a strangely contrasting musical selection. The oral participation of singers, rappers and beat boxers is super, but nothing can top the synthesis of visual and aural experience performed by the theatre-workshop.

Before the show continues with two very talented bands and a lot of dancing (unfortunately the Finnish youth, who have come to see their bands, decide not to let us enjoy their dancing capabilities and seem not to be amused by ours), a spontaneous backstage party emerges, and right in the middle of this, a Mahypphrian midget teaching the authors of this text a game of Salmoniak and standing in line. Back at the ranch it is “hancake” time, and then all the joys of this European youth exchange enfold.

Tim and Paul (Germany)

Sounds of something like a crow woke me up. Helen. She was running around the house flapping her hands and screaming like some sick bird. A truly annoying way to wake up one might say, but it made me laugh. As usual it took some time for all of us to make it to the dining room to have breakfast. We had sausages –I bet the Germans were happy.

This day was about participating all the workshops, workshop market day. I am a member of the art workshop group and my group started with visiting the surrealism workshop. We made questions and answers without knowing what was asked or answered. With this method we found out that we have to move on because we are invisible and that the spirit of nature ate all the crackers.

In the theatre workshop we jumped around. Wow, my writing is seriously boring. Well anyway, after theatre I fell asleep and slept maybe for two hours. I remember how I was somewhere in between of being awake and asleep and wondering is it morning or evening. Someone said that dinner’s ready, so I woke up.

Some very good Spanish food we had. Tapas and cheese and sangria. Nam nam. Spanish evening continued with a bull race around the house. It meant walking on poor Tudor who was the first one falling down in our struggle. At least I remember stepping on him. I also threw a coffee cup on Jussi’s neck. It was full of coffee.

A nice day I had. Now I’m feeling tired and actually it is Thursday already. I’m done.

Elli (Finland)

The morning of course was the hard part of the day for me. But l was there for energizers even half asleep

However, Monday was the day most typical for ”Youth in Action” projects – workshops in the morning and in the afternoon. In media workshop we had so much fun l almost died laughing, although we were shooting dark freaky scenes. But when we were shooting outside l stopped laughing immediately, because of the cold wind and light clothing. Anyways, we did quite a lot for the workshop, so the day was pretty much successful.

In the evening there was German national evening (details in Andrea’s article).

It was very special day indeed – we had SUN for 28 seconds (never before and never after).

Mateja (Slovenia)

Morning like every other here in Meriharju. Night is never long enough even it lasts for more than 17 hours. It is difficult in the mornings but when you hear all the guys from our little community and feel the atmosphere, you are awake immediately; if not, energizers wake you up for sure.

I was in charge for kitchen help that day. Collecting trash, cleaning, preparing food. Lots of small talks with Wheeler, our new chef who switched Sara in the kitchen. We tried to make some order, cause it was really like in Hiroshima there.  

There were some sun rays in the afternoon too and for »grand finale« Romanians prepared great meaty dinner which I (and also the other Slovenians) liked a lot.

Like all the time there were lots of small things that makes us happy and gives us a feeling why it is so worthy to take a part in this project.  They compose a greater and deeper meaning which is not describable by words but everybody of us knows what it is about  

Matic S (Slovenia)

The day begun like no other here in Meriharju, for today we were going on a alomst all day trip to Porvoo.

After breakfast we all knew that today is going to be a good one, just be reading the bus`s name: Sunny buses. An relaxing hour later we reached our final destination. A beautiful old town with friendly people and a great atmosphere. Some of us immediately began to play the game we were given (you had a small random thing and you had to trade it with one of the people living in Porvoo for something else and then trading it again). The game really helped you to get to know the people and even to get to know yourself better.

In Porvoo we saw the church, which was unfortunetly being renovated, because a man thought it would be a good idea to light the leaves in the gutters, because the church would shine really nicely, but across to his plan the roof caught on fire. The good thing is that it didn´t burn down completely thanks to the quick reactions of the local firefighters.

After visiting the church (sadly only from the outside) we went to visit one of the local museum: The Art factory. There we could see some of the more modern art pieces in two galleries.

Next on our schedule was a short break which most of us used to continue to play the game written above.

To continue our day we went to an organic farm for lunch. A short walk later we gathered in the lunch room where we had a completly natural and healty meal (and to mention, it was THE best meal we had the whole week even tough it didn`t contain any meat-fish not involving into the meat group). The people there were really friendly and they even invited us to come back in the summer time as volunteers.

After lunch we went back to the city to do some last minute shopping in Porvoo, but to our bad luck we had some minor bus problems and we stayed at the end of the street for about half an hour waiting for the bus driver to fix it. So when we finally had given up on the whole fixing thing we went back to the city centre, but to continue our bad luck strike, ALL of the shops were closed. Me and my game-partner decided to spend the rest of our free time in a coffee shop and enjoy a cup of hot chocolate to warm us up in that cold windy day.

The feeling of arriving in a nice, warm and dry house was really good. We all felt very tired, but the fun didn’t stop there, as it was time for the Slovenian national evening! After finding out something more about the Slovenian national anthem we did what all of the Slovenians do. Enjoying ourselves with games that involved what else than drinking! The Slovenians really can prepare a good evening that doesn`t really involve drinking so much. We actually learned some very interesting stuff about also the Slovenian poet France Preseren.

So yeah I can conclude that this day was one of the best during the camp.

Sabina (Slovenia)

I’m laying on the mattresses in front of the fireplace and trying to gather thoughts about Friday. It doesn’t take long before laizurents of different nationalities fall upon me for this warm hearth is the favorite spot for everyone to gag and jig, to lay around and, if one’s lucky enough, to get a massage. But one can not write here. I went to the mess hall for I was tempted by it’s silence. I hadn’t found even a beginning for the Friday as the hey-Kristin-what-are-you-writing-bla-bla-bla and hey-what-are-you-doing-bla-bla crushed in as an axe.

OK. After long lasting explanations I found myself surrounded by Slovenians drinking tequila and singing Christmas songs. I got up and sat down in a new place and got up and sit down in another place just to get up and find another place to walk away from. So. I have to find a beginning for the Friday.

“HEY! Have you seen my… It’s like this little black thingy and… hmm.. what are you writing?”

I feel the migraine getting ready for launch.

“HEY! Still writing, huh?”

Not a single word.

“HEY! I see you found yourself a new place. How’s it going? Are you ready?”

Yes, done.

 Kristin (Estonia)

Soon available!

39 Robinson Cruesos?

So what do we have here – the third day of the camp. A part of us is in the woods, in a surviving camp named „Back to roots” or as we, the northern people prefer to call it – „Elu on till” which in direct translation means „Life is a small penis”. Whether the life is a penis, small or big, thinking on the topic of surviving made me come to an conclusion.

People normally take extreme places, extreme weather or any other kind of conditions of not being in your normal element as something generally related to surviving. And its true. Most of us probably dont think that all these different people together here, living side by side, are also surviving in a way. Ofcourse in a much more comfortable way, as we dont have to worry about polar bears sneaking around our tent… But what I actually mean is, that here is many people together, who are from different countries, who have different cultural background, who are not in the same age, who this and that and some other third thing. And even this house here reminds me of an island, as it is an isolated place, quite far from public transport, from cityslights and actually even from the neighbours house (luckily that happens to be a good thing, because this neighbour of ours likes cows more then people, and as far as I remember, non of us really look like a cow…). Now if we get back to the Homo Sapiens – we all are together here – the first three days have shown us that altough it happens to be so, that the people here are extremely nice and cool, they still forget themselves drinking until late hours, forgetting their tea cups every and anywhere, etc. So it seems that sometimes the simpliest tolerance to others is the hardest. And the weirdest thing about it is the fact that we have no other excuse than the one „sry, it just happened”. Luckily people are not abusing that and I am pretty sure that we will „survive” until the end. Actually, remembering the story of Robinson, you probably will make some good friends here, I just hope that you name them better that Mr. Crueso did… Thursday for example

Mia (Spain-Estonia)