Nеw Italian volunteers in Prilep

After two months of staying in Macedonia we are ready to write our first impressions of this interesting land.

To introduce ourselves: we are Davide, Mattia and Laura, three Italian volunteers coming in Macedonia for doing the EVS project in Prilep. We will be volunteering at INFOSEGA for one year and working on a project about developing entrepreneurship skills of young people in high schools

Our first picture of this country was while we were travelling by bus, in the way from Skopje to Prilep: An orange big moon appeared among the mountains and welcomed us in Macedonia where, every sunset is an explosion of wonderful colors. The Macedonian nature is one of the aspects that has attracted us most so far: the mountains that embrace Prilep create a suggestive atmosphere, it seems to be in a snow-ball, in a comfortable zone where the time is running in a different way than we were used in Italy.

Besides the nature, our daily life is marked by the work in Sega office, tasty meals and hanging out with other volunteers and local people. Prilep is a small city but it’s a nice place to live in: you could enjoy Macedonian food in many restaurants, hang out and listen to some good music in nice cafés, pubs and places. If you take a walk in the old and narrow streets of the center you can take a tasty Burek in one of the many bakeries spread all over the city and have a nice Trileche or Baklava, two of the traditional Macedonian sweets that remind us how this is a multi-cultural land with many influences that reflects on food, music, language, architecture and that make it so interesting country to explore.

Let’s speak about the language: it was kind of challenging to recognize every single letters in another alphabet, different from ours, but now after some lessons and exercises we are more and more enthusiastic to learn new words and to go deeper in Macedonian culture: it is definitely true that a new language opens up new people, new culture, new food….in a nutshell: a new world. We will have one year to discover more and more about this land and to know deeper its treasures.