It Starts.

So here it is. An EVS Gimle Café blog. I'm sure all you people are just gasping to know all about us EVS - we are fascinating creatures. We spend hours in our secretive lair (aka the 'EVS House') and creep out to run a little Cafe in the heart of Roskilde - for free! (For FREE you say!? Yes 'Volunteer' means what it means. But not in a horrible kind of way. In fact the Danish 'Frivillig' is kind of self explanatory - free will ja?).

But how?! You wonder. Well, I shall tell you how my little friend.

Once upon a time the whole world was a jumbled mess of countries that had no real idea that there were many other countries all over the place. Then some rather bossy colonialists went around and starting to nab countries because they were feeling frisky. All sorts of countries popped up with all sorts of languages, but somehow, the big bitch 'Britain' was able to become a pretty big influence. And English became, a rather important language.

Luckily for me, many many years later, I was born into a small industrial town, where this so called 'English' language was the mother tongue. I just sat and ate and cried and listened to my parents pull their hair out in frustration, while slowly the language began to formulate itself in my baby mind. It was a wonderful thing. I was a talkative mite, and soon became known as 'chatty' in school (yeah, thanks cliché teacher phrases for that one). Around the rest of Europe, some other little people were learning other languages. They had no idea that one day they would be forced to learn another one, because it's 'sort of' important in this day and age.

Then one day a few years later, Europe decided it wanted to be friends with itself. It went around asking if everybody wanted to join this huge party called the 'EU'. Most people were like - uuurgh, hell yeah! Though a few were a little sceptical (hello Norway) and others decided they wanted to make their own rules (typical Brits). Somehow, despite all of our crazy cultural differences and mad languages, we came together. And the EU was born.

However, because we all had cultural differences and mad languages, there was a bit of trouble trying to get all the different cheeses to melt in the big melting pot. The EU frowned and said...hmmm. Well this is a pickle. After years of deliberating, and looking at each other saying - Hvad? Was? Quoi? ¿qué?? they developed a cunning plan. Lets send all kinds of young people abroad, so they can learn to love one another and realise that, all cultural freaky deakyness aside, we are pretty much the same people underneath it all.

The came up with a few names, and Youth in Action certainly has something to do with it, but EVS (European Voluntary Service) is basically one great idea to make us all pals. Luckily for me, the main language is always English. It is good for others too, if they want to practice. We all volunteer somewhere, and we get some pennies from the EU to help us live like regular people in the country (i.e. not starving, with a bike, and hopefully a bed to sleep on.) And it kind of works, in spite of all the culture shocks and language barriers. This, you shall learn about in my next post. 

So Goodnight Denmark, Norway, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria and SCOTLAND!

(Cliffhanger! Whaaat..)