Our last days in Latvia took us through different kind of emotions which has been driving us throughout the time of Action for Europe and with thoughts about future. After Midsummer's Night we still spent couple of days in my countryside, spending evenings in candle lights and evaluating our teamwork, our attitudes, sharing our life stories and recalling back our aims and visions about Action for Europe. It was very silent and lovely time, full of nice spirit and enjoyment of simple things. I felt like being together with real friends after real challenges in our inner and outer journey, and it was also a very special time for me, being togeheter with some of my friends with whom I have shared living somewhere on the other side of the World, here in Livonian Coast - in the place which is the most important in my life..
After spending this - very important time for ourselves we moved further to Liepaja - "the city where wind is born" as we Latvians say. It is the third biggest city of Latvia, situated at the beautiful seacoast - a home for many good musicians and artists. We spent our time in Karosta - a very special part of Liepaja, a town within the town appeared at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.Liepaja, which was under the great Russia Empire occupation at that time, was well known with its ice free trade port. Because of this fact and the border closeness, this place was chosen as the base for Russian Empire Baltic Navy.Starting from 1890 a huge fortress and military town was started to build in the North of Liepaja City (www.karosta.lv).
This place with all its history and special atmosphere was a perfect place for us to go through our evaluation time and think of our future plans. Here we were happy to meet some more life experienced people to go with us together through this special time - Inese Voika (Latvia, IofC International Council), Chris Evans (England, IofC International Council), Christer Lilliehook (Sweden), Lotty Wolvekamp (the Netherlands) - the people who have been together with us in their hearts all through our journey and long before that. Also couple of people from Latvian IofC team joined us, so together we were really nice group of wonderful people:)
With all kind of activities we have been step by step going through our AfE time and analysing the facts, feelings and actions during it. We were having nice laughing times, honest sharing times and a lot of personal talks. Besides all of this we were living in a very creative environment, together with some artists from France who were making crazy exhibitions:) Really nice!
We finished our evaluation time moving into the future and what it could bring. In the end we all felt, that this AfE experiment has been really successful although we have a lot of things to learn from and take into our next projects or activities. It has been different of course from AfL and especially because we organized everything by ourselves the stress and emotions which come together with this have also been indescribable, so this is time for us to rest now. To sleep endless hours, to do nothing and think nothing, just let the moment pass.. But this is just a while - a time of silence, soon we will all be into new things again, but for that we need to regain our energy again:)
We will send out a report about or last events in a while (sorry for being late with that) and in some while we will also send a report ab out our whole programme and our thoughts of future. We are still around:)
Now we are all back to our home countries, Action for Europe has finished, but this is not the end. As every end is new beginning, also hopefully this will be a new beginning of something else.. And as we all came up to the most important thing in the end of our journey - that we have all become great friends, and staying human is in the heart of everything...
Thank you everyone who has been with us in your heart during our travel across the countries and peoples hearts. This has been a very big journey of my personal life at least, so I am happy for this opportunity to be on the road with all of you!
with much of love,
Ulla
p.s.
the pictures will come:) Sooner or later!
