Øyarock

Last weekend there was another huge event at Hundvåg fritidsklubb. This is Cristina's club and it is on one of the islands. Means it belongs to Stavanger, but you have to cross two bridges across the fjord and two other islands before you arrive there. At least you don't have to take the ferry. Hundvåg is a district just like Tasta or Sunde, but the event was for the while town: Øyarock.

This is one of the biggest festivals for youngsters run by Ungdom og Fritid. Eight bands (including two from Tasta) played at the festival and all four of us worked as volunteers. Pavel helped with light and sound, Vincent visited the concert together with the youngsters from his youth club and Cristina, Elena and me were responsible for the kitchen.

We arrived at two o'clock and started immediately with cooking. The food for the bands and for selling had to be done until five. So 20 artists, the crew and approximately 150 guests had to fed. We made taco-, two noodle-, and couscous salad, hamburgers and veggie burgers, baked potatoes and bread. Three people, music, high motivation and high efficiency :D It was so much fun, I do not know if they could have given me any better task. Hard work, but great. When the concert started, we took turns in selling food and filming/ taking pictures of the concert. The bands played until 22:00, but afterwards we had to tidy up and put all the equipment (including light/ sound consoles, curtains and the whole stage)  back into trucks outside. So we worked until have past eleven. It was very intense, but the whole festival was such a huge success that we still managed to celebrate a bit afterwards.
The bands were really good, the audience happy and the food sold ;)

Spring vibes

Hey!

Okay, spring has come. Definitely. Not that anything would be green or the flowers in blossoms, but the weather is great. The sun was shining during the whole weekend, the wind was almost gone and somehow this city awakens from a long deep hibernation. At least 15 degrees on Sunday, biking tours and playing volleyball feels like spring. Or as the Norwegians would say: Summer has come: p

It started on Friday when there was a concert at Tasta Bydelshus of one of the bands, who rehearse there every other day: Novac. They play together with another young band from Bekafaret, the club where Pavel works. The concert was very nice and we had many new teenagers at the club, but still it felt more like another rehearsal for the big festival next week. It is called Øyarock and takes place at Hundvåg, Cristina`s workplace. Bands from all over Stavanger are going to play and we will work the whole day there, helping with the stage, in the kitchen (I have the glorious task to make vegetarian meals) and just try to create a nice event. It is usually pretty fun every year even though it is tough work and a long day. We are still looking forward to it.

During the breaks of the concert, the teenagers could go outside because it was still so warm and mild that suddenly a whole new atmosphere came up J After the concert Cristina and me went to the Motorpsycho concert at Folken, but went home afterwards because the next day the big cleaning called “vårdugnad” was waiting for us. All the volunteers working there were invited to help tidying the whole place up, clean it, throw out all the old things and afterwards eat pizza together. It was great!

The event started at 12 and when we arrived (by bike), we first helped working outside because of the beautiful weather. Then we cleaned the office of our group (SMF) and discovered a bunch of new secret rooms at Folken. Like the attic. We had two containers outside and one inside to fill with stuff we do not need anymore and I can tell you it was a lot! Totally worth it. Now Folken is a beautiful shiny place again J For metal standards of course.

After a long hard day of work, we finally ate our pizza in the evening and then headed to a birthday party of a friend.

On Sunday, we stayed almost the whole day outside because it was so warm and sunny. We jumped on the trampoline, drank tea and ate food in the garden, played football, read books or just relaxed in the sunshine. Around six o’clock we went to the Vaulen beaches to play Volleyball together with the Spanish guys. It is a beautiful place near the city center of Stavanger from where you have a view both over the fjord to the mountains on the other side and over the city along the coast. Such a nice way to end the weekend.

 

Easter activities

So, Easter has come and we were super busy doing way too many things. Or not. Depends on how you want to see it.
Vincent went on his second road trip to Sweden and Denmark while Cristina was going to Spain to visit her family and after going to London celebrating her birthday. Pavel and me stayed in Stavanger with a whole week of holidays ahead. But even though most people were on vacation, we still had some activities going on. The first event was the Easter workshop for children on the first Sunday of the Easter break. Whoever came to the weekly Sunday café could join and make some paper eggs with glue and scissors. Both Cristina and Pavel joined with helping the children, so all in all it was a huge success.

But after Cristina had left, we had a rather quiet Monday including cooking with our friend Elena, an hour of excessive work out (it was not...just a bit hard for us) and relaxation. On Tuesday one of our most interesting activities of the year began: The first project of the organization "Open Hands for You", which consists of four or five volunteers, who want to organize events for and with refugees as voluntary integration work. They got in contact with the Frivilligsentral, where Jeanette and I work, quite early and since I was very interested in joining them, we planned the activities together. The Tuesday evening was a movie night for refugees between 18 and 25, all men. We rented Gausel Bydelshus, because it is close to the Stavanger refugee camp, where approximately 700 refugees live. After preparing everything around 55 people came and not only watched the movie, but also played games, ate popcorn and helped cleaning afterwards. They were really nice and you could talk to most of them in English or even Norwegian. They told us about their ways to Norway, the life at the "Asylmottak" and that there are not a lot of activities for them here in Stavanger. So we were very glad to have this shared evening while Aline, the head of Open Hand for You, was already planning the next event for this group.

But first we had another event on Saturday. We went to the Asylmottak, where we had a room for group activities on our own and started a similiar Easter workshop to the one on Sunday for children and their parents. Again they painted the eggs and put them up on the wall while the mothers made waffles for eating them later in the big entrance hall. It was a very big and lively event with way too many children running around and hopefully having fun ;)

Fur us it was great to see that you do not need a lot to do workshops and motivate other people doing activities. Sometimes it just helps to feel as a group and create a nice atmosphere. After this great week full of events we really deserved some days of holiday including hiking, doing nothing and for me also a few days in Germany. Now we have returned home and the last person to come back is Cristina tonight. Then we can say "Hi" to spring in Norway :)