My (probably) last adventure outside of Prague during this summer was the INspire project in Ommen, the Netherlands. The project was about painting, dance, body movement, meditation, drawing, theater and so on. The project was written for LGBT+ people and it made to be a pretty extraordinary experience. During those 2 weeks I managed to visit also my friend Andy in Amsterdam, visit his home at the church, walk around and workout in Utrecht, visit the university of Gröningen, do yoga and running every day and enjoy unstoppable laughing with Laura in some random hidden coffee shop where we got the most expensive banana bread.

 

When I was taking the decision how to actually get to Ommen (which I thought is a village of maximum 100 inhabitants in the middle of fields, I considered the fact that I don’t want to be on my way too long and also want to see some nice place before. And of course, even when I visited Amsterdam two times prior to this visit, I finally decided to come one more time again. What perfectly fitted to my plan was, that Andy, a friend with who I met in Armenia in June, lives in Amsterdam. So we agreed already in Jerevan that I could visit him.

Andy joked in Armenia that he is a priest but I didn’t really pay attention to it because he seemed to be the last person that I would guess to be an actual priest. However, Andy wasn’t joking! When I  (finally after some small coincidences) arrived at the station where he lives, he took me to a house where some old lady welcomed us and I was just still a little bit shocked checking where we actually are. Later on, I realized that Andy is a real priest and that is the reason why he lives by the church. He offered me one whole room for myself because some other „brothers“ of him were not there. I also could borrow his bike for what I am super grateful because thanks to it I could discover the city in a completely different way than I had discovered before. I really enjoyed Amsterdam a lot. I was basically the whole two days biking on the outskirts and discovering parks, lakes and also goat farms. I did yoga and also went for a run.

 

 

The first day in the evening we went with Andy to his friend Ruth and his wife for a diner. They had a wonderful summer house and the wife of Ruth cooked for us super tasty Indonesian soup which was more than appreciated after the whole day of not eating much. Ruth was apparently a very good and educated musician because he knew about Czech music even more than me which is actually a little bit shame since I attended music school and music lessons for more than 9 years. After the diner we went to the city centre which was super dirty and full of all kind of tourists. I am sorry about the centre of Amsterdam. Too full, dirty and anonymous. So if I could recommend, try to discover more other parts of Amsterdam than the centre! I stayed in the New-Western part and it is worth to explore.Before I went to Ommen, I visited in Amsterdam the Stedelijk Museum (modern and contemporary art) which I liked but it didn’t especially impress me. However, funny thing that happened after was, that I met some guy from Schwitzerland who told me to be a teacher and was not really able to pay attention much to me since he was too stoned. We sat for a while in some park together and talked a bit. He drew also a picture of me which didn’t look too realistic. At the end, we tried to smoke a joint together but it tasted really terrible. So he decided to give me all his weed and the joint as well. Thank you! We said goodbye to each other and I went back to Andy’s place to pick up my stuff. I took the train to Ommen around 6 p.m.

 

I went outside to do yoga the first morning in Ommen and one guy (who got a nickname from our group „Viking“) came to me and asked me to teach him something. So we did a few asanas and then he got bored and went back to his group. The project that he was attending was for people with the Tourette Syndrome. It was kind of interesting to observe these people. Once when we were sitting on a bench and talking, the Viking guy and some other guy went for a “walk” with their friend and she was doing kind of weird movements that I even cannot describe. She was acting as she would puke and at the same time she was impulsively lifting her leg up to her face. And she always checked if we were observing her. In about 4 hours later I went to their house because I wanted to make some tea and she was still there with some other guys holding her. Interesting. But at least she complimented me many times because of my hair so it was nice haha. 

First two nights and days we smoked all joints that we had from Amsterdam and ate all green brownies and muffins which brought me back to the teenage times when I was smoking all the time and ate a lot as well. So I did the first two nights. 😀 I still don’t get it why people are so hungry when they smoke weed but with me, it is always like that and doesn’t matter how much I have or if I ate before or not. 

I connected a lot with Umberto and Laura with who we created a „Connection group“ and were laughing basically all the time.

I experienced many ups and downs during that project. I felt somehow excluded for some time since I was one of the few „straight“ people there and I had the feeling that some people do not really get why I came. And I also had enough time to think about myself and things I do and stuff like that. Haha everyone knows the mood I guess. 😀

In one of the last days, we created a very cool (and even if you don’t like it pretend that it is cool because we put all our hearts in it) video where we expressed ourselves while dancing on our favorite song Tri Poloski. Thanks to this experience I learned how to do a proper slavic squat. If you don’t know how to do it, check this video and learn how to squat like a proper Slav. 

Overall, I had really valuable conversations about relationships, religion, self-confidence, LGBT+ topic in general, travel and so much more.

And what I am taking from this week?
I am alive, I want to be less dependant on other people, I am my own goddess and I am the organizer of my own time. I love movement in general and I want to connect more with nature.