Hello, my name is Maxim Berdugo and I am an ICYE volunteer from Austria. I started my voluntary service at 18 years of age and just recently turned 19. I live in the beautiful city of Vienna where I graduated school in May of 2023. In my free time I like to play guitar as I have a great interest in music and arts and also play in a band in bars in Vienna. Furthermore I also enjoy motorcycling in the area around the city. But my biggest hobby might sports, as Ilike to try lots of different types. I enjoy the physical but also the social aspect as you can meet lots of awesome people and have amazing times and I’m going to tell the story of my experience as a volunteer in Colombia.

Why Volunteer? Why Colombia? Well… I have always had an interest and admiration for people who experience as much as they possibly can, in their lifetime. Additionally, I like learning about new cultures and exploring the differences and similarities.

Traveling in general is a great thing to accomplish these goals. As good as those reasons are, the idea came from somewhere else. In Austria, every young man has to complete a mandatory military or civil service and as I was faced with these two options, neither seemed to excite my in any way. When a friend mentioned you could also do a volunteering service abroad I was determined to make that happen. Okay, and why Colombia? The reason I picked Colombia as my desired country is that I had learned Spanish in school and didn’t want to lose all my progress and additionally wouldn’t have to endure learning yet another language from the ground up. Colombia checked all my boxes and I am very happy with my decision.

The first couple of weeks of my journey marked some challenges. After waking up at 6am in Austria and a 12 hour direct flight from Frankfurt, Germany, I was greeted by almost my entire new host family. By the time I was in my new bed, my inner clock was set at 6am due to the six hour time difference. After being up for 24 hours, I was informed that I would have to get up in approximately 4 hours, as we would take a trip the following day. Quite jetlagged, I took a 4 hour road trip with my host father, sister, brother and his girlfriend. The reason for the trip was to visit some relatives in a small town named Garagoa in the region of Boyaca, because my host brother would start his volunteering service in England in a few days. As his English skills were the best among the siblings and both my parents did not speak a word of English, I was faced with one of the biggest and most common challenges for foreign volunteers, the language barrier. Although I have had Spanish classes in my last six school years I hadn’t read, heard or spoken Spanish in the last 9 months and the sudden change in language was something to get accustomed to. I was happy knowing the language to an extent, as many other volunteers came without ever having had a single class. Nevertheless, the very conversacional and specific accent of the friends and family in Garagoa left me puzzled for the majority of the trip because all I was used to was slower and essay specific Spanish I could barely use in day to day life. If anything, my trip to Garagoa showed me the pristine beauty of the Colombian countryside and nature that to some extent resembled the Austrian landscape I was used to, but in other ways was something I have never experienced before. 

With time I got more comfortable with it, somewhat out of necessity because, although my sisters and most of my coworkers spoke English to an extent, nearly all conversations at home and at work were held in Spanish. The additional personal online classes I had helped as well;) Beside the language barrier I noticed other, more subtle differences in day to day life. A lesson I had to learn the hard way was that I couldn’t flush toilet paper like in Austria and I ended up clogging the toilet. Another change was the one in my nutricion, as rice and meat became part of my daily diet while at the same time consuming way less vegetables and eggs. The food I missed most was good quality sourdough bread, which was nowhere to be found and my biggest pet peeve was the amount of, bland, cheese that was added to a variety of sweet dishes and other meals where it, in my opinion, does NOT belong.

One of my greatest experiences was a trip I took to one of the three biggest cities in Colombia, Cali. It was the first time that I left everyone behind and truly traveled by myself. I visited for three days I had off work during the Semana Santa. Once again I was astounded by the size difference between Austria and Colombia. Living in a city with a greater population than my entire home country took some getting used to, but taking a 12 hour bus ride, a duration in which you could span most of Austria, to a seemingly close city, was a whole new experience. I absolutely adored the weather in Cali with a temperature of around 30 degrees celsius all day. Though the absence of mosquitos in Bogota was significantly more comfortable. I spent my time exploring the city and all possible attractions it had to offer. With my hostel being in walking distance of the city center I had it easy visiting a lot of monuments without trouble. 

During my time as a volunteer so far I have experienced many new things, learned a lot, met amazing people and gained life experience I am going to take with me for the rest of my life.