Just yesterday I was talking with Luisa, a fellow intern and a dear friend of mine who is also leaving now, and said: “It feels like I started the internship yesterday and not three months ago”. Yesterday, because time flew by so fast that I still cannot fully realize that I’m finding myself here, in the library, already writing my goodbye post. But even if it seems that just one day has passed, what a day it was. A day of laughs, surprises, growth, confrontations, overcoming fears, connecting, sometimes failing but finding enough courage to try again, experiencing.

I had a vague idea of the tasks that I would do at Moja Mavrica, and I was surely slightly nervous but the overbearing excitement did not let me step back. As I reminisce about my first day, I will never forget the question that I asked Michelle unsurely: “And how will the other interns know that we’re here?..”, to which she replied: “Oh! There are no other interns. It’s just going to be the two of us for now”. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t become ever so slightly disappointed and discouraged. At the end of the day, that is probably not one of the first things you want to hear when you’re new in a different city and a different country. But I pushed through, and I would only realize later how much this period of time when I was the only intern helped me in its own way, because day after day, week after week, the uncertainty gradually vanished, and more and more voices would fill the coworking space, more and more events would appear in the schedule, but I would still feel that everything was under control because I had had so much time to focus purely on my personal tasks. Yet if it hadn’t been for your words of encouragement and your gentle guidance, Michelle, it would have been way more difficult to believe that the next months would make up for this less eventful part of the internship. I still don’t know how you keep everything in sight.

That being said, a few weeks after my arrival, the working constellation already became a bit different. Finally, another intern joined Moja Mavrica too. Ema, I think our first week or so together was slightly awkward, but from the very first day I was amazed by how brave you are while still being so young. It’s great that we live in the same city, because you stayed for way too little. 

Luisa, our reverberating laughs were the loudest everywhere, be it the library, Center Rog, Mladi Zmaji, or Metelkova, and our little dances the most mesmerizing. I admire your unapologetic authenticity, and I look up to your confidence, professional and personal. And your picture taking skills!

Marie-Sophie and Jeremias, you both brought the calmness into our working space that was sometimes very much needed. I could see that you were always working so diligently (at times, definitely more than me) and I wish I would be able to participate in your workshops.

To all the interns that arrived more recently, I had way less time to get to know you better, but it was enough time to be assured that Moja Mavrica will keep standing strong. 😉

The interviews, the youth exchange, the workshops, the board games nights — every week brought something new. Some days would also bring a ton of daily reflections that I, in all honesty, could be careless with, which was not all too exciting, but that was fine too, because I could confide in my fellow interns — and a shared sorrow is half a sorrow. 

To Iva and Teja, who I wasn’t able to meet in the end, but still want to say something: Iva, thank you for your oversight on the more professional and academic side of things; I am happy to have contributed a lot to the Creative Resilience project. Teja, I actually grew to like your instagram posts (even if my facial expressions look very questionable in a lot of the pictures) and thank you for being my biggest instagram fan, too.

I realized that I can keep writing more, and more, and more, but in the end, I still have to face saying goodbye. Bittersweet. It is bitter in that I can now only be connected to Moja Mavrica through memories, and it is sweet in that I have made these memories that I can take with me.