..Hi Vincent. Please introduce briefly yourself speaking about your life, your country and your hometown.

Oi, I’m Vincent, a 24 years old non-completely grown-up boy. I’m from Reims, the capital of Champagne, in France. Baguette. 

Taking inspiration of the famous quote of Charles De Gaulle about France, “How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?”, I want to ask you “How can you live in a country in which you can find – basically – just two main kinds of cheese (kashkaval and sirene) and a lot of vodka and rakia instead of your soft, kind and beloved Dom Perignon”?

How can I live in a country where they only have hard stuff and two kinds of cheese? I don’t, I survive! Jokes aside, it’s just adaptation: I’m not that a big fan of Dom Perignon so it’s not a problem. But talking about cheese, it is something that I really miss. Fortunately, you can find some different cheese in the supermarket. They are a bit more expensive but when you want some, price is not a compromise!

 

Some weeks ago you had a presentation at the Free University of Varna about EVS promotion and generic notions regarding your country. According to your experience, are you satisfied with the involvement of the participating students? Please make a short report of the event speaking of your sensations about the environment and the reception.

As far as I remember this presentation was interesting; actually a lot of students were attending to it. We had a good exchange time speaking and they had a lot of questions. The place, the university, was a really good place. In general when I’m making presentations of my country and about EVS the main question is “Why you came in Bulgaria?” and it’s funny because they don’t understand why people choose to come here.

Before to come to Bulgaria you had a master degree in marketing disciplines and some eclectic working experiences (if I’m not wrong you talked about videogames as well). What has pushed you to set aside your previous life – because, from my point of view, this is a kind of reborn – in order to embrace a totally new unfamiliar existence as EVS in a border country like Bulgaria (for sure not one of the most yearned and well-known in Europe)? Is this choice just a parenthesis between your past life and your future plans? 

I have experience in a lot of different fields. I like to learn and to discover. I was working before the EVS, I had a proper job and everything but I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. I mean that what I was doing wasn’t as concrete as I could expect. After some personal happening, I decided to quit my job and jump in the EVS opportunity. It is not a parenthesis it’s an evolution, I changed my mind about different things, comfort myself in some others and it gave me new ideas for the future!

Tell us something about your working place (the Social Teahouse) and your next activities as Association. 

Tell you about my project. Alright! So basically it is the best project in the world with the nicest people I have ever met. With this combination, you get The Social Teahouse project. We are aiming to offer a first job opportunity to orphans, to help them to integrate into social life and give them the basis of a stable life. We also aim at developing a hub to regroup all kind of people by doing activities/events almost every day.

 

For that purpose, I redirect you to our Facebook page where we put our events and I link you our website also!

(Here you can find the other interviews with the workers of the Social Tea House: Laura and Sergio and Nuria).

Do you have a personal project related or external to your actual tasks? 

Yes, I do, but they are secret!

Ok, I don’t wanna be killed by a hit man of the French Milieu! Time for a traditional question: could you tell us a story about the weirdest encounter or experience that you have faced during your life as an EVS volunteer? 

Weirdest… Well, it was during a trip to Rila’s mountain with friends. We were heading to Sofia airport after being on the mountain. Of course, we were not prepared to snow on the mountain so our clothes and shoes were wet. We decided to have a stop in a big mall and as everything was wet we went without shoes in the mall. After like one or two hours a bunch of security guards came to us and took us out of the mall thinking that we were homeless people. After a bit of talk, they laughed and get us back to our car!