European Wilderness Volunteer Diary

The Diary of the European Wilderness Society Volunteers

Wilderness Diary

An evening of food and culture

Hi, Vicky here! I’ve been a volunteer at the European Wilderness Society since October. So much has happened since then, and various daytrips, dinners and winter sport activities have let me properly settle into life in Tamsweg and get closer to everyone in the office. One thing I was really looking forward to was an international dinner, an EWS tradition. With just....

740-hour walk and all the wilderness I have skipped

Hi, Servus, Привет, my name is Elena and since January I’m the new ESC-Volunteer at the European Wilderness Society. Here’s the story of my 4297 km long journey from my hometown in Russia to Austria.  From the banks of Volga to the banks of Danube I cross multiple regions and countries, different ecological and time zones on my way to the EWS office. I move....

Skifahren in der Zeit des Lockdowns

Hello! I thought I would do a little German post seeing as we’re in Austria and that one of the key parts of being a volunteer abroad is learning the local language (although I’m not quite sure how much of the local Lungau dialect I understand still!). So here goes my winter update… Letztes Jahr habe ich während Herbst darauf sehr gefreut, in Winter....

Arriving in Tamsweg during COVID times

Hi all! My name is Lia, originally from Spain, and I’m one of the new volunteers joining the European Wilderness Society team!  I arrived to Tamsweg the 15th of March, after a long journey that started the day before in Aarhus (Denmark), where I was staying at the moment. As we all know, COVID-19 makes travelling a bit more challenging than normal. So, to....

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Volunteering: an opportunity for more

Why do you volunteer? Maybe because you want to do something good or because you can learn more about the culture of a country? I personally always used it to gain valuable work experience while being able to live and travel in an exciting new place. I wouldn’t have thought that I would end up volunteering in my home country Austria, and even less that the....

Interview with Gintare Tamulyte

For nine months, Gintare volunteered with the European Wilderness Society. As her time comes to an end, she tells us in an interview about how it was for her when she fist arrived to Tamsweg, about her favourite leisure activities and about how she learned to ski like a local in only two months. What stands out in her story is that she experienced many first times....

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My advice: Make plans … and then change them

In January 2019, when I first heard of the European Wilderness Society, I did not plan that I would be in little Tamsweg in the middle of a pandemic in February 2021. Back then, I was in the South African desert during the hottest time of summer researching small rodents. Now I am amongst four different ski resorts in the Alps – the temperature difference between the....

International cuisine dinners at volunteers’ flat

When the start of the strict lockdown in Austria was announced, volunteer mood dropped. We were used to going to gym in the evenings and having a few beers together on Friday nights. How will we spend our weekends now? Especially in the cold months? What activities can we do together in our flat? In the beginning there was curry The answer to these questions was....

The International Wilderness Week

Time flies here really fast. It seems that we just had our adventures in Tyrol and now we are already preparing for Christmas holidays. And I am still living in the mood of the International Wilderness Week that we held in October. Maybe because I am still working on the wrap-up of the event – processing recordings, uploading presentations and cleaning up the website....