When the Lovis set its sails this morning to travel from Riga to Narva-Joesuu, the sailing crew of the last trip was waving us goodbye. And I was sooo sad. The farewell marked the end of a very special and very diverse part of our festival tour: Seven members of the Gdansk partner organisations Culture Collective and Center for Environmental Education and Information as well as the festival organisers from Kaliningrad (Museum of the World Ocean and Ecodefense) plus two Russian visual and sound artists plus the German coordinators and the Lovis members were on board from Kaliningrad to Riga. Once arrived in Riga, the group built one single team running the Moving Baltic Sea festival. Marek and Tomek helped putting up the screen, while Olga and Lena welcomed visitors in our info tent. Agata and Natalia distributed the headphones for our silent disco, while Danil amused the dancing crowd with soviet hits. Pavel and Maxim secured the festival location during night, while Kamila and Jowita stayed awake as deckwatches to assure the safety of people sleeping on the Lovis. No big prior introduction necessary: The Russian participants had already gone through the festival in Kaliningrad. The Polish ones had experienced the two festivals in Kaliningrad and Gdansk. And some of the Germans even three festivals. So the working steps to be done were already quite familiar, and lively discussions came up while comparing the different festivals: How will we manage to create a common festival feeling regardless the fact that there are different festival locations? How is it possible to provide catering for a big group without producing a huge amount of garbage? At which time our promotion groups should spread into town to reach our target group?
Changing the crew, so that people from each of the participating countries can join us for a while, is part of the Moving Baltic Sea concept. But the negative part of it is that others have to leave the ship. Lots of memories, stressful and joyful moments we shared during the festivals and the sailing trip, will remain: Tomek visiting Westerplatte with us after having carried dozens of benches from one truck to the other. Jowita explaining bird migration and initiating the water samples workshop on board of the Lovis. Marek casually announcing our festival events in all kind of circumstances. Lena bravely answering “I do” a hundred times a day, whenever a grumpy Museum guard in Kaliningrad asked, who would take the responsibility for this and that action. Pavel socialising with the locals to get smoked fish and a camp fire at the last stopover to Riga. Thank you for all this and a lot of other things making the previous stops and the tour so special – I will miss you very much.