"All the people are very pleasant and kind, we greet each other although we don't speak the same language. After all, we are the same, regardless of the country we come from, Spain or Slovenia," says Miquel Ribas, 82-year old Spaniard from Mataro near Barcelona. For one week he exchanged his room in the home for elderly with Jožica Kučera, 77-year old pensioner from the centre of elderly Zimzelen in Topolšica.
Ribas, who is returning to his native country today, had a very busy week in Slovenia. "I like it very much here, the weather is not so good, but never mind. I saw beautiful towns and landscape," he told us during his visit to Ljubljana, and added that the summer here is much less warm that in his home land, Spain. The head of the project at the centre of elderly Zimzelen Diana Janežič told us that he liked the Savinjska valley and the mountains very much. We met with him in Ljubljana, where he had a meeting scheduled with the Spanish ambassador. At first he listened to the story about Prešeren and Julija on the Prešeren square, and then ... he started dancing.
Ribas, a very talkative person, explained to us that the manager of the home of elderly where he lives invited him to participate in the project: "There are 70 people living in our home, and I am the only one who is still able to go around. I can go out whenever I please, and need no permissions as the others do." He is extremely vital for his age, 82. He worked in a textile factory for 41 years; he was married, but his wife died, and his daughter is disabled.
"I never imagined that at my age I would visit Slovenia. I thought I would travel around Spain, and never imagined I would go to the other part of Europe," he told as when asked why he had decided for the exchange. At first he thought he would go to another part of Spain, and was quite surprised when they told him his destination was Slovenia, a country he hardly knew anything about. But he told us Slovenia reminds him a bit of Germany he had visited once.
A busy week in Slovenia
"We have prepared a very diverse programme for him: we had a Spanish-Slovenian language course, we organized a trip to the Logarska valley and to Rinka waterfall, we had a cocktail party with dancing. We were told he liked to play Boules, so we did that as well. On Saturday we made a trip to Velenje and Šoštanj, today we came to Ljubljana, and tomorrow he is leaving already," Janežič explained to us the busy schedule for the pensioner exchange.
The other residents of the home received him with curiosity; at first they were rather worried whether they would be able to communicate with him. "But we managed. He became friends with one of our residents, and I asked how they talk to each other. Easy. Ribas speaks Spanish, and he speaks Slovenian, and then they wave with their hands a lot, and simply understand each other."
And his daily routine at home?
Ribas is a very active pensioner. He walks for hours every day, and he has a special routine he likes very much. "Every day after lunch I take my empty plate to the kitchen, and then I go to a bar close to our home, where I help the waiters. They always want to pay me for my help, but I refuse, as I don't do it for money."
He doesn’t drink neither beer nor vine. Since November three years ago he hasn't tasted alcohol, previously he did occasionally take a sip of good whiskey.
He liked the dwelling in Zimzelen very much, it quite differs from his at home. "We don't have a bathroom for every room; there are communal bathrooms for every floor, for 16 residents. We have a schedule for taking showers: my turn is on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday," he told us about his home in Mataro, where he has been living for the last three years.
He liked London most
He has visited a number of European cities, but he liked London most. "Everybody was very polite and respectful, they treated us with great care," he said. Venice made the worst impression: "Everything was so dirty, I was rather unpleasantly surprised. When we took a ride in gondola I expected a well-mannered, nicely dressed gondolier who would sing to us a serenade. But in the end we sang for him a couple of Catalonian songs."
Andreja Štefan Bukovič, the manager of Zimzelen, told us that the concept of work in their home of the elderly is based on cooperation at various projects. "The home should be oriented outwards, we need to integrate with our environment. LinkedAge complies with our concept, so we never hesitated joining it. The added value is the participation of volunteers, the active pensioners – it increases the vitality in the wider sense, not only for us from the home of elderly, but for the entire valley."
LinkedAge – for the mobility of the elderly
Exchange of the room in a home of elderly was the first international exchange within the LinkedAge project, which was last year pronounced as the best entrepreneurial idea of the year. LinkedAge offers two systems of pensioner exchange: either for people living in homes of elderly, where two pensioners exchange their rooms in the home, as Jožica and Miquel did, or the usual renting of a room in a home for elderly. "A couple of pensioners from Berlin rented a room in a home for elderly in Malaga for a week. They are there right now," Dijana Galijaševič explained the principle of LinkedAge.
Presently 94 homes of elderly are included into the LinkedAge network, 30 from Slovenia, while among the participating homes are also homes from Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, and several European countries. She emphasised that LinkedAge was the result of endeavours to offer the elderly innovative services, which became necessary due to demographic changes.
What's the principle?
"After a home joins our network a presentation of the project is organized there. Those residents who would like to participate apply. Ms Jožica for example came to the head of the project in her home, Ms Diana, and told her she would like to participate in the exchange – and the same happened in the home in Mataro," Galiješevič explained. It was the first international exchange, and consequently attention-grabbing happening both here and in Spain, while we already had a number of pensioner exchanges within Slovenia. During summer the interest for those homes of elderly close to the sea or in the mountains is especially large.
