“Europe without frontiers”

It was the best week of this year definitely! I got a lucky chance to participate in an international youth conference “Europe without frontiers” in Germany, where I met interesting people, visited a new country and had a lot of fun.

So we went on a bus to Berlin. During the first day we saw Bundestag, Brandenburg Gate and the Under the Lime Street. Than we took the suburban train to Frankfurt on the Oder where the site of hosting organization Internationaler Bund was located. In the evening we had the first ice-breaker, that wasn’t that ice-breaking, some people went to sleep (including me, as I hadn’t slept for previous two nights on the road), some went to a hospitable Armenian team, they tried mulberry vodka.

The second day was famous for the Cultural evening. We gathered in the canteen, and presented our countries. Our team member Vanya hosted the event and challenged the teams with tasks to perform a dance, sing a folk song or tell a national joke. Our team made the presentation during the last hour ( as several other countries did too). I tried little bit of Armenian food, Albanian Rakia. The Irish had great green costumes. The evening ended with a nice ice-breaking disco.

During the next days we visited Frankfurt on the Oder, where we had a nice quest and shopping. I bought candies and beer as souvenirs, but I drank the pack of beer during the parties, so I had to bye an extra pack. During the week we were busy in several workshops, all dedicated to the topic of the conference, like “video”, “newspaper”, “dance”, “slam poetry”, “florists” and “wood art”. My workshop was called “creative Arts’ there we made a mask and a costume for Mister and Missis Europe, and a little contest for 5 couples, the winners of which – Albanian girl Ira and Croatian guy Ante – became Missis and Mister of Europe.. The “Newspaper” was a daily one and it reflected the life of our camp. “Florists” decided not to wait until the last day and had their presentation somewhere in the middle, the dresses that they made were haut couturier, and Russian matrioshka was the highlight of the program. “slam poetry” did a poem on different languages and made a little performance ”customs office”. The “wood arts” made a train out of wood, symbolizing the Europe and wooden plates as souvenirs. My favourite workshop was “dance”, they made a dance, but of course you need to see the dance, because the power of art cannot be expressed with words.

At the beginning of the week the weather was “weak”. But when the sun finally decided to show up, our director Brita proposed to go to the beach. So part of the group went to Helena Lake, where we logically swam, lay on the beach and also played some volleyball.

How could I have forgotten the High Ropes Course!!!!!!!!!!!! It was an extreme sport on the …high ropes, ))) the ropes that were connected on wooden pillars and we walked on them with security belts. It was worth taking, and we learned some swear words in different languages.

To sum it up, I would like to quote our organizer Steren “ If it wasn’t this conference, it would have been just an ordinary week”, but it was a blast.

P.s. I tried national German food – sausages, sauer kraut (sour cabbage), Bretzels (rogaliki), pork kotlette and apple cake with ice-cream. Also I taught Croatioan girls how to play Russian card game ‘fool” and Irish team – the game Mafia.