20 - 28 October - 2005, Artvin, TURKEY
 Having in mind that Artvin, where the project took place, is on the other side
of the Black sea it was a long way to get there.
But, boy!, can I
describe all of it to the one that wasn’t there?…OK, OK I’ll try. The scenery
first (just like writers do): imagine a small town huddled in a valley,
surrounded by an impenetrable wall of grand, rocky mountain slopes, their tops
touching the sky. As I said, Artvin is a small town with lots of small steep
streets(so steep you can barely walk- thank Allah? the winter’s mild there).
It’s funny how you can get from a street on lower level to the one above through
a narrow flight of steep steps(gets a bit crowded when more than three people
use it). The hostel was the nicest I’ve been in so I’m not going to describe it(
nice things are just nice and that’s all).
 What did we actually do there?
Well, we exchanged. We exchanged songs, stories, information, words, jokes,
gifts…Especially when we played the “Secret friend” the suspense was at its
highest level: everybody was hiding in order not to come in light whose secret
friend they are. It’s really great to have a gift or a note with something nice
on it from somebody unknown. It’s suspense in any sense - the only difference
with a detective story is that you’re not solving a crime but a secret
friendship?. It’s funny when somebody gives you something whispering: “Somebody
gave that to me, to give to you to give to somebody to give to (for example)
Kezban. From the secret friend.”
One interesting thing to share is the
fact that some of the Turkish guys were fasting because of the Ramazan. During
that time(a month) they don’t eat during the day. When the sun goes down and the
hodja (a Muslim priest) sings a special song they’re free to eat and drink. You
may know this but I just wanted to tell it.
 How can I miss telling about
the national evenings? Romanian- Moldovian (because the Romanian guys were in
fact Moldovians studying in Romania), Turkish, Bulgarian, Polish…mmm…everybody
likes national evenings. In fact evenings are the time when fun simply floods
the event- guitar playing(wow! It feels good when there are people who can do it
well), singing songs from the different countries(it’s especially interesting
when you don’t have any idea what you’re singing about), dancing, talking,
talking, talking, laughing, some love stories- in a word: partying!
What
about work? Visiting nice places such as Yedigoller (the Seven Lakes), national
parks full of magnificent natural sights, waterfalls, small villages and ancient
churches can’t exactly be called work. (I only hope Artvin’s people will be able
to preserve these natural beauties from some big mining company.) Writing
reports on what you have seen was the most unpleasant part of the whole thing.
And cultural exchange is best done on parties. Is that work? 
You know
what I(in fact all of us) missed the most? Sleep. But nobody went to sleep
anyway because parties are not done to be missed.
I’m sure I’m not
telling everything as it should be but it’s all a happy blur for me and I hope
you’d be kind enough to excuse me. Would you?
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