22 - 29 June 2006 Athlone, IRELAND

For a second time, participants from Bulgaria and Bulgarian organization “Open Youth” took part in a youth exchange, held in Ireland.

A group of ten Bulgarian boys and girls traveled to Athlone, a town, situated in Central Ireland, to meet and work together with other young people from Poland, Lithuania, England and, of course, Ireland. The theme of the exchange was “Tensions in Europe” and how young people can fight and overcome them.

Most of the activities were organized in the college of “Saint Joseph” in Summerhill, Athlone. There the youngsters participated in different interesting discussions, debates and games.

Each of the group had to develop and present to the others preliminary prepared workshop, connected with the theme of the international meeting. The Bulgarians presented themselves with a workshop, named “All different-All equal”, which was evaluated by the organizers of the exchange as the most interesting and well performed.

The presentation was divided into three different parts. In the first part, the whole group from the five European countries present, learned and discovered the differences and similarities between them, through asking questions. For example, they had to imagine a line, dividing the room into two halves. If they matched any of the questions, they had to cross the room and go to the other side. At the beginning, we started with funny questions like:” anyone wearing jeans should cross the line”, or: „anyone who like swimming should cross the line”. After that, we continued with more provocative and serious questions such as: „anyone who has gypsies’ friends should cross the line” or “….anyone having parents from different nationalities, should cross the line”.

The aim of the second part of the workshop was to stimulate the participants to show their visions, way of thinking and so on. They had to create their own logo – an original way to express them- and after that they had to explain to the others what it is about. The Bulgarians introduced their logos drawn on their T-shirts.

In the third part, the young people had to organize themselves in groups, based on the already discovered in the previous parts of the game, differences and similarities between the players. The game is over, once the whole big international group is formed in one team, learning in the process of the playing how to accept the differences between the people or how to get over the potential conflicts, provoked by the differences.

Beside these activities, oriented to the theme of the youth exchange, each national group presented its country, history, traditions, etc. There was time, specially dedicated to the national presentations. Here all of the young people played together Polish dances, sang Lithuanian’s songs, learned interesting facts of the English history. Two boys and one girl of the Irish group played traditional Irish music in front of the international young auditory.

Bulgarians made interesting presentation too. They presented the country to the others, by showing some photographs of interesting historical sites and natural beauties in Bulgaria. After that, each member of the group, introduced the history of his/her birth place.

We performed traditional Bulgarian dance-called horo-and taught the others how to play it. The last evening guests from Athlone were invited and two of the Bulgarian girls prepared pogacha and banitza – two of the most popular national dishes.

Another interesting part of the exchange was the Creating Drama activity. All participants were divided in teams, each one including participants from all the countries present. These teams wrote and perform short plays, connected to the topic of the exchange. In that challenging way, the young people expressed their visions about fighting against discrimination, violence, corruption.

The program included special time for tours in Dublin, Athlone and the vicinities around Athlone. On the first day of our arrival, we visited The National Library, the National Historical and Archaeological Museum in Dublin. Also we were shown around and we walked around to the Trinity College-the oldest university in the country.

The town Athlone is situated, like the local people say, in the heart of Ireland. It is not such a big town, but it has rich history and places to be visited. The biggest and deepest river in Ireland-Shannon river-flows through the city. In the center of Athlone, beside the small and affable streets, nice cafes with a view to the Shannon River, there is preserved and reconstructed a medieval castle-the Athlone castle. It was built for defense and was used as a military camp in the middle Ages.

The whole international group visited the Clonmacknoise-an old monastic settlement near Athlone, which was also educational and handicraft center. It is famous for its ancient crosses in Celtic style. We learned about the legend of the shamrock there. It is a legend saying that St. Patrick (the most adorable saint in Ireland) showed to his disciples the three leaves clover, called shamrock by the Irish people, and told them to be united like the leaves, that represented the Holly Trinity – The Father, The Son and The Holly Ghost. Since then, the clover is a national symbol of Ireland.

We saw the Atlantic Ocean and visited one famous natural monument in Ireland – The Cliffs of Moher.

The introduction with Ireland and its culture and tradition continued with other interesting activities in the program. We tasted traditional Irish dishes, prepared and cooked by ourselves – a beef with vegetables and a sauce.

We watched a performance of national Irish dances, played by professional dancers, invited in the college specially for the last evening of the exchange.

This was valuable experience and we all enjoyed the time spent in green Ireland very much.