2 - 8 October 2006, Nitra, SLOVAKIA

This youth exchange project took place in Nitra, Slovakia from 2nd to 8th October 2006. There were participants from more that 14 countries: Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, the Czech republic, Bulgaria … Furthermore, there was a participant who was born in Cambodia, one of his parents is Malaysian, he lives in France, at the moment is an EVS volunteer in Hungary and now is in Slovakia. So as you can see it was a complete mixture of different cultures.

The aim of this project was getting to know other’s culture and find out the similarities and the differences. So we had workshops connected with presenting our countries: culture, habits, traditions, history and typical way of life. The organizers separate the countries into regions and we made presentations in these groups talking about differences and similarities between the countries from one region. I am not going to comment the geographic knowledge of the organizers and the countries they had put into one region … But anyway we learned a lot for the other countries’ culture and at the same time we made them desire of visiting our beautiful country and gain an intimate knowledge of Bulgaria and Bulgarians.

Also we had some workshop connected with the local culture, infrastructure and people. For an example we were separated into 5 groups, each one had 4 tasks like: to find out in what architecture style the local post office had been built; to find out and take a picture of a very famous monument; to describe a place which is a great tourist sightseeing; to visit the castle of Nitra; to learn something about their national hero by the local people and so on. The next day we visited all these places with a guide and he told us some interesting historical facts about Nitra. We also visited Bratislava – the House of the Parliament, some monuments, Bratislava’s castle and after that we had a couple of hours of free time so we were able to do some shopping, sightseeing or just to go for a walk.

The national evenings were the biggest parties we had and it was such fun having a national evening of about 13 countries at the same time… Slovak and the Czech Republic evenings were together one day before the others which were again all together. We presented our national food and drinks; tell some interesting facts about our countries and then the party started.

In Nitra we also had the opportunity to practice some sports because just right next to our hotel there is an Athletic stadium and a football playground. We visited and some discos and pubs which is integral part of every youth exchange – having fun.

This youth exchange was an unforgettable and useful experience. We learned lots of new thinks about many countries, met interesting people, made some friends and become a bit more tolerant and responsible.