28 July - 7 August 2007 Veitsch, AUSTRIA

From 28th of July to 7th of August 2007 in Austria took place a successful international exchange with the partnership of the “Open Youth” association. The participants were from four different countries: Austria, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria. The topic of the exchange was Multicultural background- mutual respect and it took place in Veitsch- a lovely village situated in the very heard of Austria, surrounded by the mountains, green fields and woods. The main aim of the project was to provide information about racism, xenophobia and propaganda. Through different workshops and meeting with different lectors the organizers gave us the chance to understand a lot about prejudices and that the racism is an undividable part of our lives and that everyone can be a racist. We had a very interesting workshop with Mr. Karl Pfeifer who is a Jewish and he was pursued during the World War II and he succeeded in escaping. He told us a touching story about his escape from Austria. He didn’t eat almost anything for 4 days and when he was passing through the territory of Bulgaria with the train he was given a breakfast from unknown Bulgarians. “It wasn’t a lot but it was something and it was given from the heart”, he said and broke into tears. Everyone in the room was moved to tears and we, the Bulgarians, were feeling really proud of this act of humanity that our “relatives” have shown years ago.

Like a continuation of the story of this experienced person was the visit of the concentration camp Mauthausen. Words are not enough to explain the things that we saw there and the feelings that we had.

Also we visited Graz – a beautiful city which was pronounced as a cultural capital of Europe during 2004. We spent one unforgettable day in Vienna and we had the opportunity to see the real beauty of the city and to feel its atmosphere.

The national evenings, of course, were very interesting and this was the way that we could get closer not only with the people, but also with the habits of those people, with their culture. We had the opportunity to see some Austrian, Spanish and Italian international dances and to teach these people to dance our “horo”.

As a conclusion I can say that it was one successful project, we learned a lot about people and their prejudices and about racism, we saw and experienced a lot and we made really good friendship with all the participants.