27 March - 07 April 2007 Castelo de Vida, PORTUGAL

Polya, Emona, Gosho, Zhaneta and I, students at “Metropolit Andrei” language school in Targovishte, and Kostadin, the leader of the group and a student of journalism, set off for a small Portuguese town. There we were going to present Bulgaria in an exchange on an international youth project. In about an hour and a half we were in Munch and after a short stay we continued our journey to Lisbon.

A three-hour journey and we finally were in the capital of Portugal where Olivier met us. He was from Belgium, but he had lived in Portugal for 15 years. We had a four-hour journey to Castelo de Vide but by bus this time. We looked through the windows with great interest and found astonishing views – little houses, orange trees, and big palm-trees and cactuses.

In Castelo de Vide we met the second person that welcomed us – Filip, a 20-year-old Portuguese volunteer. We were accommodated in a three-storey house, where our hosts were Simone from Italy and Xesca from Spain. We found out, that the house belonged to an artist who lived elsewhere. We got to know our new home and after dinner we went to the centre to send SMS’s to our relatives in Targovishte. On the second day the other groups from Estonia, Italy, Portugal, Poland, and Spain arrived. We, the Bulgarian group, were something like a welcoming committee. Actually, everything from there on was going to be one big game.

Simone and Xesca told us, that before every group meeting they were going to play ABBA’s song “Mamma mia” on the big stereo. And whoever had arrived after the end of the song had to pick a name from a bowl filled with the names of all participants and they had to be their “slave” till midnight on the same day. That was both engaging and fun.

The first game was called “Interview”. We took off one of our shoes and put it in the centre of he room. After that every person took a shoe and interviewed its owner – about their hobbies and so on. The person who picked your shoe had to interview you. After a short break we went out, lined up in a circle and everyone went forward and introduced the person they had interviewed.

In an interesting way, through a game, we determined the rules of life in the house. Simone asked if someone had read the book “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding – only three people including me had read it. Then he asked me to tell about the little children, which had got on a desert island after a plane crash, organized their life as a little society. And so, on a big cardboard we wrote our rules: to be punctual, to keep the house clean and tidy, to take part in the activities, to speak English, to be tolerant to each other and so on. We all signed the “contract” and we hung it on the wall in the living room.

After that, they split us into team groups and we named them. Three of the groups were going to take care of one of the rooms each (kitchen, bathrooms, living room) and the forth group was going to be free for the day. Of course we were going to take turns.

The hosts gave us a presentation of the lime production. At first sight it looked easy, but it turned out to be very interesting, because almost no one knew anything about lime. They explained to us from what stones it’s prepared, how the kilns worked, what chemical changes there are from the beginning to the final product. They took us to the lime kilns – 5 km away from Castelo de Vide. We had a walk around the marble-quarry, and we found out how lime had been used through the ages, how they had painted pictures on it and how it is used nowadays.

We also worked in groups from the respective countries. Some members off the group had to find information on the internet on how lime is used in their countries. The others were given a list with the name of a street which they had to find and to mark how many houses are painted with lime and how many are painted with other plaster and rate them as: very pretty, pretty or bad. It turned out that according to the information from the internet all countries participating in the exchange used lime in building houses.

The next game was “Getting to know Castelo de Vide”. Simone again split us but into improvised families (a mother, a father, a son and a dog). And each one of us had to describe which member or the family they were using no words, only with gestures, and to find the other members of the family. It was very funny- the boys acted as mothers and the girls as fathers. It became interesting when they gave us lists with tasks – what kind of photos we had to take, what to recreate. And everything was graded with points. For example, we had to take a funny picture in front of the statue of Don Pedro in the square, a picture of all the girls in the group under a “WC” sign and the “child” of the group drinking from the fountain. Also a picture of the “singles ones” from the group, declaring their love to the sweet old librarian, Dona Branka, at the entrance of the library and a picture of the whole group at the top of the castle, representing a scene from “Hamlet”. There were bonuses for pictures with messy hairs and rastas, pictures with a local person and especially if the person was the same in all pictures and for pictures of the group with switched clothes. After that, when we looked at the pictures and rated them, we literally were rolling with laughter.

And I want to tell you about two other games.

In the game “Secret friend” we all put our names in a bowl, from which everyone had to pick a name and that was their secret friend. Till the end of the exchange they had to take care of them, to help them, to give them nice presents, to make them feel important, but without being revealed. We could use coconspirators too – everything depended on our good will and imagination. And so, till the last day – it was very interesting, because the conspiracy was so big that till the end no one knew who their secret friend was.

For the game “Two truths and one lie” we wrote on a piece of paper two truths about ourselves and one lie. After that we danced to music. When the music stopped we exchanged our sheets with the person who was standing in front of us. We had to guess which the lie was. Then we returned the sheets and continued with another person. We all were very inventive.

I don’t think I can tell you about everything we did in our house. But not only in the house, where we had parties and we even played “hide and seek”. I almost forgot that there was a national-cuisine night: the Estonians presented themselves with chocolate, fish on small loaves of bread and liqueur. The Poles with biscuits and saltletts stick. The Italians with pasta, liqueur, their rakia and appetizers. We made musaka and shepherd’s salad. Two of the Italians were dressed like waiters and poured wine.

I won’t forget the outdoor picnics, one of which was near a church. We visited the village of Marvao too – situated in and out of the castle. With a big garden, a fountain and many bushes in different shapes. With that sort of bushes was written the name of the village- MARVAO. We reached the place of our next picnic on a Roman path covered with paving-stones. Not only in Marvao but in other villages we had visited the narrow streets made us a great impression on us – it was even written on some how wide they were. The houses were so close to each other that you could tell where the houses started and ended only by the roofs. All houses were white, so white that they looked as if light was steaming from them. They were the same in Castelo de Vide too, where the streets were narrow and steep. And where the people were warm-hearted, good-willing and always asking who and from where we were. Actually in Castelo de Vide, one of the tourist destinations of Portugal is near the oldest university town in the country – Koinbra. I forgot to say that as volunteers we painted an outside wall in the village. The Italians started to play while they were painting inside the house and finally they were all covered in lime. Generally they were one of the funniest and craziest groups. Once we saw a group of old people. It turned out that they were there for an exchange too. The Italians understood that they were their compatriots and started to sing “O’sole mio”. The old people started singing after them. We watched the parade for Easter. The first day when Christ had been crucified, the procession was like a funeral and everyone was sad. The people who were carrying the coffin were dressed in purple. We went to Olivier’s place the last night. His wife invited us to supper.

Poles, Estonians, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Italians – gathered for a youth project in a wonderful white village, where we had fun with attractive games and became friends who would always remember Castelo de Vide.