Excursion to Maribor

This day and therefore also our last excursion in Slovenia started very early in the morning as our destination was a few hours away. When we finally arrived in Maribor we were positively impressed by the European capital of culture of 2012.

First we got a presentation about Maribor, and the volunteering work related to being a European capital of culture. After this interesting information, we participated in a guided tour by a woman from the tourist information. This tour made it possible to got some more impressions and a good overview of the city!

After the lunch break we had to do some questionnaires preferably with tourists according to Maribor as a tourist destination and especially as European capital of culture. It was interesting to talk to tourists and listen to their impressions and opinions, even if it was difficult to find tourists that were willing to answer the long questionnaire as they preferred to spend their time in the city of culture.

After conducting the questionnaires we had some time of before going back to the coast.

All in all it needs to be said that Maribor is a very nice city, which is definitely worth to be visited. For us it was very interesting to see how being a capital of culture can change a city and that Maribor really used this chance with organisinga lot of events and activities for their guests.

Good bye Maribor, see you during our next visit!

Team Netherlands

Dear Readers,

This morning, the lecture was one hour later, at 10 am. the day started with a lecture of the polish teacher about how children can be teached by volunteers in primary school. The teacher showed us a programm on the internet where the user can learn a lot of different languages with. We should try to practice with it, but it didn't work on the computers in school.

At 1 o'clock we had lunch as usual in our restaurant at the beach. After eating and swimming in the sea, our final workshop started at 3. We prepared our presentation for thursday and could spend the rest of the day at the beach. Tonight we had a very nice Pasta dinner.

After dinner we went into the city centre to Cacao and had nice ice cream :-)

We have to get up very early tomorrow because we will go to Maribor. The night hours until then, we will spend working on our video ;)

Good night,

Team Netherlands
Fabienne, Joukje, Trudy & Janina

Dear Readers,

after our free sunday we started again with a lecture at 9 in the morning today. The lecture was about social capital and entrepreneurship, which was very interesting.

After swimming in the sea, we used our lunch time to discuss with our groups ideas for the final presentation.
During the afternoon we had our workshop which we finished on time, so we could go to the beach and enjoy the rest of the hot day close to the water.

In the evening we all had dinner together in our restaurant close to Piran. We could choose between Pizza, Pasta and Risotto with Shrimps which was very delicious. After dinner we went into the city to have some coffee and cocktails together. Tonight is the good bye party of the portuguese teachers, who will leave tomorrow with their wonderful children. We will miss them here.

Regards,

Team Netherlands
Fabienne, Joukje, Trudy, Janina

Exploring Piran

Dear readers,

Today we went to Piran. We really enjoyed it to explore new things, a new environment, a new atmosphere and new activities. We started the day with a small lecture of the best volunteer of Piran. Even though we couldn´t understand the language, we could tell that the lady was really passionate about the volunteering activities. Because of that we were motivated to do some volunteering work ourselves. So, with fresh energy we started to vault all of the quiz papers into little  boats. At first we were still inexperienced, but after a while we actually started to be good at it (with a little help of our professional Stephanie). A hidden talent was discovered! ;)

After the vaulting part we could start to make the quiz ourselves. This was a nice experience because this was a good way to explore Piran. We now know that St. Georges is one of the nine churches of Piran, that you can walk over glass in Piran and that we have something in common with Venice because we both have a lion as a symbol.

Of course we also had some time to explore Piran even more. We saw the market and bought some nice souvenirs. Then we walked among the seaside from where we could see Venice. What a view! We walked a lot and we went to the restaurant where we could cool off a little and eat and drink.

We had the afternoon off and some of us went to the beach and some of us relaxed at the balcony so that we could save all the energy for tonight’s’ party.

We hope that everyone is looking forward to it, because we sure are!

Now there is only one thing left to say; CHEERS to the freaking weekend! (We drink to that)

Team Netherlands

Janina Klenke, Fabienne Buhrdorf, Trudy bleeker and Joukje Elzinga

Hippy Happy Day

Dear Readers,

today we had our “voluntariat”. During the morning we met the volunteers and they were first giving a lecture about their work and after that we were playing some group games until the lunch break. The day started cloudy but later it was getting really hot and sunny. 

After the siesta we continued with another lecture of the volunteers about glass recycling followed by the activity of designing a creative glass by ourselves inspired by our country. Our glass ‘potsi’ was just making friends with ‘Hatsi’. 

After a long day of lectures and workshops we could finally relax at the beach and go swimming in the sea. It was nice because almost everybody of the students was at the beach. In the evening we finally had the great pizza party and everybody could choose a pizza by our own choice. Sitting close to the sea while seeing the sunset was quite romantic ;) 

We finished the day by having drinks and coffee at a small restaurant.

Best wishes,

The Netherlands.

Joukje, Trudy, Fabienne & Janina

There we go - day 3

 Today we had two very interesting lectures about voluntourism.
Lecture 1 was from Eurobasket and we received information about how volunteers are organized during the basketball championships in Slovenia. Lecture 2 was from a company specialized in voluntourism and several volunteering activities were explained to us.

After lunch, we had some time to cool down in the sea before starting with our workshops. All workshops seem to be interesting so far and we are looking forward to our further development! Detailed information about the workshops will follow, next week when events are organized and we know what we are going to do!



Now we are looking forward to a nice dinner and a beachparty with our fellow students!

Cheers from beautiful and sunny Portoroz!


Janina, Fabienne, Joukje & Trudy!

A Cultural Journey

Hi dear followers,

Unfortunately, yesterday we were not aible to write you a blog. Well actually, unfortunate for you, because we were enjoying the beachparty. Speeking of which, the beachparty included many kinds of typical cultural foods and drinks of all the different nationalities that are participating in this summerschool. It was a nice setting with a perfect atmosphere to get to know each other in a relaxed way. We really enjoyed to literally taste all the different cultures, from the Portugese wine to the Slovenian salads and a lot more. Thanks everyone for making sure that we cannot fit in our bikini’s anymore!  ;-)

 Enough about the beachparty, because of course we also learned a lot this day. In the morning we started the day with a lecture of our own Dutch teachers, Steffen and Constantin. The kick-off was from Steffen, with a lecture about Olympic games in London. After that, Constantin continued with a lecture about coachsurfing, which he is also doing himself. This probably also was the reason that the presentation was very cheerful and enthusiastic!

In the afternoon we had the international evening. We learned that Romania has a really nice traditional dance, Polen has lots of sightseeing options and Croatia has beautiful nature areas.

After this day, we could actually really use a couch for ourselves, but instead we went for a drink to a beachclub in Portoroz, which we enjoyed a lot! Don’t worry, we didn’t sleep too late and were perfectly on time this morning. J

Team Netherlands,

Janina Klenke

Fabienne Buhrdorf

Joukje Elzinga

Trudy Bleeker

Slovenia here we are!

Dear readers,

Finally after seventeen hours of traveling yesterday we arrived at beautiful Portoroz.

Although we were very tired we could still meet some students of the summer school group at the bar and get a first impression of the nightlife here. After that long day of traveling you can imagine that we could really use a drink, so we enjoyed it a lot!

Today we had our first meeting with all the students and teachers at the university. Definitely outstanding was the amazing view from the classroom and of course the really positive vibe from the whole group. We started the day with a ´getting to know eachother game´ and found out that noone is able to speak Icelandic, Tiago is the only one who is left-handed, Trudy is the only twin and everyone is really openminded and likes to socialize. On our concern those are great ingredients for amazing two weeks! One of our main tasks during our time here is to write a blog and we are already thinking about how to develop a creative video for you all.

Now we´re going to have lunch and experience the sunny weather at the beach.

We´re looking forward to get to know everyone better during the day AND the night ;-)
Team Netherlands hopes you like our first attempt of writing a blog and that you will enjoy following our further adventures.

Team Netherlands

Trudy, Fabienne, Janina and Joukje