Visit Report Berlin

The 1st meeting of our Comenius Project „Europe Without Prejudices" took place in Berlin from 9th of April until 16th of April 2011.

During this week we realized many excursions like visiting the German History Museum, Berliner Unterwelten and many other places to get to know Berlin, Germany and German people. Our students did many different activities like creating a comenius calender, choosing a comenius logo, learning words in other languages. This video gives us an overview about our activities.

Welcome visitors to our website. Here is a little report about the Comenius project.

First we all met near Brandenburg gate. At the beginning we didn't talk to each other and everybody talked only with people from their own country. At the first trip with the exchange students, we had a guide, with low English skills. Most of the pupils didn't understand him, as a result of that we had to explain and translate everything. This was the beginning of new friendships. We got to know each other and we learned new words.

For example I want to talk about the last day: We met in the hostel with the Estonian, Greek, Turkish and Polish students and teachers. I was a little bit late, so I missed the beginning of the party. Later we all went to a room and sat in a circle. Ms. Güzel initiated a little show. The plan was that students from each country showed a song or a dance which is typical of their country. The Turkish students started with a dance. In my view it was great and exciting. A boy and a girl danced together, they moved their feet fast and went down to the ground and up again. Everybody was clapping their hands to the beat.

After this fantastic performance, the Polish girls sang a sad song. The melody was slow. Later, the Greek girls sang, too. The song was a kind of sad, but also powerful and optimistic.

The best performance was from the Estonians. Their show was funny and everybody laughed. The women stood in a circle of men, who danced around them, faster and faster.

And now to the best part of the German performance: We had no idea what to present. [...] Finally, we sang “Mein kleiner grüner Kaktus” by Max Raabe. On the one hand it was fabulous, on the other hand we hadn't practised and we weren't able to sing like Max Raabe. :-(

Finally, we all danced together, took photos and said good-bye.

All in all I can say that this was a great experience. I just gave one example for the exchange of cultures. When you read this, you think it's only a party, but in my view it was much more. Now you understand this wherever you go and wherever your home is. You can celebrate together without any prejudices and this is the aim of this project.

Because of these great and exciting days, I think it is a success for everyone. This week didn't meet my expectations - it was better than that. The whole week was just fun. I will never forget the time and the guests. I'm thankful for the chance to have a week like this.

Finally, I believe that everybody enjoyed it and it was a perfect idea.

In this year's Comenius project, there were schools from five countries participating: Estonia, Poland, Turkey, Greece and Germany. The aim of the project is to visit each other's countries to get rid of prejudices about other European countries. And of course to get to know new people and maybe making new friends is another aim.

At the beginning of the project, the four other schools sent teams of students and teachers to visit Berlin. They stayed for one week, during which we visited many famous and important places, in and around Berlin and did various activities together.

On Sunday, we had a guided tour through former East Berlin and a boat tour on the river Spree.

On the second day we met in our school and did some language learning there. Also, we all showed the presentations of our cities and schools which we had prepared.

It was the 17th birthday of one of the Greek girls, and in the evening we celebrated.

[...] On Wednesday the students were supposed to create a calendar for each country, so they could take it home with them. It took more time than we had expected.

On Thursday we drove to Potsdam and visited Sans Soucci, the former residence of a German monarch whose name I don't remember [...]

Saturday was in my opinion the best and most important day. We met with the Greek group at the Zoo. “We” actually meant Michael and myself, because the others didn't take it seriously. [...] We had fun in the zoo and while walking through there, we were talking about a lot of things, from culture to politics to private things. Even with the Greek teachers. After this, we knew each other for better than before and in my eyes, this fulfilled the programme's topic better than the whole week before.

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 This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.