Date: 20-28 April 2013
Venue: Kobuleti, Georgia
Pax: Zdeněk Gloz, Jaroslav Hluchý, Tomáš Hrubý, Martin Stiburek, Lucie Jandová, Pavlína Šlesingrová, Kateřina Maršíková, Pavel Rataj, Adéla Foltýnová
Programme and action: Youth in Action programme, action 3.1. youth exchange
Project report:
Yourth Exchange ocassion with theme „Soul Connection“ took place from 20th to 28th of April 2013 in turistic area of town Kobuleti situated at the Black Sea cost / state Georgia. First days it was quite cold and rainy which was surprising even for natives. Our accomodation was in hotel near to the sea. In this hotel there were located all the activities: works related to the program and also all the extra enjoyments.
First two days we spent by playing games with the goal to meet all participants, get to know better each other and make the right team.
Organisers of our ocassion presented the target to improve your knowledge about the culture of all involved countries. All the 8 days we were together with people from Armenia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Luthuania, Ukraine and Georgia, of course. Representatives of particular countries were presenting their national dances and teaching all the rest of participants to learn it. The most difficult dance to learn was the one of Georgia. On the other hand our Czech dance called Mazurka was very popular for all. People were enjoying this easy and funny dance. It was nice to hear strangers singing even during the spare-time after offcial programme the czech lyrics „Měla babka čtyři jabka“. Also the song from Lithuania got very popular and people were often singing its content of „Kepė, kepė, kepė, kepė boba blynus. Kepė, kepė, kepė, kepė boba blynus.
Evenings and nights were popular intercultural events. We as representatives of Czech Republic were presenting especially the region of Slovácko. We showed our typical folk costumes and also dances including Verbuňk registrated on the list of cultural heritage of UNESCO. Czech representation was also very succesfull with sausage, wine and strong-water slivovice.
During the programm we had a lot of time to get know the town Kobuleti and we also made two interesting trips, first to Kutaisi and later to Batumi. Both towns are near to Kobuleti, anyway both are very different and we could compare. We also visited 3 monasteries close to Kutasi. The most beautiful and largest was more than 1000 year old and offered beautiful lookout to landscape.
After finishing the official programme the Czech group had 1 extra day to stay in Georgia because of later flight home. Some Czech people stayed in Kobuleti for relax, other ones took this advangate to visit Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Nevertheless, both group had beautiful sunny day. Everyone got a lot of bautiful events, experience and memories during the staying in Georgia.
During the Youth Exchange in Kobuleti there were 9 great Czech people from all the 3 traditional regions (Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia). Everyone was enjoying singing, dancing in national costumes and getting interesting knowledge about other cultures. Czech participants fully used the opportunity to learn somenthing new.
Lucie Jandová
