9th October (Friday) Day 9

Today we got up early in the morning in order to live one of the most wonderful trips in our lives!!! Thanks to the local transport company we had an excursion to Gearanger and the Norwegian fiords!!!

We experienced Norwegian nature so pure and wild, we played with the snow (some brave even ate it!), had a cruise on a ferry with breath-taking views, went for a walk to see numerous waterfalls (main source of energy in Norway) and appreciated views of incredible landscapes decorated with fiords and autumn-coloured trees...

Simply...SUPER COOL!!!

After the trip, we went to UFO, where we experienced a very interesting debate (based on fish bowl technic) in which we discussed many interesting hot issues in Europe, as: the role of women in modern society and equality of rights, borders within Europe, religion and values and LGBT rights. We heard a lot of different opinions and some of us acted defending beliefs contrary to their own ones. Brilliant!!! At 8 pm. we met with local youngsters in UFO and joined a disco party in the center, dancing and singing spanish "Pajaritos por aqui..."and some other international hits...

8th October (Thursday) Day 8

Today...we actually overslept and missed our ferry at 8.00, so our trip to Alesund had to be postponed till 11.40 and our plannes changed...

It was not a great problem, however, as we used the time to tidy up a little bit.

After a breath-taking cruise in a speedboat we reached...Alesund- Tove-Laila's home town, which is just amazing!!! We visited its center with beautiful coloured buildings, did some shopping, learnt a lot about local culture and we also got to know a little bit about North Sea and its life as we visited Aquarium, where not only could we see local species of fish, like wolf fish...

...but we also fed and cuddled them!!!

Some of us went up the mountain and some just had a walk and appreciated the incredible views of the town.

The day was just great and was supposed to end with the intercultural evening but because of the weather conditions and a longer than usual cruise, we had to postpone it till the last day of our exchange.

7th October (Wednesday) Day 4

In the morning we learnt that people from different countries look at Europe in different ways which was shown on the maps we drew. We were also reflecting on our identity and European identity, what’s it all about and do we truly feel as part of it.

After that we took a trip to the neighboring island called Haroy to the hospitable family Ask Bakke and spent the whole day there. That was a delight! We had a chance to try some water sports and activities including canoe, boat riding and fishing. It was amazing to bear the big waves on the boat having a real chance (at last!) to feel the salt of the ocean, the wind and the rain and the beautiful Nordic sky over the water surface.

All of us experienced how to manage a canoe and it didn’t appear to be so tough (though we crushed one at other at times but that thing recalled a lot of laughter). Our clothes got a bit wet but we were happy, weren’t we?

After that we had a lovely barbeque and a drive to the windmills both contributed by the wonderful Ask Bakke family. We had a possibility to hear the sound of working windmills and the stars above giving us the feeling of being in a big spaceship, so surreal yet so visible!

And we also can’t miss a chance to mention the cosmic laughter of Maria keeping everyone smiling for almost an hour in bursts.

6th October (Tuesday) Day 3

Today we visited Brattvåg and UFO- a youth center, which is also our host organization in Norway. We were actually shocked by the size of it and a number of facilities and social and cultural alternatives offered to local young people. We had an opportunity to participate in four different cultural workshops:

Music...

photography...

loesje (creative writing)...


and roleplay...

We enjoyed the workshops enormously!!! Now, we are all humming: "Oh!, She's electric..." and thinking a lot about the life of refrigerators, bags made in China and recycling of hugs :)

After the workshops we participated in a debate with representatives of four local political parties, which was marvellous, one of the most interesting activities up till now, as we could taste some real politics.

Moreover, we learnt a lot about educational system, environmental issues, democracy, participation, economy, immigration policy and many, many more issues in Norway.

We see Norway as a country which could share many good practice with other European countries...

5th October (Monday) Day 2

Yesterday was a day of new experiences. It concerns not only new information about history of democracy, but also the discoveries in the field of international democracy and the variety of ways to show the understanding of democracy in different places in Europe was surprising. Serbian group showed some films, Belarusian group show a video-presentation and led a game, a group from Montenegro showed a role play, youth from Norway told us about their schoolcouncils and a Spanish group represented some facts from the history of their country. So, different countries – different stories!

Belarussian group held a game =)

Norwegian commune also has problems… with swimming pools!

The films, Serbian group brought, were really impressing! It’s the reality!

Our next task was to create a political party in groups! Oh, that was a challenge! But we managed to do it! Moreover we even used media and colourful maintability!

"The ORANGE GROUP is pleased to announce that the election campaign went extremely well yesterday. Even though it was not real elections we are convinced that we would get a lot of votes due to our brilliant "Pink- connecting people" slogan, good parties and our special FUNCARAVAN and youth-environment-econom protection policy."

We had a great honor yesterday to taste a delicious "bakalao" cooked by the greatest Terje Strand - who is a local fisherman, a fantastic cook and a wonderful person!!!

I should also say the “green’s” decided to create language evenings! The idea was to make lessons of different languages every evening. So, the first evening was dedicated to Serbia. And the way they organized the evening was really cool! We sang songs in serbian and then in english and we chilled-out.

Special cheers to the greatest Tove-Laila for scaring Lyosa to death at 2 am in the morning while he was searching for some snacks! So, to make the long story short I should say that during the whole day we had much fan!

4th October (Sunday) Day 1

And there it was, our first day on the spaceship, although one of our today’s assignments was actually to create one xD

We started our day with a short introduction to the program and establishing the rules , of which, we found those informal ones more amusing, like greeting people with your tongue in the morning or eating with the opposite hand that you use…

We also shared our expectations and fears about the exchange and one of the things that we all agreed on was that we hoped to have a good weather here...

Soon after, in international groups we were supposed to “hunt” a treasure exploring the village of Fjørtofta. We got the letters with instructions and soon set off. Despite our wishes the weather was horrible. It was raining for the whole day, so we had to take our rain coats with us.

It was indeed funny to see little groups of five running around and trying to find the stuff from their assignment. The task included finding a specific destination and answering a few questions regarding local society. Some of us had to find our way to the church or a “horse place” while others had to go to the ferry dock and a harbor. At the end we all had to find a “saloon” which is one of the local sights and looks like an abandoned bar and pick up fishing equipment which we would need later on. All of this was extraordinary fun even though the rain was pouring all the time like insane. At the end of the game all of us gathered in the school and discussed our experiences, laughed like crazy and tried to dry our clothes.

In the afternoon we worked on decorations for our spaceship travel. Some people had to arrange the chill out room while others had to turn our working room into a spaceship cabin…

In the end it all looked like we were really in space.

In the evening, after launching the spaceship with messages we had a so called “alien party” dressed up as aliens.

Five different groups, five different adventures on our travel to Fjørtofta-the host village :)

NORWAY

Vegard came and picked up us up at our home 12.30. We arrived to the ferry place where we met people from Belarus and Serbia. We were a bit nervous, but it was ok. People looked nice, and they were. When the ferry came, we went inside with all our bags and things. All the people from Serbia and Belarus wanted to go up and out on ferry, but that is not normal here, but Tove asked permission and it was ok. It was funny to see how happy they got when they could do this.

The trip was not so long for us. An hour, maybe. The only thing we knew was that this would be fun!

SERBIA

Five representatives of delegation of Serbia, encouraged by adventure spirit, started with a trip to the islands of Norway. First we took a flight from Belgrade to Munich. We were actually late to catch the connecting flight to Oslo but the plane was actually waiting for us, nice! :)

After a long hour running we reached the plane, took breakfast and enjoyed a view from plane window. We arrived in Oslo, where we had an unpleasant situation becouse Nebojsa´s suitcase was broken, which made our journey a bit more difficult. After that we took the plane to Ålesund, where we were welcomed by the rain. A group from Belarus arrived after a few hours. We were very happy to see them since we had heard so many nice things about them before. Together we set of to Brattvag where we spent our first night. We were amazed and surprised by the youth centre, which we found beautifull!

We had so much fun there with the Belarusian group cos we could use billiard, listen to music, play games, prepare interesting food and etc. Next day we took a ferry to  Fjørtofta, enjoyed in a beautiful nature and after that waited to greet other participants. It was a great adventure coming here :) ///Veljko, Milisav, Nebojsa, Minja

SPAIN

Everything began at 6 am in Bilbao (where we had to get by car earlier!). On our first flight to Frankfurt Edu was so tired that he immediately fell asleep. He had just opened his eyes when one of the cabin crew members offered a cheese or ham sandwich. With his sleepy eyes he saw something dark brown (german type of bread) and thinking of chocolate said: "CHOCOLATE". The flight attendant looked at him confused and walked away (!?!) 

On our second flight to Stavenger, when a lovely flight attendant offered us an aperitif, Edu was 100% awake and concentrated and managed to get his sandwich :)

Pass the security control in Stavenger, one of the officers reminded Ruben it was not allowed to bring liquid in flasks bigger than 100 ml, as he had found a half a liter bottle of water in Ruben´s backpack. Ruben preferred to drink the whole bottle of water, rather than to throw it away.

It was already 4 pm when we finally got to Ålesund where we had to wait for a group from Montenegro arriving at the airport at 8 pm. After useless efforts to use a norwegian coffee machine (we had no coins and our credit cards seemed not to work!) we decided to go to a Cafe. Unfortunately the only place to have a coffee was on the other side of the airpor, which meant we had to pass the security control once again.  Poor Rubén had to drink his whole bottle of water in order not to have to trow it away. He seem to love his bottle very much. We finally reached the island of Fjørtofta very late at night, exhausted but very happy to meet other young participants from Serbia, Belarus and Norway. And...we had the opportunity to taste yummy crabs- gifted to us by a local fisherman.

 ///Rubén, Elena, Edu, Bea.

MONTENEGRO

At 10.10.p.m. we took a train to Belgrade. It was funny because there was a lot of smoke in the train, so everyone was laughing and being scared at the same time.

We had to take three flights before we got to Ålesund. We arrived late, and there was a small boat waitinfg for us to take us to Fjørtofta.

Our trip was exciting but we were extremely tired. We were very happy when we arrived as there was a Spanish group waiting for us.