Trip to Poland

from the German school magazine Lesson

Comenius Trip to Poland

Off to our next Comenius trip:
In the week after the autumn holidays 2012 (oder: after fall break), we hit the road. The German travel team consisted of the teachers Mrs Schöndorf and Mrs Elbert and four students. Other groups from Austria, France, and Spain got on their way as well. This time, we were headed to Gorzow Wielkopolski in Poland, which used to be Landsberg an der Warthe before World War II.

On Monday, October 15, 2012 at 9:00 AM, we met at the Neuwied train station. We had to switch trains in Cologne, Berlin Ostbahnhof, and Frankfurt an der Oder. From there, a taxicab took us to Gorzow. Altogether, it took us about 10 hours to get there.

We used our time on route to prepare for the International Quiz that was supposed to take place on the last day of our trip. How do they say “Guten Tag” in Polish again? This is really difficult!

At 7:00 PM, we finally arrived at the hotel for the teachers, where our host families had already been waiting for us. It was very exciting: Who is going to stay with whom? Are they friendly? First impressions: It’s going to work out just fine – at least for most of us.

On Tuesday at 9:00 AM, we met at Gymnazium Nr. 7, our Comenius partner school. We received a very warm welcome and everybody was talking all at once: “What’s your name? Where do you come from?” Our communication in English went quite well.

We were divided into groups with one representative of each country. Each group got a laptop where they were shown pictures of different kinds of food such as tomatoes, ginger, cucumbers, rice, etc. Every group member wrote down the names of the different foods in their language. That way, we created an international dictionary!

At 12:00 PM, we went to a cooking class. We watched a short film that taught us how to make traditional Polish Pierogi, dumplings of unleavened dough stuffed with potato, sauerkraut, or ground meat. Then, it was time for us to form groups and cook ourselves: Roll out the dough, cut out the pieces, stuff them, form them into dumplings, and cook them. After everyone finished cooking, we went to a dining hall where we enjoyed our meal: It was delicious!
 Afterwards, we had some time off. A group of people went to a pizzeria for dinner and they were stuffed like a Pierogi!

For Wednesday, we had planned an excursion. First, we visited a baroque castle with a beautiful park and ancient oaks. Then, we went to Poznan (former name: Posen). We got to explore the city in small groups and we saw the famous goat statues on top of the city hall tower. The legend says that they escaped there to save themselves from being cooked. In the evening, we took the bus back to Gorzow and arrived there at around 9:00 PM.

On Thursday morning, there was an official reception at the Gorzow city council where speeches were held and we were shown a film about the town. Afterwards, we went to an outdoor museum on an old farm and looked at old farm equipment and furniture as well as artworks made of salt dough that are produced for a competition every year. Later on, a talented baker showed us how he created numerous different shapes and forms with bread dough. Eventually, he baked bread in an old oven. We made a bonfire and grilled sausages and marshmallows that we ate along with the freshly baked bread. In our free time after the museum visit, we walked through Gorzow and had dinner by the Warta river. There is always something going on, as the new river promenade with its restaurants attracts many people.

Friday was the day of the International Quiz. Students from all five countries were competing against each other. They had all handed in questions and solutions for several different categories (e.g. famous people, history, language, etc.) in advance. Now, the teams had to show what they had learned and how well they had prepared for the quiz – however, a little bit of luck with the dice and the questions was helpful as well. At the end, the Austrian team was the winner!

After the quiz, we went to our respective host families and baked cakes and cookies for the farewell party. We met at the school at 5:00 PM and the principal gave a speech and showed a video of our cooking talent. Then, we ate cake and in the evening, we went to the river with all the students. Everybody was in a melancholic mood as they had made friends and didn’t want to say goodbye – who knows, if we will see each other again? We hope so...

Saturday was the day of our departure and we said our goodbyes and extended warm words of gratitude to our host families. We arrived in Neuwied at 8:00 PM that day.

My conclusion:  Those that are open-minded and curious about other countries, cultures, languages, and people & able to integrate and adapt themselves to new and unknown situation will learn a lot about themselves and others through their Comenius experience.

(Merita Dehari)