Erasmus+ project: Students' mobility in Bratislava, Slovakia

Tuesday 10.03.

The next day started again very early. The school in Slovakia starts at 8:00 sharp, and we think that we are lucky that our school starts later so we can sleep 30 minutes longer. 

The second day continued with work at the workshop. We were divided into 2 groups based on what we preferred – graffiti or performance. The graffiti group started painting their huge wall-sized masterpiece and the performance group started developing their performance. For us, the Slovak teacher picked a Sibelius piece about the Swan of Tuonela. We thought it was a bit slow, but then we got a great idea to act as swans and to perform their way to Tuonela. We think this idea will work great with the whole concept.

On this day we also got a tour of the school. The whole building was quite strange, and then we learned it was because it used to be a hotel. We often got lost walking up and down some random stairs and once we even walked onto the roof and found out the school also has an actual star observatory. 

 Another strange thing for us was that you can only access the school with a special card. Everyone had one and it was the only way to open doors at the school. 

Also, what we found very different was that the teachers were very strict with the students. We are happy that our teachers are much nicer and treat us in a much better way.

In the afternoon we had a tour of the city. Bratislava is the capital city of Slovakia, and we went to see a pretty old town and the castle with an amazing view over the whole city. The guide also gave us some information on history of Bratislava, and we learned some interesting facts. Unfortunately, during the communism era, most of the old town and Jewish quarter was destroyed for a highway. The guide told us that this was normal in communist times. We are so glad we have democracy now.

Wednesday 11.03.

They say that life or an artist is hard and today we have got a little feeling for it and we agree. For the whole day we worked hard on our graffiti and performance and as usually when you are half-way through some project, we felt like we can never finish this on time and it will never look good.

What made us feel better was another meditation session about going to our own planet. Imagining being floating in space on a planet of our own imagination really cleared our head and we were ready to go back to work.

What also helped us was that we had snacks every day and also very good lunches. The way lunches worked at this school was a mystery for us, but they tasted good. Students could always choose from 3 options and once a week they also had a real chef coming to the school and cooking some delicious meals.

We tasted many Slovak dishes during the week, and we all agreed that our favorite was Slovak pasta with cheese and bacon. The food here seems to be simple but very good. And they also served a desert after every lunch, which is something we would love also at our school.

Thursday 12.03.

Bratislava has a great location; it is only 2 hours from Budapest and 1 hour from Vienna. So, today we went to visit Vienna for the whole day. 

It was exciting to be a big city (because Bratislava is not that big, it feels maybe the size of Tampere) and of course, some of the Slovak students almost got lost in the metro. Luckily our teachers were sure we are always together and never separate from each other.

After some travel time and a little walk, we arrived at the museum of Austrian history, where we had our first workshop. There we learned about the history of Austria starting from 1900 until today. It was a great exhibition with very interactive things on display, and we learned a lot just by playing with the displays. Interestingly, people at schools learn about the history of Germany, France, Russia, but we realized we do not know much about Austria after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

After the workshop, we went and had a traditional Viennese hotdog for lunch. It was ok, but Finnish sausage is much better, we all agreed. 

With bellies full, we had a little tour of the center of Vienna, we saw the cathedral and then had couple hours free time to walk around, taste some Austrian sweets and do some shopping.

We all thought we have to try the Sacher cake, which is a famous Austrian specialty but those that we found were way too expensive for us, so we had ice cream instead and coffee from Starbucks and went to some shops. Two hours is not that long and soon we had to leave Vienna to go back to Bratislava.

It was a good day, we saw and learned a lot and we were excited about our last day and presenting our graffiti and performance.

Friday 13.03.

Today is Friday the 13th, but we were all hoping that it does not mean bad luck for the presentation of our week’s work.

The morning was dedicated to finalizing the performance and the graffiti and around 11 we started cooking some traditional food of our countries. Our teacher made salmon soup and blueberry muffins, the Croatians brought maybe 20 kilos of cheese, salami, and other delicacies from their country and the Slovaks made some sweet pasta with poppyseeds paste. 

It all smelled and looked delicious and once we were allowed to eat, we could say it all also tasted great. Of course, the best from all was the salmon soup – we thought that and everyone else agreed.

And then the time to present our work came. People started to show up – not only the students, but also the parents, their siblings and other guests. Even the German ambassador showed up to see what we have created.

We were very stressed, but after all everything went great. We got a standing ovation, and everyone thought our performance was perfect and the graffiti raised a lot of conversation about the topics of freedom, liberty and human rights.

With that, our week in Bratislava came almost to an end. We spent last evening with our host families, and the next morning said goodbyes and left for a trip back home.

During the week in Slovakia, we have learned some important things:

• we learned how to make digital booklets, QR codes and some basic design
• we learned some meditation techniques to support our mental and physical well-being
• we learned about the history and culture of the central Europe by visiting Slovakia and also Austria

And we made some new friends along the way 😊