Kultuur–Kulttuuri–Kultúra

The Finnish Evening 29.4.07

2007-05-02T06:09:00.000-07:00

Buffee

Finnish specialities

Finnish folkdance "Huutokatrilli"

The Finnish Evening 29.4.07

2007-05-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

Yam, yam...

I love salmiakki.

Elviira, Justiina and Amanda from Finland.

Finnish song competitions election board from Hungeria and Estonia.

The audience.

"Május elseje" (=first of May) Photos

2007-05-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

Early in the morning 26.4.07 in the bus to the Helsinki-Vantaa aeroport.

27.4.07 in Börcs

27.4.07 Györ Quis

28.4.07 Hungerians are cooking gulash.

28.4.07 Hungerian folkmusic band and Karoli from Estonia.

28.4.07 Hungarian Evening

29.4.07 Flowering field in Börch.

29.4.07 Finns are preparing Karelian pies to Finnish evening.

30.4.07 "Dont wake me up, I want to sleep".

27.4.07 Four flags

30.4.07 Pannonhalma Abbey

30.4.07 view from Pannonhalma www.pannonhalma.hu

1.5.07 Sanni and Karma in Hungerian field.

Journey so far through Estonian eyes

2007-04-30T03:12:00.000-07:00

It all started way too early in the airport in Tallinn. With bags full of Estonian candies and vodka and heads full of sweet dreams we headed off towards Börcs. It took us about 15 hours to get here, as we had to face flight delays, adventures in the local metro and missed some trains.

When we finally got here, exhausted as hell, we were greeted by the lordmajor of Börcs himself. Another "shock" was that people in here are extremely friendly. They are all trying to make our stay here as good as possible. And it is.

On the second day we had fun in Győr.

On the third day we had workshops and in the evening the Hungarians showed us some real Hungarian culture. They are like awesome dancers and great on wine and white bread.

On the fourth day we had workshops again and the evening was Finnish. Again we danced as if the floor was on fire and tasted some liquorice and Karjala pies.

On the fifth day we went to Pannonhalma to visit the monastery.

To be continued...

How it began II ...

2007-04-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

Györ through my eyes - after some palinka(s), March 2007

Once upon a time...
... those beginnings always suck, don't they? I'll try once again. Twice upon a time... Hmm.. Oh, I'll just let it go and get to it!

I think it was in the end of September of 2006, when I promised to attend a seminar in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia. An evaluation-seminar for a sub-programme of YOUTH (now Youth in Action, click here to check it out), called Crossborder Cooperations. I was defenetly damn glad I had a chance to go back to Slovenia, but I never even thought of meeting the people I met there or.. starting a project with them!

But I'm sure You want to know all the details too, right?

Ofcourse it was one of those lovely early afternoons in Ljubljana airport, I had just drank my last zip of water, after explaining to too many mysteriously charming taxidrivers I do NOT need their help and looking at time and thinking, how am I ever going to recognize someone Dimitri, who I had never even met and who should have been here already several minutes ago... That was the minute a happy face walked out and I knew - this is going to be a fun weekend! Meet Dimitri, a fabulous Estonian, who became a good friend and a great idea-generator in just a couple of days. A guy, who knows what a good joke consists of , for sure (egoboost?:D) And then, after arriving to Kranjska Gora there was this always-smiling guy with this very unusual name to me (I think I had to ask it over for dozen of times) who was calling everyone to this „Welcome Party of the Seminar!”. And the best part was, that all the people I needed, just came around - Merja was my roommate with that supermini toothpaste I still admire (and me with my pink bunny-toothbrush!) and soon after, Hanna moved in too:)

By the way, the Welcome Party of the Seminar lasted several nights and it did consist of different national drinks, including viciously good palinka and there we were, with our palinka-heads on that sunny morning in Kranjska Gora, Cathy, our fabulous Canadian trainee pushing us to create fab ideas.. And it DID work actually!

We didn't really need much to get to the point of Finno-Ugrians. I mean, when Balazs propsed the idea I felt some energy floating in and topics that I felt interested in, jumping around everywhere.

With my own travelling around and meeting people from all corners of the world, well - so many people even in Europe don’t actually know, that there is such thing as Finno-Ugrian culture, there ARE people, who don’t know that we have our own „bizarre” languages, that Estonians are not speaking Russian actually and that there are dozens of other Finno-Ugrian nations around Finland and Russia, who are dying out! And why should they, really? Yeah, that is one way of looking at it, but at the same time, why shouldn’t they? So, hey, why not to make a project connected to that, huh?

So, the aim of the project as written down in the ideal shape, was to help Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian youth to get to know each others culture and origin of the Finno-Ugric languages. The idea was to get closer to each other through investigation of our (similar) cultural background. Also one of our ideas was to fight against prejudicies and stereotypes (so blue-eyed as we all are), give the participants (=YOU) a possibility to become more open-minded in direction of other cultures and facilitate Your interest for (other) foreign languages. Also one of the important ideas of the project is to make Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian youngsters to give insight to the culture of EU member countries, where the spoken languages have the same roots (not only Finno-Ugric). We wanted to let You recognize the importance of protection of the cultural heritage left for us to be kept on. The main topics are Finno-Ugric issues, but there is an opportunity to get to know and experience other fields of culture as well. The applied methods are based on interactive and informal techniques so the participants aka You, would be able to explore Your own values, develop Your abilities in tolerance, cooperation and social conformity.

Reading this You may think – what?! But the truth is, even if You do not realize it just right now, You’ll probably feel a piece of it when You get back home and think back of this exchange. Maybe not even that Finno-Ugrian thing, but there will be something.. I promise! And well - in the end, itt’s really all up to You – how much You gain from this experience, how much You give away and how much You receive. As always – it’s all up to YOU.

Hope You're doing great and giving Your support for the organizers too. As we all know, it's their first youth exchange and even though it's impossible to make You belive, but organizing a hole week for some people You've never even met before, is damn hard. So, smile when You see Rita or Adrienn walking towards You next time and don't forget to slap Balazs from me:)

Best to all of You and hope You enjoy Your week!

Hugs and head ööd!

Helen (those who haven't met me and have absolutely no idea, who am I, well, You will defenetly meet me in the next exchange! Do not even DOUBT about that one:)

How it began......

2007-04-29T08:03:00.000-07:00

Hallo Finno-Ugrian friends!

Now you are in Hungary and I hope enjoying your time together in Börcs.
The picture you can see has been taken in Slovenia last September.
Among many youngsters from various european organizations I met there Merja, Helen,Hanna, and Dimitrij. Actually I think we met together with a bottle of pálinka as well. I don't remember clearly...:-)
On the picture you can see the balcony where we began to discuss about a camp with topic Fenno- Ugrian language relations at first.
We all found it fantastic and decided to work out the idea. To realize the meeting between you, we had to apply to our Natonal Agencies and all the three application had to win also, which was not so easy process like drinking a bottle of pálinka before.:-)
Fortunately all of them won and I'm happy you can be here and hope you'll make friends and you can see each other in Estonia and in Finland in the future as well.

Have a nice week!

Balázs

2007-04-29T02:12:00.000-07:00

Győr

Győr

Győr

Hungerian night Saturday 28.4.2007, girls in national costumes are Janet, Isabella and Andrea. We became friends with goulash, which was in in fireplace. There was a real folkmusic band and we learned many hungarian dances. We got a presentation about hungarian national drinks, too.

Saturday 28.4.2007

2007-04-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

On Friday night we got to know which group was the best in Győr Quis. The best group got books for prizes and others got sweet cakes. We learned to know each others names by games, too.
The Friday in town of Győr was very hot. Few Estonias got too much sun. So they were quite sick in the evening.
On Saturday we choose out of three workshops: multimedia, moving theatre or classical theatre. We are going to work next four days with these groups to make some presentation or show. The theme of every group is finnougrians culture, which in this case means: Finland, Estonia and Hungary.
The summer is reality here. Its about +25 C, sun is shining, birds are singing, flowers blooming and erything is so green.
To night is to be coming Hungarian nights. We shall see what is coming up.

Friday 27.4.2007

2007-04-27T04:20:00.000-07:00

Győr Quiz was in program in middle of the day. We went by bus to Győr, the nearest city and weFinns and Estonians had split up to groups. The Hungarians were in checkpoints with different tasks. We had to draw pictures, try to spell hungarian language, to sing hungarian song, to change a match to a largest thing as possible etc. At the same time we make friends with each others and old town of Győr.

Thursday 26.4.2007, Finns

2007-04-27T03:45:00.000-07:00

We all left home very early. Pavel and Jari didnt sleep at all, and others only few hours.
Here is Finlands groups (Lumikot) members opinions.

Maria: I think best part on arrival was jorney from Budapest to Bőrch (We used bus, underground,train and our own foots). It was exciting when Pavels baggage were lost, and we all thinked how is this going to end. But it was happy end because Pavels baggage was just security checked.

Another excing happening was when we were on train. Salesclerk sold us wrong tickets. When we were on train, ticker-controller asked our tickets and said we are in wrong train. It was very confusing.

Sanni: My journey went out really good. I was little anxious, but it went over.

Anni ja Aino: We were tired and we felt that travel was too long. But everyhing went fine. The local people are interested about us and they are very warmhearted. The village is beautiful and nice. We think that its wonderful because here is summer. We wish that we could catch some sun. Its excing that grasshoppers make noise at night.

All boys:

Aeroplane was interesting and fun. (Exept Jari was first time in a aeroplane and he was anxious)
Before we step up to plane, we saw spinning turbine right next to us. It was very cool. It was very funny when Eino and Pavel studied hungary on the bus and shouted ˝We love you!!˝
to girls in backseat. It was very easy to communicate with others, there was no problem with that. Maybe the best thing from thursday was Texas Hold em´ with Petér.

Estonian group

2007-04-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

Pille

Hannes

Merilin

Jorma

Karoli

Mihkel

Karola

Eeva

Siim

Finnish group

2007-04-24T03:09:00.000-07:00

Jari
Maria
Pavel
Hanna, groupleader
Merja, groupleader
Aino
Juha
Anni

Eino

We are waiting for Sanni`s photo...