Monday, March 13

The week started with our first “real school day” full of presentations. The whole day should begin at half past eight but we started with a delay, like rest of the week ;-). We Germans and the Dutch weren’t used to this relaxed treatment of time, so we had to get used to this southern mentality. For the first part all the students were divides into two groups (with five members of each country in each group) to do a workshop on „national identity“. One was lead by a Spanish and the other one by a German student. The German student Konrad had prepared a presentation in which the different nations had to find key words about their autostereotype and the stereotypes they have of the other countries. Then they had to put them on a poster for each country. Finally, we had to think of keywords for a European identity and put them on the posters as well. The Spanish presentation included interesting surveys where we, the students, had to get active, which means that we could estimate a percentage of how important certain key words are for the identity of our country. One of the conclusions included that the Dutch and German students responded rather similarly as well as the Italians and the Spaniards. Through those surveys you could get an amazing view behind “the curtain”, meaning how different from you foreigners think of your race and counrty in some cases. Another plus of those tasks was that you could agree with prejudices/stereotypes foreign students mentioned for Germany or joke about them because they are nonsense. Well, as you can probably tell, the Spanish presentations took quite a while and because of technical difficulties they took even longer. After an eagerly awaited lunch break the program continued with meeting two migrants from Africa who told us all about their journey and their assimilation process in Italy. It was a rare good to have the chance to hear such a story face to face and we could ask questions we always wanted to ask such people but never had the chance to. Lastly, we played a game where you had to guess the country whilst only hearing a soundtrack or looking at some pictures. All in all, it had been a day filled with a variety of activities which wasn’t exhausting though. After half past five we were dismissed and could do whatever came to our minds. We went out for dinner or were amazed by the cooking skills of our host mums. Luckily, there were plenty of fruit and veggies, which means we didn’t gain too much weight although we ate way too much pizza and pasta :-)

Tuesday, March 14

Now it was excursion day! That means we all gathered around school at a quarter past eight, but as always we left a decent amount of time later. Our first stop was at Alberobello, a cute little village with houses with stone roofs that look like they were from another century. All the people there earn their living through tourism, which means nearly every shop owner stood in his doorway trying to sell products to you. You could buy nearly everything, from homemade noodles and olive oil to dolls and bracelets. After our small “tour” (once up and down the paved hill with the shops) we drove ahead -with our by the way “personal” bus that stayed with us the whole day- to Pilignano, which was probably THE highlight for every student. Finally we would see the sea! There we had a two hour lunch break which we used to explore the rocks and cliffs. The Spanish students even dared to walk into the sea with their naked feet. We Germans rather stood nearby and exchanged cameras so that everyone got at least one picture of himself with the sea in the background (additionally to all the selfies). Till now, this location was one of the most beautiful ones of all. Rather by chance we picked one of the cafés/restaurants for having our lunch. There we ate mainly pizza, pasta and focaccia (you see: we did act stereotype-ish in some way). Unfortunately it had been very windy there. But what would be the sea without a little breeze, right?

Wednesday, March 15

Today was our second day filled with presentations. The Dutch had one presentation about stereotypes in songs and then there was a poem concerning refugees that you could read forward and backwards and that was pretty amazing because it gave you goosebumps. Depending on which direction you chose, the author either spoke in a friendly or in an extremely harsh way about refugees. Finally, there were presentations about the Anti-Islamic and the right-wing movements in the Netherlands and Germany. Apparently, such movements don`t exist in Spain and Italy. Afterwards we played volleyball or watched some Italian students baking a traditional Eastern cake whilst the other group of students immersed into their subject “trees”. The international students had to form a tree together and took a picture of it.

At half past nine or let’s just say nine o’ clock, we were invited to the great “Farewell-Dinner” with four (!) courses (Bruschetta, noodles, Scampi and chocolate fudge) that were prepared and served by the students who study hotel management there. The atmosphere was rather posh, considering the 25 students (approximately 4 per table) that rushed around trying to serve everything perfectly. In the end, everyone was totally satisfied and after a huge thank you we spread out into the evening, walking around Trani one last time until we fell into our beds (one earlier than the other).

Thursday, March 16

Afterabout only 4 hours of sleep we met at half past eight at school where our shuttle to the airport in Bari awaited us. After a tearful good-bye we headed off. Despite long waiting times the whole week was a success! Nevertheless, some of us girls were more than happy to come home to our families again. We had even missed our clean and modern school ;-)

(written by Laura Diebold & Lena Stadlmair)