By Marija Tomevska

In the period from 19th to 28th August in Berlin was held the trinational Work Camp organized by the YMCA, which was attended by 25 young representatives from Macedonia, Germany and France.

The participants were accommodated in the youth hostel “Gaste-Etage” located on the street Osloer, where the camp acted as one big family, where each participant took care of the food preparation and the maintenance of the space on a daily basis. The first day began with introducing of the participants from the three countries with a help of couple interesting games, followed by language animations.

Throughout the duration of the work camp the participants used rented bicycles in order to accelerate the movement around Berlin and thus closely to acquainte with the beauties of the German capital and the sense of freedom that the cycling brings. With the bicycles they visited the airport Tempelhof which is no longer in use, but it is now transformed into recreational space for bicyclists, joggers, rollerbladers, urban gardeners & yoga enthusiasts where the residents and the tourists spend their free time. With this visit they learned about the concept of urban gardening and got ideas on how to organise an urban garden, which was supposed to be done near the French Centre in Berlin.

The participants were divided into two groups. The first group was responsible for the cleanup of the landfill that was located near the French Centre in Berlin where the urban garden was supposed to be formed. The second group was performing activities in a workshop where they built furniture and props from wooden pallets and other natural materials that were going to be placed in the urban garden as equipment. This working part durated every day for four hours, afterwards followed by language animations and games in French language center.

During the free time that the participants had, they visited the Bundestag, Mauer Park, Alexanderplatz, Berlin Wall, The Memorial Museum of the Jews, Tiergarten, and they also enjoyed swimming in one of the many ponds near the Tegel airport.

One of the most interesting evenings was the international evening where all of the participants prepared traditional food from their country, they presented it to the others, tried the different specialties and drinks and sang traditional songs.

The last day of the camp was reserved for the presentation of the final form of the urban garden. Plants were planted in large pots by all participants of the camp, and afterwads was organized a party with barbeque and German beer, where not only the participants were present, but also the local citizens from the nearby buildings.

After the ending of the official part, all of the participants shared their experience with the successfully organized camp and the way the language animations were held, which helped in getting familiar with Macedonian, German and French language. Apart from the learning and practicing the three languages, the pleasure of meeting seemingly different people, get close to them and to create something together suggests that we, the young people of Europe are not so different after all.