Meeting in Portugal (11th-17th March 2018)
Monday the 12th of March, 2018
At Monday we were able to sleep a bit longer. After a delicious breakfast in our hotel (, which was great) the Erasmus+ group met for the first time at the reception. There were a few already known faces, but a lot of new people too. The Portugal teacher „Luis“ arrived and as a group we went to one of the participating Portugal schools, a „secondary school“. There were already flags of the participating countries waiting for the first group photo. We soon were leaded upstairs to one of the teachers rooms. It was nice prepared, with comfortable seats and flags on the tables. After everybody welcomed each other, Mr. Schmieder (German teacher and coordiantor of the project) took the chance to think of Maria, who had not longer the chance to be with us. Rest in peace.
The teachers then stayed in the room while the students were showed around the school building by Portugal Erasmus+ members. After lunch the coordinators meeting took place. While this, in a several room the students talked about our main subject „friendship“. Later we all presented the presentations we had brought with us. For dinner we went to a local restaurant, a great possibility to get to know each other better.
Tuesday the 13th of March, 2018
Our second day in Portugal startet as always with an excellent breakfast at our hotel “Brisa Sol“. After that we started a guided tour through Albufeira. Our guide showed us a few sights of Albufeira. For example: A statue of San Vincente of Albufeira, two churches, a house with a fassade made of shells and some of the most beautiful views over the beach and the city.
When we finished the tour, everyone had about an hour to have lunch at a restaurant of his or her choice in the downtown of Albufeira. Me and three other students decided to eat at “Burger Ranch“.After eating our Burgers we met the rest of the group again and went to “D. Martim Fernandes“ school where the portugese students showed us the play “Tales of Lusophony – a linguistic friendship“. The play was about different tales from all portuguese speaking countries. After the play we went to another building of the school where we watched a short Youtube video on Lusophony – which is the expression for all portuguese speaking countries. After seeing this video, a few groups from the school presented some traditional songs from Portugal as well as our Erasmus+ project song. Afterwards we had a coffee break in the school in which we had the chance to talk to the portugese students for the first time. It was very relaxed and everyone was in a good mood after eating some delicious cake.When we finished the coffee break we had a few hours time to walk around Albufeira for our own.Later on the evening the whole group went to have dinner in the downtown.
Wednesday the 14 th of March, 2018
Today we went to the capital of Portugal, Lisbon.
Since we wanted to be there as long as possible, all groups woke up at around 5-6 o’clock in the morning, and we did not go to breakfast in the hotel.
Instead, the hotel gave us our lunch in plastic bags, and wished us a wonderful day in Lisbon.
The bus drive took about 3 hours, so we had a lot of time to get a great view at the beautiful landscape of Portugal as well as the western coastline.
Our first stop in Lisbon then was the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Jerome Monastery or Hieronymus Kloster), a monastery built around the end of the 16th century.
With its Late-Gothic architectural style, this building already iis a masterpiece, which is also a reason why it was officially declared a UNESCO world heritage in 1983.
We got entrance tickets to the entire monastery, and explored it and the built-in church for several hours.
Then, we drove a bit more into town with our bus and stopped at a “Mall”, which is basically a gigantic market / basilika, mainly filled with food stands. We (the german group) bought a lot of “Pastel de Natas”, which is a tiny and very tasty portuguese cake / delicacy there.
When every group was finished visiting just named food stands, we continued our journey to the Oceanário de Lisboa, a gigantic aquarium at the port of Lisbon, that holds birds, invertebrates, fish, mammals, amphibians and plants of all sorts that can be found in portuguese waters and beyond.
We visited both the permanent and temporary exhibition, which was pretty cool because that way we got to go underneath the actual watermark, where they had built an aquarium as well, making it look like we were inside the ocean.
Some of the fish species they have there were completely new to us, we had never seen anything like that!
When we returned to Albufeira in the evening, the groups started splitting up. We (germans) however sticked together with the turkish group and went to Pizza Hut for dinner.
Thursday the 15th of March, 2018
On Thursday the second coordinators meeting took place. The students learned some traditional Portugese games by the PE- teacher, which was pretty funny! At 11:00 we all drove to „Portimao“ for lunch. It was a nice village next to the sea. The weather was very good too. At lunch especially the German and Portgese group got to know each other good. Later we drove to „Lagos“, a pretty historical town and great place for tourists. We had a look at an old boad (as a joke named the „friendship“ by Johann) and walked trough the old part of the city, in small groups. Together with the Portugese we went for an ice cream too. In the evening, back in Albufeira, in rather small groups we had dinner in the centre of the town.
Friday the 16 th of March, 2018
On Friday morning we met in the foyer of our hotel to go to the School together to have our last meeting and the wrap-up session. After a short speech of the portuguese director Aurélio Nascimento and our head coordinator Christian Schmieder we all got handed out our “Certificates of attendance“.After that we had to give a short feedback of the meeting and then we went outside where we were shown the new sign of our meeting. It was a sign made of glass which was hung up on the outside of one of the buildings. In my opinion this was a great idea.
This whole ceremony took pretty long and everyone was hungry when we went to the restaurante „Tres palmeiras“ to have lunch. This was our last lunch as a whole group because after the lunch the first countries already had to leave for their departure. Italy was the first one to leave, followed by the UK and Spain. In the end there were only Portugal, Turkey and Germany left. The rest of the day we had free time and because of to the perfect weather the turkish and the german group went to the beach where we spent the rest of the day. Later on the evening we had dinner at Pizza Hut and then went to our hotel rooms for the last time with the memories of a great week.
Lino Becker, Johann Hochbruck, Niklas Rodenbüsch