Trip to Timisoara

Travelling and the 1st day in Timisoara

When it came to travelling day, The Erasmus+ Youth Exhange to Romania consisted of two seperate Finnish teams. Our team included young people and a staff member from Tampere and Helsinki. Our flight took off around 6.05 on a Sunday morning from Helsinki. The first flight landed in Munichen, where we had a few hours to ourselves to spend around at the airport. In Munichen, it showed clear signs of winter as there was lots of snow on the ground. The second flight took off around 11.45 as the flight was a bit delayed. 

However, the flight landed in Timisoara after about one hour, so we still managed to stay on our original schedule. At the airport, we decided to take the easy way and we took a taxi to our planned accommodation. As we arrived early in our hotel, we had plenty of time to settle around and get ourselves comfortable. We met up with our Romanian friends and had our first glimpses of the youth center where our project takes place for the most part. Later in the evening, our Romanian coordinators had ordered us all pizza for our dinner. In addition to that, we visited the local supermarket nearby to get us some extra food and snacks. Most of us went to bed early as we didn’t get much sleep prior to the trip. Overall, the travelling day was easy on us and we were already so eager to get to see what more Romania has to offer!

Turku team arrived at Helsinki-Vantaa airport at around 5:30 am. We went trough the security check and waited for our flight, that departed at 9:30 am. Tero had his first flight ever and he was quite frightened but Nico and Sasu held his hand at the start of the flight and Tero's fear was gone and even when we landed he was ok with the landing. After landing to Hungary at 10:50 public time, we went to get something to eat. We waited for our bus to leave at 15:50 and our 5,5 hour journey would begin. We arrived to Timisoara around 21:30pm and we walked to FITT center from the bus station. After arriving to FITT we called pyry to help us to log in to hotel. Pyry showed us some places inside the FITT center before we went to our rooms to eat pizza and go to sleep.

We woke early in the morning to have a breakfast at the main hall. After the breakfast we went to a room and sat in a circle with the Romanian participants and facilitators. Pyry started the whole thing with some simple activities to get to know each other a bit. first activity was to walk around the room and just kind of feel yourself be present. There was some slower walking, eye contact, bigger steps and stopping mid walk. At first participants didn't feel like they weren't too excited about walking around, but when there was added things earlier mentioned then they were laughing and having fun.

Second thing we did was to make a posture of our happiest moment in our life and kind of just stay as a statue, then 5 more people joined the picture and made a statue out of their selves and then other participants were asked how did they feel about the installation these people made. We repeated it a few times with different people. 

After this we carried on with our saddest moment/memory we could think of and wrote it on a peace of paper. Now we asked someone to volunteer to show their sad memory as a statue and everyone in the room would join as they please to pose a statue. Now the one who first started it was asked to come see the picture people had made by making their postures around the first one to show their memory. We repeated this few times with other people before going to dinner. 

After our dinner we went for a city tour that lasted around 1,5 hours. The city looked amazing with its old and massive buildings. Everyone seemed to be very excited to see around the city. We also went to a part of Timisoara where the revolution 1st started in Romania. There was also a little ferris wheel in the middle of the town and traditional food at the stalls.

After touring around the city we headed back to FITT by a bus. At FITT we had a tour around the center that was super cool. The building has a lot to offer like arts, youth courses, handcrafts, dance, music, free time activities, stage, bar, terrace, art exhibit room and so much more. Also the doors are open for 24/7. After this tour we had a little break and after the break we shared people to blog and editing groups and some of us went to make traditional Romanian food with our romanian friends. 

When supper was ready we all went to eat this odd but tasty cuisine called mamaliga that was made mostly out corn. There was some cheese and sour cream added. After the supper we thanked for food and wished everyone good night and went to our rooms. Tomorrow will be another good day of learning!

The youth exchange is funded by the Erasmus+ Youth in Action program of the Europen Union.