Between 22-28 August the second Erasmus+ project of Ér hangja Association took place with great success at Székelyhíd. Thirty young people from four countries took place in it.
During the time of the different activities, the Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian and from HIghlands (south part of Slovakia) participants got aquinted with the culture and traditions of the others through cooking different traditional meals. The first day of the youth change programme was the exposure day, when all the participants got aquinted with the project, their daily programme, the Erasmus+ programme of the EU, the hometown of the project and had the first meeting with the others. They learned the name of each other through a game and gave an account of their expectations over against the programmes and their participation in it.
In the second day has started the interesting part of the programmes. The young people talked about their conventions pertain eating and their traditional meals, they draw together a food map, than in mixt groups had an open discussion about the possibilities to gain money using the gain gastronomical knowledge.
Photographed food making
Among the meeting between cultures, the main goal of the organisers was to give a long-term knowledge to the participants which they could use when they will return in their home country. The programmes main topic was gastronomy, and the organizers were the members of Er hangja Media Group , so the professional part of the activities was food photography and making of short videos about the preparation of the dishes. The organisers asked their expert coleagues to lead the group of food photographers and the filming of cooking workshops. First the participants had a presentation part of photo-video fundamentals, than they had the chance to practice what they learned. Each group prepared their national dishes and the others made photos and videos about it, then edited it on the computers. The usefulness of the programmes was reflected in the photos and videos made by the participants which can be seen by everyone who is interested on the internet.
The land of delicacies
The key words of the programmes were traditionality and eating, so the organizers next to the media programmes took the participants to visit two little food producers. First they visited Csomaközi László and his family in Érolaszi, where they saw the polytunnel plantatation and walking through the garden the farmer spoke about the begginings of his activity and cultivation of plants. The young people were surprised of the modern technologies used in plant cultivation and the huge plants, but the attraction of the day was when they ate fruits and vegetables directly from the garden. The hospitality of the family made them forgot for a second their home-sickness. The other visit was at the estate of Tolvaj family in Hegyközszentmiklós, which was like a little lost paradise.
The rich and green garden made the promisse of new adventures and information and the hosts told a lot of stories using the help of a translator. The attraction of this visit was when the young people saw how the family produces oil from various seeds by cold pressure and the mill of integral flours from different cereals. They saw the working process of the oil press and they could make healthy oils from sunflower seeds, hemp, sesam seeds ect. Then they saw the little wooden mill. By the use of a big stone the family makes integral flour, offal wheat and others. In the end they could taste the oils, ate sconeas made of integral flour and other healthy foods too.
The friendship of nations
To know better each other, the participants organised every evening a cultural night where they learned from the others national songs, dances, tales and learned about traditional foods, bevarages and delicacies. By the time they could watch short films about the participant countries. So we learned that the bagpipe is a popular instrument in Bulgaria, not only in Scotland, we drank Slovakian cofola, we ate Hungarian sausages with paprika and learned to dance the Romanina penguin dance.
The aim of the programmes was to fill the bag of the participant young people with knowledge and memories which they can bring with them home. The project was sponsored by the Erasmus + programme of the EU.