11 Bochum/DVakuf/Civril

A short trip to Mostar

On Wednesday we went to Mostar, where the thermometer showed delightful 41 degrees – the perfect condition for a 2 hour bus trip. Luckily we had air conditioning and enjoyed the nice view of the mountain landscape on our way. Mostar is the biggest city in Herzegowina and a famous place for tourists. Especially the Stari Most – a beautiful bridge across the river Naretva – is definitely something to see. It was build by the Ottomans in the 16th century.

But at first we visited a traditional house which was left also from the Ottoman empire. With its architecture and original objects from that time such as furniture and dishes we were able to get a good impression about how people lived during that time period. After some of us bought postcards to send them to their families and friends, we moved on to meet up with local people in a nice pub.

The most interesting part about Mostar is its devision in two parts: a Bosnian and a Croatian one. At the pub we had the possibility to talk to locals from both parts about how live is in such a conflicted situation. We got the impression that most of the young people in town had overcome this devision already and that they do not want to see the differences between these two parties. However the older people seem to hold on to old prejudices and stereotypes about each other.

We were able to exchange our prospectives and ideas of our perfect republic and happily the locals seemed to agree with us and our values. Afterward we had some free time and spend it differently. Some of us went shopping and bought lots of souvenirs, while others had a fantastic traditional Bosnian coffee with Lokum or went to swim in the very cold river.

On our way to the bus we found a dehydrated bird on the ground. We gave it some water to drink. Shortly afterward it felt much better and was able to fly away. Isn’t it symbolic?

Our first days in Donji Vakuf

Zdravo everyone!

After some time spent in Sarajevo, we arrived to our host town Donji Vakuf, where the family of our friends hosted us in their homes.

To understand better the situation in this town, we had some workshops that included interacting with local people. We went to the market, and asked people questions and their opinion what do they like and what would they do to change the things as citizens.

During our workcamp, we divided into two working groups, ´Republic´- where we are working on our ideal republic, where we create our perfect country and `Furniture group` where we are making furniture out of pallets for the kids in the neighbourhood. Local people reacted very positive about what we do here, and the kids were helping us :))

So far it´s going well for our final event that is going to happen on Saturday evening. We are preparing invitations, and inviting people ourselves, and there we are going to present our republic, so we are pretty busy right now, but we will post more pictures next time to show how are preparations look.

And here are some pictures of the barbecue we had last night, where the family of our friend Haris hosted us.

Till next time!

Democratic Playground

Hello everyone who is reading our blog. So we gathered again. but this time we came from Turkey and Germany to Bosnia and Herzegovina and we are here to create our own ideal republic.

The first two days we spent in Sarajevo, exploring the capital city, learning about the history and the culture of the country. We also visit the Parlament of Bosnia and Herzegowina where we have learnt about the system here and how it works.

For that purpose we interviewed local people and discussed each countries good and bad points that learned us how is the situation and lead us shape our republic.

During our two days in Sarajevo we had a chance to meet Amar and his mom Adha who are witnesses of the war that was happening from 1992 till 1996. They visit us and shared their stories. It was very emotional to listen, especially because it was told from the first hand and also because we didn´t know many things about the war that happened.

The other day we visit Tunnel of Hope which was built by Bosnian army during the siege of Sarajevo. This tunnel linked the Sarajevo neighbourhoods of Dobrinja and Butmir, allowing food, war supplies, and humanitarian aid to come into the city, and allowing people to get out.

Finally, we arrived to our host town Donji Vakuf, where we will spend the most time of our workcamp, and that´s why you should keep following us, because there are many interesting things we will be posting in our upcoming posts.

So stay tuned!

Warm greetings from hot Bosnia!

pARTicipation!

Hello to everyone. Here’s shortly what we have been doing lately. We are finishing with our workshops, and tomorrow is our final event.

Energizers and games :))

And some workshops:

Also we played beach volleyball :))

Becoming ´ U R B A N `

Sooo, we have started with our workshops. There are few group we have splited in. Besides the video/photo group and ewoca blog, there is also a Rap group, where participants learn how to rap and make music

Graffiti group is learning step by step how to draw and do graffiti

and another group is going to make some nice furniture with the pallets

Yesterday we visit guys from Urbanatix Bochum, and we they show us some basics things in HipHop dancing, parkour and tricking. It was really cool to do so many different and new things for the most of us. We had so much fun.

Group becoming DreamTeam

Sorry guys for being not so active on our ewoca blog, but we had not so much time to use the computers. We were doing many interesting things so far.

After some energizers, we were devoloping our sketches, we did many different activities in Bochum, like treassure hunt, looking for graffiti etc. and later as a prize we went for a picnic near the river. After we had food we collected the trash and used it to make boats, and nobody`s boat sinked. We did a really good job!

Also we went to Dortmund and we visit Steinwache, the memorial prison museum. Our guide was really cool and he told us many interesting things about it, so we even learnt something new.

Our group is getting closer and closer. You can hear many languages speaking, because not only there are Germans, Bosnians and Turkish, but also Albanian, Syrian and Azerbaijani. It´s really fun to meet new cultures and learn new languages. :)))

Till next time :)))

Our first days in Bochum

After and exhausting trips, finally we have arrived to Bochum. We were very excited and happy to meet each other. Already after the dinner, we got along with each other.

On the second day, our camp has officialy started. After some energizers and warming up-s we divided into the groups and discussed about what is participation?

On Wednesday we were making some sketches about active and passive participation, which we enjoyed very much. After that we got some tasks to explore the city and meet local people. Also we were playing `Apple and Egg` and we exchanged these for a very interesting things. We danced and song with locals and had a lots of fun.

Adieu!

Our workcamp is coming to an end, tomorrow we’ll all leave back home. In total we’ve had four great shows and we were working hard on improving each of them. We had a lot of workshops on the topic sustainability and also already collected ideas for the next project in Germany in 2016, so we’re really excited!

Right now we’re spending our last days at the seaside of Turkey in Fethiye, where we got the chance to meet with several interesting local NGO’s (non governmental organisations) and also had our last show with a lot of children.

This is our last entry here, we hope you enjoyed following us! :)

News from Çivril

Hi everyone! We have some news for you.

Sunday evening we were invited to the house of one of our turkish participants to have dinner together. We learned to prepare ”çiğ köfte” which is a traditional and very delicious dish.

On monday we had some workshops on creating costumes and to recycle the plastic we found.

Then we prepared a ”Harlem Shake”-video. The link to the video will be published later. After this we had some kind of treasure hunt at the city centre, we really enjoyed getting in touch with the locals.

Here we got some free drinks from a very friendly turkish man.

In the evening we had our second show which took place in a small village called Irgıllı, the audience really enjoyed us being there. The difference between the city of our first presentation (Çardak) and of the second one was huge and interesting.

See you soon, guys.

It’s showtime!

Hello, we’re back!
Today we are going to report the last three days.

The third day was the day we started to prepare our main project: the show. We began to make small sketches about sustainability and chose which of them we wanted to use for the show.
Later on the day the german night started. At first we had dinner with delicious german food and then we enjoyed a short show they prepared for us.

The next day we prepared some songs for the show and cleaned our accomodations, then had freetime. We were supposed to meet the mayor of Çivril but something bad happened and he had to cancel his appointment. Instead of this, we went to clean a part of a mountain and collected plastic for our show to create lamps and decoration for it.

In the evening the bosnians cooked for us and continued with a bosnian show and games.

The fifth day of our camp was the day of our first show. All of us were very nervous. After breakfast we planned our entire show. It was a little bit confusing but somehow we managed it.
We went by our ewoca-bus to a city called Çardak, 100km away from Çivril.
As we arrived there, it was very hot. We had two hours of free time to see the city and the bazar before we had a meeting with the mayor of Çardak. After a short interview he invited us for dinner.

This day there was a small festival in the town. A lot of people were watching a wrestling competition, our show and after that there was a tradtitional folk dance group.

We did the final preparations for our show but suddenly they announced our show, so we had to go on stage, to introduce ourselves. We started with a selfmade poem in english, which we also translated to turkish so everybody could understand it. Then the first of our three sketches started. It was about the ozon layer and how we are destroying it. We wanted to show the audience that they have to take care of the environment because of the next generations. The next sketches were kind of similar and had the same intentions. After that we danced a turkish folk dance (Halay) and sang a selfmade song, which included the topic sustainability. The show was over, we took some pictures with the mayor and our clowns painted the faces of the people.

Have some nice days, as we do, until the following report! :)