{"id":154,"date":"1998-05-25T19:30:00","date_gmt":"1998-05-25T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/?p=154"},"modified":"2026-05-27T11:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T09:50:14","slug":"youth-summit-1998-janeda-yuri-romanenkov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/youth-summit-1998-janeda-yuri-romanenkov\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth Summit 1998, Janeda Yuri Romanenkov"},"content":{"rendered":"

Youth Summit’98 took place in Janeda, Nothern Estonia, on May 14 – 18 1998 in an agricultural school that gradually transforms itself into a conference center. Some school students were still on campus and were very much impressed by the summit – as one of them said, he has never seen people from so many countries all together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There were 110 people from 15 countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janeda is a small town, surrounded by woods, lakes and fealds. Meetings took place in the school’s hall or on the grass outside and we were sleeping in students dorm, that is very convenient – two bed rooms, bathroom for every two rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The summit started May 14 evening from the opening ceremony accompanied by brass band that came from Tartu, from Janika’s school, to greet the participants. Then we had dinner and after it students presented their countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was very interesting to observe the way they presented: they did it very differently. Some took their task very seriously, some were joking. Some talked about their country, some about their town, school or their projects mostly. While Slovakia was presenting, many people joined and danced macarena together with them. I won a T-shirt and a map of Slovenia in a contest that Slovenians organized prezenting their country (since I knew what Triglav is). Girls from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan presented their folk dances (they even wore folk costumes!) Unfortunately, Nelly, I*EARN folk costume expert;-), came later and could not see them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Albanians, Romanians and Bulgarians were not present at the opening since they came late at night. Macedonians and Russians from Petersburg were not present at the summit at all because, unfortunately, they were not able to get their Estonian visas on time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After country presentations there were ice-breaking activities for students. Just imagine bunches of students trying to balance on a small spot of ground, clinging to each other and shouting – the coldest ice would broke. At the same time, teachers were breaking ice in the bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night students formed teams in which they worked by the end of the summit. Albanians, Bulgarians and Romanians, who came later, formed one Balkan team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next morning, May 15, most people went to visit Tallinn and Rigikoku (the parlament) He who visited the parlament, had a chance to sit at a prime-minister chair. Marek proudly sang “cookoo-reekoo” at the Rigikoku \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Me and Jevgeni Koshelev went to visit two “minority” (Russian and Jewish) schools in Tallinn and talked with teachers and principals there. (I hope to write a more detailed report on visits to schools). At the Jewish school we were accompanied by Michal, a student from Warsaw, who took pictures for the youth magazine he publishes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After late lunch in a traditional Estonian pub we all went to see a big estate of count Pahlen, which is a museum now, and where, by chance, we observed a wedding ceremony, and the bride and the groom greeted us as well as we them. Then we went to a fishermen village near the sea and I was able to deep myself into water (I can not call it swimming, since it is very shallow there, but water was not cold because of the sunny day). Sea shore is beatiful there, with a lot of rocks, entering far to the sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of that day, nearly everybody had a chance to talk to everybody else, and we went to a traditional estonian restorant to selebrate that fact with estonian food, and later on went back to Janeda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, May 16, after gathering in the main hall and discussing and announcing day activities, people proceeded to preparing expositions on their project work. Those expositions were displayed near the hall during the whole summit and we learned a lot from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students had a simulation game leaded by Tartu University students. Talking to them after that I understood that it was fun – they were pretending several countries with very different cultures and then they had to interact with each other according to these countries rules and it was very funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time teachers had a group discussion that continued after lunch. We started from introductions, and then discussed future of youth summits and the “wish list for CEE” produced in Prague. (See more detailed report on that)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before dinner, after some discussions, students and teachers were playing volleyball, basketball etc and also had team competitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After dinner teachers gathered on the lawn in front of the school for informal meeting over a glass of wine ( Bulgarian Monastyrska Izba) and guitar. Branko was playing and Joko used it to frighten mosquitoes. Talgat brought a bottle of French brandy (bought in Moscow ) and Peteris treated us to Latvian sweets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to point out, that student teams at that time were still discussing how they would present tomorrow the topic ‘all different, all nice’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then disco followed and some went there, some stayed in the lobby for singing, some went to the bar. And some tried to be everywhere (e. g. me;-) but mostly I stayed in the lobby, since many people were passing it on their way from disco to outside and back. We started from singing songs like “Blowing with the wind” and “Imagine” and “Yellow Submarine” and “Guantanamera” and ” La Bamba” (fortunately we had Diliana from Bulgaria who teaches at a Spanish language school), and “Hava Nagila”, then Estonians sang Estonian songs (many of them) and finally we came to Russian songs and sang a lot of them (with the help of Anna Kuleshova, a student from Tallinn).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then people got bored of singing and went out and lobby was occupied by joke lovers, mostly Albanians, Bulgarians and Estonians, and they were telling jokes, and gradually they started to teach each other their languages. (guess what words they tought each other first?;-) Very inspiring experince is to see Riin, an estonian girl, speaking Bulgarian and Albanian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next morning, May 17, students reported about their discussions on various topics and presented posters that they produced as a result. (I think they bring them to chattanooga)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then some people went to Tammsaare (a famous Estonian writer who had 20 children) museum, and some went for a walk in nearby woods. In the woods we visited a lake with very clean water that comes from springs, you can drink it. It was very hot, more or less like in last year May in Hungary, but there we did not have a lake to drink;-)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After lunch students presented their interpretation of a slogan ‘all different – all nice’ All the interpretations were different, but they all were… yes, nice! There was a jury to judge, but the competition was not stressed very much and there probably were also prizes (sweets?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One team presented smth like a shadows show along with a poem and it was very impressive. The other group composed a song and the public asked to repeat it. Another group presented smth like an absurd show and in the end they all took off their shoes and one of them smelled them with the words: ‘all nice, smell different’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it was closing ceremony and everybody got a jar of red bilberry jam and a juniper spoon. The applause for Estonian organizers was so longlasting (all people stood up), that they were afraid they would need to repeat the whole summit once more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before dinner we also had coordinators meeting to discuss fundraising workshop at Chattanooga issue and what we need to prepare for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After dinner we all went to the nearby hill to sing and dance near bonfire. First many of us were dancing Estonian folkdances, then we started singing songs, passing turns from country to country. The most reach in songs were Albanians – teachers Linda and Vladimir, and students Alexandra, Andi, Evis and Kledjan. They sang a lot of songs, beautiful songs, and they sang them in a very inspiring way. Then they also danced – Evis and Andi (or Kledjan? for obvious reason I remember girl’s name best;-)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of cause we sang ‘Building Bridges’ in the end and then time came for farewell hugs and kisses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We stayed awake together for a quite long time (some students did not go to sleep at all) and next morning many of us were on our way home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you and hope to see you again,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuri<\/p>\n\n\n\n

— Yuri Romanenkov I*EARN coordinator for Central & Eastern Europe Taikos 186-10, Vilnius 2017, Lithuania yuri@expert.osf.lt Tel: 3702\/420 621 Fax: 3702\/221 419<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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