PEOPLE
Romania is a state located in the south-east of Central Europe, on the lower course of the Danube, north of the Balkan Peninsula and on the north-western shore of the Black Sea. On its territory is located almost the entire surface of the Danube Delta and the southern and central part of the Mountains . Carpathians. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Serbia to the southwest, Hungary to the northwest, Ukraine to the north and the Republic of Moldova to the east, and the Black Sea coast to the southeast.
Romania is a semi-presidential republic. It is the ninth state in terms of territory (238,397 km²) and the sixth in terms of population (over 19 million inhabitants) among the member states of the European Union. The country’s capital, Bucharest, is also the largest city at the time and the fifth largest city in the EU by population (2.1 million inhabitants). It was Romania’s turn to designate a city as the European Capital of Culture for 2007, Sibiu being chosen and Timisoara for 2023.
The Danube Delta is the lowest region of the country, below 10 m altitude, with stretches of marshes, lakes and reeds.
The Romanian Carpathians expand like a ring, which closes a great depression in the countries, that of Transylvania.[119] They are mid-altitude, fragmented mountains with an alpine floor, alpine pastures and extensive erosion surfaces, whose maximum altitude is reached in Moldove Peak (in the Făgăraș Mountains), at 2,544 meters. On the territory of Romania, the Carpathian Mountains have a length of 910 km.
After the whole presentation of Romania, at the end we taught the other countries a representative game “Country Country, we need soldiers” (Country Country, need soldier) and then we put our imagination to work and played a game based on the famous movie with Dracula.
ACTIVITIES
We started the day with a game that Eddy used to play when he was a scout. We went on a field and chose one volunteer who had to catch the rest. The task was to run from one end of the pitch to the other. If someone was caught, he went to volunteer. When everyone was caught, we met in the main room for another workshop about preparation for the trip to the mountains. Each of the 6 groups had to describe in some way how to prepare for certain risks in the mountain. We talked about how to cross an unexpected river or what to do in the event of an avalanche. After that we had workshops during which each country calculates its carbon footprint. We had to take into account our travel, luggage and clothes. Of course, the countries that flew the plane had the largest carbon footprint. After lunch break, we started preparing for the debate. The topic was: Too much tourism can harm mountain areas. One group had to disagree and the other had to agree with the sentence. We debate for about 1.5 hours. The summary was that both groups were right.
Then, as usual, there was time for team work and a evaluation. After some free time, the next and last international evening began. This time it was our hosts, Romania. We met outside and watched a few videos and presentations about this country. We also played a game that turned out to be not necessarily safe. Several people ended up injured but everyone enjoyed this. At the end, Eddy told us that two people from the Romanian team were kidnapped by vampires. We divided into two groups and went into the forest. Each group could only have four flashlights on to protect us from vampires. After an hour, we managed to find everyone and spent time together in good spirits until the evening.
NATURE
After the days with cold weather, today was more sunny. We learnt what carbon footprint means and how to calculate ours. After this workshop we have become more sensitive to nature. We had a debate about “Tourism in Mountains” and Romania’s cultural night was outside. After the cultural night, almost everybody went through forest to play a game. We had a chance to watch stars clearly at the sky. The night was cold like the last 2 days.
