Versteck in the south of Germany

A photo of me in my medieval costume with one of the local children. Behind us is the view from the top of the 13th century tower where the play scheme was based.

In the beautiful surroundings of southern Germany I was able to do two things I love: speak German and work with children. For anyone interested in practising their language skills, I can definitely recommend volunteering at a children’s camp or play scheme. The children were all very forgiving of my many grammar mistakes and willingly involved me in their games. The forest in which the holiday club took place lent itself perfectly to hours of “Versteck” (hide and seek), interspersed with art and crafts. All the volunteers dressed up in costumes to go with the medieval theme of the holiday club, which inspired the children to create their own gowns and armour. A group of small girls transformed me into their fashion doll and added to my costume daily – finally resulting in a head scarf, veil, apron, 2 cloaks and small bag round my waste, in which we put ‘precious’ stones and jewellery. I loved being greeted by a shriek of “Jennyyyyyyyy!” every morning, and soon forgot the challenges of speaking a foreign language with the fun of being with children out-of-doors every day.

Outside of the play scheme, which lasted until 2pm each day, we were able to explore the surrounding area and visit the local museums and tourist attractions. The international volunteers stayed together in a youth hostel and we cooked for ourselves, often attempting to recreate typical dishes from our home countries. It was fascinating to learn about other cultures and taste their cuisine, and especially exciting to get to know people my age from all over the world. A highlight was probably the many evenings of card games and the fun we had trying to create little Russian felt boots, which the two Russian volunteers kindly but despairingly tried to teach us! I was also taken aback by the level of gratitude which the locals showed to us as volunteers, and we were frequently given free fruit from the market and on one occasion two large bags filled with bread from the local bakery. This interaction with other volunteers and with people from the area has not only boosted my confidence in speaking German, but has also made me more confident when meeting new people in general – which was perfect preparation for the first few weeks at university.

I would recommend this experience to anyone. Thank you, Concordia, for making it possible!

Roy on EVS in Germany - 2012

Roy (our EVS volunteer) reports on his 10 months abroad teaching fun and inspiring English classes at a Montessori school in Germany. Looks like great fun, we love the illustrations.

A year in English: speaking, playing, cultural exchange and having fun.

This year I've learned a lot from my place in the European Voluntary Service here at the Montessori school in Würzburg. I've tried to share my enthusiasm for discovering new things in life. I've worked everywhere in the school, from swimming and ice skating with the afterschool club, to debates on issues such as justice and climate change disciples with the FOS (college). I would like to thank the teachers with whom I had the opportunity to work closely together in the classroom, thanks for being patient with me when I was new and could not speak two words of the German language!

Our first English project: "Casper the Friendly Ghost"

Together with the 4-6 class we watched that old ghost film in English and talked about all the animals Casper  scared away. Afterwards, everyone took a picture from the movie and everyone wrote a caption describing the image. Finally, we recorded our own version of this spooky but happy story.

Our second English Project: The Mystery of the Icelandic Iceland

Once upon a time there was a precious treasure in a small museum on the island of Iceland.

Unfortunately the next morning the treasure was missing! Who stole it?

In small groups we answered this question and finished the story. With a lot of creative thinking we have decided what the treasurer was, who had stolen it, and if they manged to escape at the end. One example was that it was an old fossilized alien who was rescued by Lula, the lighthouse keeper.

Here are pictures of two other figures from the story. We used these images as inspiration to describe the drawings in the stories.

English learning center

In the English base I've worked with all students from the 4th to 10th class. With the 10th we've talked about their "Topic-based talks," and I learned a lot about dancing, graffiti, movies, skateboarding, gymnastics, and India. And with the 9th class we read a very interesting  and motivating story about Nelson Mandela.

Furthermore, with the 4-6th classes we have learned all about the face and many adjectives to describe it. We then drew a few faces and played a game where they had to guess the face that was being described. Here are two examples of our faces

We have also written a small English autobiography. I prepared a few topics and then each pupil took a piece of paper, folded it and turned it into a small book.

We have written, all in English, something about where we come from and where we live, our hobbies and interests, and our inspiration and our dreams.

Roy Clutterbuck

Rebecca in Germany on EVS - 2011

"... best of all, I have assisted on two school trips. One week in the Harz... and one week in Sweden..."

I arrived in the evening of the 13^th of August and was met by another Finnish volunteer who is also working on the project. Shortly after we met 3 more German volunteers who we would be working and living together with for the next 11 months. The flat is very closely situated to the 3 schools that we will be working with and I was very impressed by the efforts of the community here to renovate and equip the flat in order to help make us all feel comfortable. Unfortunately we were not able to receive the internet in the flat until 1 ½ months into the project, but we found ways to keep ourselves busy (most notably, attempting to understand all of the American/ British television series which were dubbed in German, let alone German T.V =P).

I am beginning to make many new friends around here with people from the youth centre, the other volunteers, the teachers and the students. Although some of these friendships will take a while to form it seems that they will be long lasting.

The work we have been given here, at times, has not seemed like a lot. We have been sharing it together between the 5 of us. However, I think as we start to find our feet’s better, the work load will start increasing.

The tasks I have done so far include:-

• Making a photo chart of all the teachers.
• Supervising at break times and in the library has given me a chance to meet and talk to the students and also the librarian, who does not speak English ;)
• Currently I am helping to create archaeology workshops and an English language conversation group with the teachers. I am also working with a German volunteer to create a cooking group.
• have translated some documents and started working to find more partners for the school’s youth exchange programme.
• I have attended a first aid course and a church ceremony! (at the beginning of the year to welcome the 5^th graders on their first day at school)
• And best of all, I have assisted on two school trips. One week in the Harz getting to know the 6^th graders and one week in Sweden getting to know the 10^th graders.

I soon expect that my level of German will increase rapidly. I am taking a course that runs two times a week, when my German language level increases I will find it much easier to work and live in this society.

I have been very happy with the level of support and hospitality that I have received from my host organization to help me branch out and find new activities and people. I was especially impressed when all the staff sung me happy birthday which was co-ordinated in a choir by a music teacher during a staff meeting!

Chris in Germany on EVS - 2010

My EVS in Germany finished three months ago, but it seems like it's been much longer: it apparently takes quite a while to re-adjust to British life after being abroad for such a long time. In fact, I still haven't totally acclimatised, having cycled on the right (wrong) side of the road for 10 minutes last week before noticing the error of my ways... oops!

Since my last blog update, I moved from the students' halls I had been staying in into a small flat, with an Italian girl doing an Erasmus semester in Munich. She had lived in the city before, and the Bavarian winter meant the days were getting shorter and shorter, so our free time was mostly spent experimenting in the kitchen. I thought I knew how to cook pizza and pasta and could identify a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo pretty easily, but apparently I was wrong...

Having said that, the weather was much better than it had been during the washout summer, so I managed to squeeze in trips to Dresden and 'fairytale' Neuschwanstein Castle, as well as seeing a good selection of German Christmas markets. I also met up with some friends from the UK who were on exchange visits in Heidelberg and Munich, who happily had equally positive things to report on their observations of German culture!

There was also the Oktoberfest, when another EVS volunteer from Spain who I'd met on a seminar at the start of the year came to visit for her birthday. It's pretty much how you'd imagine an epic beer festival to be, just a little bit better. (And with even more beer...)

The end of my project was predictably chaotic - all those goodbyes, festive celebrations, evaluations and bulging suitcases squeezed into such a short space of time. Plus, the atrocious weather across Europe in December meant getting home was no easy feat. Luckily, though, I was back home just in time for a Christmas overflowing with mince pies, which I'd sorely missed in the weeks beforehand.

EVS was a great experience for me, and I can only recommend it to anyone thinking of doing something worthwhile while meeting lots of new people.

My warmest thanks to Fiona and Chloe at Concordia and Claire and my colleagues at EMCY for making the year run so smoothly... *most* of the time!

My Two Weeks in Germany! - Summer 2003

During my two weeks in Germany I learnt a lot about other cultures as well as work I was not used to. I was there for 13 days all together in a place called Holzerner See, near Berlin. Later on I found out this meant ‘wooded lake’, which should have been obvious as there was a lake on one side and a forest on the other.

My first job was to clean the top of an old hut (or so we thought). An hour into working we found out it was to be turned into ‘bat house’ so the top was to be left as it was (the way the bats liked it). Instead we had to fill in the gaps in the walls, which let the light in, by making mud out of water, dirt and straw. The guys were doing heavier work at this time, making a mini garden.

The next job involved splitting into two groups, with one half filling the holes in the windows and doors and the other designing a table tennis table room. We decided to paint the lake on the main wall of the tennis table room and on the other walls we painted flags, hand prints and wrote welcome and goodbye in all the languages of the volunteers.

Whilst the girls were painting the guys were making a fence for the bat house as well as a notice board with explanations in all the volunteers’ languages.

Our last job was to work together to make a fence out of logs and twigs. This was the hardest out of all the jobs, but also the most rewarding.

We didn’t only do work on the project. We also had fun and went to places like Berlin, Potsdam and Dresden. We also had use of the facilities, including boats, bikes, table tennis and volleyball on the beach.

Going to Germany opened up a lot of doors for me and I got to meet lots of new interesting people. I would recommend it to anyone. It was a lot of fun!

Katie Jones

Katie joined this project through the EVS programme

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Reflections on EVS in Germany - 2009

EVS volunteer Chris reflects back over his project


I’m spending eleven months in Munich volunteering with a non-profit organisation which oversees music competitions all across Europe, from Lisbon to Moscow. I began European Voluntary Service (EVS) back in January, in Bath, where I received the very-official-sounding (but actually-quite-relaxed) ‘pre-departure training’. There were thirteen of us heading for various desinations, many admittedly more exotic than mine: Peru? Lesotho? Mallorca? Wow. They’d be saving vultures or rainforests, or vultures and rainforests, and I’d be in an office. Every day. We learnt that everyone would get homesick, depressed, lonely and ill, but also that everything would be fine. Hmm.


Some weeks later, my night train from Paris pulled into Munich Hauptbahnhof. It was sub-zero: lakes and canals were frozen over, and the novelty of snow quickly turned to irritation and an itching for summer to arrive: those beer gardens apparently aren’t so inviting when there’s a risk of pneumonia. Warmer was Heidelberg, where I spent ten days on my ‘on-arrival training’ in February and ‘mid-term meeting’ in August – this time getting to know fellow EVSlers in Germany. There are few volunteers here in Bavaria, but those nifty high-speed trains meant making friends based elsewhere would prove a wise move…

Compared to my colleagues in Africa or Latin America, of course, the culture shock here has been mild. One notices the differences, and the first few weeks were full of typical misunderstandings, faux-pas, and getting to grips with the wretched various ways of addressing people... Are you a du? Or should I call you Sie? What about ihr? Come again?

Since then, though, it’s been great, if intense. Friends and family have come to visit, and vice versa, and I was able to explore my new surroundings more as the days became longer and the snow melted away. Alps, castles, lakes and forests aren’t so far away - nor are Switzerland, Austria and Italy - and May and June especially were largely spent out of the office. I travelled with a former EVSler from Spain, Carmen, and my project leader, Claire, to Münster and Essen (near Cologne), where we’d organised a row of concerts as part of a music festival and competition. Working with the young musicians, who’d travelled all the way from Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland and the Slovak Republic, was refreshing, as was getting to hear them play, and of course learning the various international incarnations of ‘cheers’…


After a quick sojourn back in Munich, we were in Barcelona, running a conference for some of our member organisations. It was stimulating to learn about how music is celebrated in various countries, and for ticking the remaining Santé’s, Na zdravje’s and Skål’s off the list. Now. in just two months, I’ll be finishing my EVS, and I’m looking forward to spending the time here in Munich after so much toing and froing, especially now that the Oktoberfest crowds have dried up. Mine has certainly not been a typical volunteering experience, and has probably been neither as challenging nor rewarding as many possible EVS projects, but I’m really glad to be here and have gathered many memorable experiences in the process – some documented in photographic form!

Would you like to volunteer on a fully funded European Voluntary Service (EVS) project for 6-12 months? Email: evs@concordia-iye.org.uk to request an application pack.

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Historical Project in France

Special Project in France – Douvres La Delivrande, North France

From 05/08/2009-27/08/2009 5 French, 5 German and 5 British volunteers came together to work on a very special project which is very close to the D-Day landing beaches of Northern Normandy in France. As Concordia UK sent volunteers to this project Fiona Callender went to visit this fascinating project.

For over 60 years Concordia France, Concordia UK and IJGD Germany have been committed to international volunteering. In fact the very first recorded exchange of volunteers was back in 1919 where the first workcamp in Verdun, France was held. Ex soldiers from France and Germany met to rebuild the battleground area and the workcamp movement was born. So in 2009, which is the 60th anniversary of Concordia France, it seemed appropriate to bring volunteers together to work on a project in this historically significant part of France.

Douvres la Delivrande is a sleepy village which is about 2 km from the beautiful beaches of Normandy and around 14km from the historical port of Caen. If you walk through the village now you it’s hard to imagine that over 60 years ago things were very different and in a field just outside the village, one of the biggest German war secrets was taking place. In 1942 the biggest radar station, known as the ‘German Atlantic wall’ was built. It linked most of the French coast to a radar detection network. At its peak the 35 hectare radar station had 258 people working on its site of 30 bunkers. The radars were very effective in detecting British and American aeroplanes and were responsible for shooting down many planes. It wasn’t until mid 1944 that the radar station was finally taken by Canadian and British troops.

The Radar Museum was opened on 31st May 1994 where 2 of the bunkers have been turned into a museum. The work for our volunteers was to clear 2 of the unused bunkers that have not been touched for 64 years.

Most of the work involved clearing vegetation and on the day I visited it looked a daunting task to clear mature vegetation away from the bunkers. The museum had a steady flow of visitors whilst I was visiting and I was impressed to see how well recorded the events had been on this fascinating site. I spoke with a few of the volunteers and asked them why they were volunteering on this project.

Liz Game, a student from Warwick University who is studying History and French, told me that as well as improving her French she joined the project because she really wanted to bring her interest in history ‘to life’. She was very inspired by the work she was doing and felt great pride to be part of a team who was undertaking restoration from the 2nd world war. As part of Liz’s degree she had to stay in France for a month of her holidays, so she felt this was a great way to doing something positive with her time that would not cost her a fortune. She was also going to get her Duke of Edinburgh Residential gold award through her time on this project (another UK volunteer, Sophie was also using this project to gain her Gold award).
Liz, Anna and Sophie

Anna Bentele is from Stuttgart in Germany and was part of the German team of volunteers. Her main motivation for coming on this project was to improve her English and French and to meet new people.

A French volunteer Assa Doucoure who is from Vitny Son Seime in the South of France had free time over the summer and wanted to meet new people and thought that the work was really worthwhile.

Concordia France had 3 great leaders; Thibquit, Caroline and Alice. All three spoke great English and had between them a wealth of experience for leading volunteers. Thibquit was the technical advisor and worked with the volunteers on the practical work where as Caroline and Alice were in charge of logistics.
The leaders of the project

The group were staying in a local primary school which was about 2km from the Radar museum. We were invited for lunch which was, as always a great feast.

My lasting impressions of this project where one of solidarity, friendship and the commitment to respect and keep history alive. Whilst I was walking around the radar museum site I watched 4 flags blowing in the wind, a British, French, Canadian and German flag. It wasn’t until later I was told of the huge symbolism of these flags; it was the first time ever a German flag had been flown at this site and was a major step forward in terms of building peace. The decision to fly the German flag was not taken lightly and it was by Concordia France’s enthusiasm for this project that helped convince the local town mayor to make the decision to allow the German Flag to be raised at this site. It just goes to show how important international volunteering really is!

Check out the pictures www.flickr.com/photos/concordia-iye/sets/72157622008616854

Fiona Callender Brighton, 28.08.09
The group outside the museum
The Flags
www.concordia-association.org
www.ijgd.de

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Claire is currently on an EVS project in Germany. She is volunteering for a European music organisation for young people in Munich. Claire has also taken part on other Concordia short term international projects in France, Croatia and the Czech Republic. She also co-ordinated a project in Iceland last year.

My EVS Experience:

My EVS isn’t exactly a typical project, but then again, I’m not sure what is! I am spending a year working for a European music organisation for young people in Munich, Germany. Throughout my time at university I took part in many different short term volunteer projects in France to help my French studies, but also in Croatia, the Czech Republic, England and Iceland. I had some amazing experiences and wanted to have the chance to volunteer for a longer period of time when I had finished at university. At the same time, I wanted to get valuable work experience to kick start my career in European Cultural Management. There’s a huge variety of projects on the EVS database and I found a project which was exactly what I wanted!

I work in the office of the music organisation where I organise various projects. These include concerts and tours for young musicians and European conferences. So far, this has taken me to Russia, Poland and Liechtenstein and trips to Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria are lined up for the next few months! In St Petersburg I was helping to organise a European conference which was really interesting and brought me into contact with many people from all over Europe. And of course we all had some time to do some sightseeing!

In the office with me are 2 German volunteers and we also spend quite a lot of our free time together. I’ve been on 2 seminars for EVS volunteers in Germany which have been good fun and have enabled me to meet other volunteers and see new parts of Germany. There are quite a few European volunteers in Munich and we meet up quite often. My placement organised my accommodation for me: I have my own flat which is part of a beautiful big chalet owned by a friendly couple. It’s on the edge of the city centre and only 10 minutes walk to the office.

I love living in Munich: it’s a beautiful city and there’s so much going on. What’s more, it’s not far to the Alps and I can see them from my office window! At the weekends I meet up with friends, go to concerts and the cinema and generally explore the city. And I’ve been on quite a few day trips into the mountains and to towns nearby. Aside from work trips, I’ve also been on weekend trips to Salzburg and Bratislava and I’m planning to go to Italy and Slovenia in the summer – it’s great to live somewhere where you can just sit on a train for a few hours to go on holiday! - Claire

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