In dates 23 of April till 3rd of May I was in Lithuania for International Trainers Conference (ITC) organized by AIESEC International.
ITC was open by public Global village at the square in front of one university in Kaunas. It was really interesting to talk to people from Lithuania about Iceland and see their interest in our country. I and Kristín were proudly presenting Iceland.
After GV we moved to small spa town Druskinikai on the south of Lithuania. We were accommodated in 4 * hotel. It was really beautiful hotel, i got one of the biggest room on the top floor, having huge bathroom, walking closet, and balcony with great view on Druskinikai town. I shared my room with two girls (Russia and UK).
Conference was focused on understading and living AIESEC Learning environment and teaching us how to bring it back home to your AIESEC countries. Although I expected something different from ITC, I have to say I am really happy to be there and I am not regreting. It was toataly unusual conference, just taking in account delegates and their profile, purpose of the confererence, all the funny stuff during the conference and amazing closing pleanry on the grass by the lake of Druskinikai town. Can u imagine having closing plenary without bye bye powerpoints, music, and aiesec dances? Yes, it is possible and I think it was the best closing plenary ever! There were some random Lithuanians walking around and looking at us, taking pictures and movies of us and making fun of us. But we didn´t care about them. Were were felling so much connected to each other and we didn´t want to leave. Everyone was kind of glued to the grass and it was hard to stand up at the end and say good-bye to each other.
I feel so strange even now, few days after ITC. By writing this post I have tears in my eyes and I miss all those people I met there. Want to be in Lithuania again.
I am sure I would be able to use much more what I have learnt and got to know from the conference if it was one year ago, but even now I will use a lot.
This conference was the most valuable for me from my personal side and I am still asking so many questions to myself and trying to organize my thought, my wills, needs, passions and make clear what I want. I am so confused and so unbalanced as ever before. But that´s good. I know it was needed and I am happy that it came now.
After ITC there was suppose to be Study Tour, but it was announced just one week before the conference that it´s canceled because of low interest. I had my tickets already booked and they weren´t changable so I had to stay till my flight back. I also wanted to see something from Lithuania. My MCP is Lithuanian and I even don´t know her country, so I wanted to get to know more.
Me, Kristýna (from Ostrava, CZ) and Katrin (from Germany) went straight after ITC to Kaunas where we slept over in Audra´s place (outgoing LCP of Kaunas). She is really nice person and were very happy to be with her. Audra took us around Kaunas the next day and also we had brunch in stylish restaurant, where the waitresses were wearing typical national costumes. Food was cheap (comparing to icelandic prices, similar to czech ones) and delicious! Typical Lithuanian food is made out of potatoes in all kinds of styles, but the most common ones are simillar to our "bramborak", just all this mixture is putted into a tall tray and baked.
In afternoon we met few people from LC Kaunas and we had some kind of small teambuilding with them. Actually they had teambuilding with 4 polish guys from their twin LC and we just joined them. We went to some kind of wood-park near the river, had some beer, wine and smoked water-pipe. It was fun!
Afterwards we took a bus to Vilnius and in 1,5 hour we were there. We came quite late and we missed our last bus which was suppose to take us the the hotel – hotel next to the airport. So we were confused, stressed and trying to find out how to get there. We didn´t want to take taxi, because it was quite expensive (10 litas and bus is 1,40 litas). We got on some bus, after kind of hard talk with driver, who didn´t really understand english we managed to get to the airport. He took us directly to the airport although his line wasn´t suppose to go there. For that he asked for 10 litas. Well, it was wierd and we didn´t really trust him at the beginning of the way. Weren´t sure weather he is taking us to the right place or not. But luckily he did ;-)
Just right infront of the hotel we met Manish and Gabiza. It was sooo funny to see them again. After checking in and walking by the hallway we heard some strange noices and voices and we were thinkin about aiesecers right way. And we were correct! In room number 17 was party going on, some Serbians (Jesus!), Mimi, Vinay, Keoke and other people. So we just unpacked our bottles of alcohol and joined them immediately. Kind of drunk and fucking tired we were playing Ming-meng-mong and some other games .. it was funny.
Next day we (me, Kristyna from CZ, Katrin from Germany and Vinay from Australia) made a trip to town called Trakai, 25 km from Vilnius. Viney from Australia joined us... he is such a funny guy! Trakai is beautiul city full of wooden houses and at the end of the town is a small island and on it is castle. Really nice one, I felt like in the middle-age and all the fairy-tales were running through my mind. We spent whole day there. In the evening we joind AIESEC Vilnius EB election paty.
Next day, when almost everyone left (all Serbian and Croatian delegation), we stayed alone – me, Kristyna, Vinay, Katrin and Keoke. Leftovers from the ITC. All Tuesday we spent by walking through Vilnius town, doing sightseeing. There is so many churces in such a small area! Unbelievable!
In the morning next day we went together to the airport and say good bye to each other. It was sad moment.
I like Lithuania. I haven´t seen much of this country, but still I can say I like it. Lithuania suprized me a lot. I didn´t really know what to expect, but I thought it will be very similar to the Czech Republic. But it wasn´t at all! There is a lot influence from Scandinavian countries, even in language i see some similarities (although it sounds like some kind of weird Russian). Also nature is not so similar. I though about huge spruce trees, lot of woods, but there are just smaller pine trees. Well, at least what I saw on the way. Lithuania is also country of huge contrasts, for example:
- nice, clean and fancy girls walking on the streets in comparation with same-aged youngs under alcohol and drugs
- newies cars going through the city and really bad buses, minibuses and trolleybuses used for public transport (i was really scared to even get on there, they looked like from 40´s of last century)
- modern nice buildings in the centre of the Vilnius and just few meters away in the second street houses looking like just before demolition and people living in them! (some of those bad houses even had new plastic windows... i don´t get it)
- newly reconstructed houses, with wooden flood, newies equippement and on the other hand really bad bathroom with old bath-tub, nonexisting sink (we had to brush our teeth in the bath-tub) and old toilet
- and many more, you would have to experience it to understand.
But I have to say I liked my stay there. People are really nice and helpfull. My Serbian friend told me a story when they were in some caffeteria and asked one Lithuanian girl if they can use her notebook for a while to check some address, she said no problem, then they asked her for help to find the address on the map. Because they had really bad map she went to buy bigger one and she gave it to them for free. :-)What a great hospitality! I am not sure if this would happen in Iceland.
People don´t speak English much (Icelandic number of people having of spoken english is a dream of each foreigner), just the young ones and even some of them have problems. They always said – Russian or Polish. And as non of us spoke those languages (and after my unsuccessfull try with Czech) we were trying our best to communicate. Funny that Serbians spoke Serbian and they did understand. I got motivation to learn Russian now. I think I am able to learn it quite fast as it is Slavic language. So .. Oleg, are u willing to help me with that?
Yeah, i have to mention one more thing. What suprized me as well was number of Polish tourist. Actually there were just few Russian and German tourists, most of them were Polish. I would never say so. After Sandra told me that area of Trakai and Vilnius was in past under Polish occupation, i understood why. People wanted to see their past connections, eager to learn about their history.
Well, that´s Lithuania! I would love to come there again, explore more out of this country. Would be cool to go there with Sandra ;-)
Regarding the conference, I am now summing up all thoughts and new ideas and hopefully I will start off my plane and I will show that I have learnd how to fly ;-).
I have all my picutes in album at Snapfish, so please if you want to see them send me mail and I will send you invitation. There are just few i managed to upload (i have some problems to put more ... don´t know why):
ITC delegates
My team Mokhtalef:
Marshall - Poland, Joe - UK, me, Anna - Poland, Mihaela - Romania, Vincent - France, Mici - Slovakia, Ivana - Serbia and Mont., Caro - Switzerland (our faci), Herdis - Estonia, Astrid - Germany, Sherif - Egypt, on the pic is missing Almina from Lithuania
Travelling - in Trakai castle, there we met accidentaly other aiesecers
JC´s yakki yakki (left part of picture, breaking some cookies), Maria and Ladi singing with JC and Amit taking a video.
Scandinavian MCs in Amusement park.
From Stockholm with love.
