The Leonardo da Vinci project as a host-school

From the 7th to the 12th of March, our school was the host-school for The Leonardo da Vinci project: Let's play chemistry.

The Leonardo project is a project between 3 different schools: HTL Wels, Patrik Lajos Budapest and Col. Tehnic Ana Aslan Cluj-Napoca.

This project started in October 2010 and will end in June 2012. The goal of the project is to make a computergame about chemistry. About every 4 months, the delegations of the different schools meet each other to work for the project and to learn about the culture of the other countries in Europe. This was a very interesting project for me. The most important language was English, so I could really help actively in debugging and in writing the exact scenario of the game.

The project was over 5 days, so I'll try to give you a survey of the different days...

Day 1 (Wednesday)

9.00: The different schools give a presentation about their schools. After that, the members of every delegation stand up and explain briefly who they are and what they expect from the project. At the end of the formal part, there is tea and cake. This is for me a moment to meet new people and to test my knowledge of German.

11.00: When there was no cake left, the delegations of Hungary and Austria received a guided tour on our school.

12.00: The real work starts... Severin and Andreas has worked at home for the project. They present their work and they explain what we'll need to do during the next 5 days.

14.00: Together with the delegations and some teachers from our school, we're going to eat in a restaurant (Capricio, the same as on my first evening).

16.00: One of our pupils, Tudor, gives us a guided tour in Cluj. We see the ancient Roman ruins and the Catholic church, we also see the Babes Bolyai University, the Piața Unirii with the statue of King Matthias and the Piața Mihai Viteazul.

19.00: In the evening, we went to a traditional Romanian restaurant, Hanul Dacilor. I ate for the first time as a real Romanian. The waitress brought some big planks (yes, no plates but planks :P ) and we could take the food from the planks. There was a mix of vegetables and potatoes, a lot of meat and bread. It looked a bit strange to me, but it was terrific.

The Hungarian team was quite hungry.

Day 2 (Thursday)

9.00: The different riddles in the game still contained some bugs. On the 2nd day of the project, we try to make a clear overview of all the bugs in the riddles.

13.30: After 4 hours of playing chemistry-games, it's time to fill our stomachs, we go back to the Capricio restaurant, where we ate yesterday.

15.00: The delegations go shopping in Iulius Mall, but I need to go home because I still have to iron a lot of clothes for this weekend. Being independent is nice, but you also have to do everything for your own.

20.00: Learning about other cultures also means that there needs to be time to relax... I go with an Austrian teacher and some pupils from all the delegations to Solas, a music bar near the student complex of Hasdeu in Cluj.

Day 3 (Friday)

9.00: Nine o'clock feels a bit earlier every day. I'm already at school and waiting for the others to come, meanwhile I'll talk to a Romanian illustrator. She was hired by our school to design some parts of the game. We hope that she can give the game a really professional look.

9.15: When everybody is at the school, we split up in different groups. I'm helping by writing the scenario together with Andreas and Alina. In my eyes it's a very nice story, I'm really looking forward to play the game when it's completely finished.

13.00: The game is ready for his final destination. 3 pupils from Austria and Romania will finish it and on the next meeting in June they will present the result to the group.

17.00: Making a video-game is only one part of the project, the other part is learning about other cultures. We're going to play bowling with some members of the delegation, so we can learn from each other. Afterwards I ate with the teachers from Austria and some members from the delegations at McDonalds.

Day 4 (Saturday)

8.30: I just arrived at school to load the bus for the excursion we're going to make this weekend. The plan is to make a trip in the North of Romania and to eat the typically Romanian food.

11.30: The first stop we make, is to eat clătită cu brânză, it's a kind of pancake with cheese, ham or jam in and typically for the region of   Maramureș  . The recipe is secret and even the Romanian teachers don't really know how to make it. The cheese/ham or jam is really baked inside the pancake, it's not laying on top of it.

13.00: We arrived in Baia Mare, Baia Mare litterally means 'the big bath' and they call it because it's like a big bath, surrounded by cliffs.
Hundreds of thousand years ago, there was a sea in Baia Mare. That was the moment that the cliffs were created. Now there are still a lot of minerals, minerals that were created by undersea volcanic activity. Over an area of 3 000 km², there were found a lot of beautiful stones. We are going to visit a museum where all these stones are exhibited. While I'm walking around in the museum I'm starting to feel very small in this world. These stones are so beautiful but however so different from each other, I realize how many secrets that the nature has. Unfortunately we were not allowed to make photographs in the museum, but I've found this one on the website of the museum:

14.00: Lunch in Baia Mare. We're very hungry, however nobody succeed to eat everything he received. I ate Mămăligă cu brânză, a very heavy dish with cheese.

Mămăligă cu brânză

16.00: After we ate our meal, we visited a museum about the medieval way of life in the Romanian villages around Baia Mare. We see some rooms of an ordinary house in a village and some tools that are used by the villagers.

17.30: We arrive in hotel 'Secret Garden', about 50km from Baia Mare, we go for a swim in the pool and we eat again. We also learn about a famous Romanian drink, called Palincă. It's a very strong drink of which I can only drink one shot.

We also received a diploma for our presence in the Leonardo project, it was a very official moment.

Day 5 (Sunday)

7.00: We have to wake up early for the last day of our project. We're having breakfast and we make fast a picture of the group. At 8.15 we're already back on our way to a cemetery and a monastery.

10.30: Our first stop today is in Săpânţa, a village in Maramureș. It's a famous touristic attraction because of his cemetery, Cimitirul Vesel. On this cemetery every person was painted by the painter of the village, Stan Ioan Pătraş. He wrote a poem about the life of every person that died. So if you walk on the cemetery, you can still feel how the personality was of the body where you're standing on. The only condition is that you talk Romanian, but I'm improving everyday and I can understand quite a lot of the texts that are on the graves. We also have some time to buy some souvenirs.

13.00: In Romania, there are many monasteries. We have visited one of them. I really had a strange feeling. Since the day I'm in Romania I feel like I'm coming somewhere that I've been before. I have the feeling that I know this place, I actually cannot describe how it feels but there's something special in this monastery. It's situated on a mountain, it's peaceful and quite. This place breathes religion, it breathes life. It's the first time since the beginning of the project that I really chose to walk alone and to let the awareness of something much bigger flow through me. While I'm walking on that holy place, it starts to snow but it doesn’t bother me. Romania has impressed me in many ways, but this is the most mysterious one.

16.00: We're eating in a restaurant not far from the monastery. However I swore yesterday that I would never drink palincă again, we get another shot to warm ourselfs in the snowstorm. On the way back I have a conversation with David, one of the pupils from Hungary, strange enough he starts talking about life, about following your heart and about the way how we can get the best out of ourselfs. This was a very special afternoon for me.

20.30: We're back on the school, I say goodbye to the delegations and the projects ends here for me, time to get some sleep.