Knowing your city: June 2011

2nd MEETING OF THE PROJECT: “KNOWING YOUR
CITY: KYC”. Petrosani (Romania) 27-29 May 2011

We left Madrid towards Romania (Petrosani) to attend a new meeting of the
european project “Knowing your city”. The trip was very pleasant thanks to my
traveling companions. Everything was developing all right until a hard storm
surprised us in Munich and obliged us to stay into the plane around two hours.
A driver was waiting for us in Timisoara to face the last three hours by car to
arrive to Petrosani, as this city doesn’t have an airport. The typical romanian
music, a bit repetitive and catchy, that the driver listened along the journey
made it more enjoyable. The hotel was very nice and the rooms, very clean and quite confortable, and
everything in the exceptional surroundings south of the Carpathians, in the Parang mountains.

Friday 27 of may, 2011. Cultural approach of the area

All the partners of the project (except Poland, that incorporated to the meeting later) meet at 9.30 in
Petrosani townhall, where we were welcomed by a city councilor, as the mayor couldn’t receive us. We
were explained that the city is developing a lot, thanks to the european funds, and a ski resort is being
refurbished to promote the city as a winter sports destiny, that will be added to the industries of the city. Our
european project can help to publicized a bit the town.
Afterwards, we travelled in a minibús to Hunedoara city to visit the oldest fortress/castle in Romania
(1440/1450). A guide explained all the details related to the fortress, that developed into a castle thanks to
the improvements realized by its various owners. Part of it is quite well preserved, although most of the
building needs to be refurbished and hasn’t recovered from the last fire caused by a lighting.
We had lunch all together in a restaurant in Hunedoara and we could enjoy the delicious romanian food. We
took again the minibús to go to Deva city, where we could see the gymnastics school attenden by Nadia
Comaneci and Bela Karoli, two of the best gymnasts of the world. Next to the school there’s a hill, on which
top is the fortress of Deva. To climb the hill we had to take a very steep funicular, that at the beginning
seemed a bit threatening, although finally we felt quite safe. The fortress is quite deteriorated, but the views
were unforgetable, with all the city on view and the possibility of seeing the differences between the
buildings of the commuinist period, and the actual one.
We had a walk along the old part of the city, where the moste important buildings are placed, and in a park
we could see a huge statue that represents Decebalo, chief of the dacians, the people who populated the
actual Romania and the true ancestors of the romanian population.
We could see that the streets were very clean and the parks, well arranged.
We returned to Petrosani and had dinner in a restaurant distributed around a lake, that in winter becomes an
ice rink. The different establishments around the lake served different types of meals, and there was also a
ship with a children’s club inside.

Saturday 28 of May, 2011
In the morning, we had a meeting to coordinate the work of the european project teams. We introduced and
valuated a draft of the didactic routes guides. Thanks to the different versions and methods, we could
discover the different ways of developing a didactic guide, and also the difficulties each team has found
along the elaboration. We also talked about the adjustments necessary to fit the target population of each
entity and the expasion possibilities of the project within each entity.
We voted the logo of the project, and the polish one was choosed. An internal communication tool has been created in the Moodle platform, and we compromised to use it to communicate the rest of the partners both the difficulties and achievements. All the teams compromised to help each other, work together and
communicate fluently.. We have a blog in english (language of the project),
where the project is given coverage,http://knowingyourcity.blogspot.com/, and we are also in
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Knowing-your-city/116315501773388, and in a blog in spanish http://acgandalf-conociendotuciudad.blogspot.com/ where everybody can follow the evoluation of the project.
This meeting also allowed us to solve all the doubts about the project and to unite more the working groups
of each country. We know we are working in a great project and that it represents and added value for our
entities.

We finally made an evaluation of the meeting: location, development of the working sessions,
achievement of the aims of the project, cultural exchange, ideas to improve the next meetings… An
evaluation always help to improve.
When the work session was finished, we had lunch in the Hotel Rusu, that is placed on the top of the Parag mountain and offers splendid views. After the lunch we visited a cave called Bolil that is some
kilometres far away from Petrosani. A guide explained us that the erotion produced by an stream started the formation of the cave started millions of years ago. The cave has a long history
and it has been used as a shelter by oppositors to the governing regimes, to hide war weapons and as worship place. In the evening, we had a walk along Petrosani.

Sunday 29 of May, 2011
The meeting finished and we only had to sign the minute with all the agreements taken by the partners.
We still had some time to visit the farmers and artisans’ market in en Petrosani. We would like to remark the work of the Romanian team (Elena, Mihaela, Clara, Charlotte, Mihaela, y todos los demás)
and thank them for their efforts, the way they have treated us
and their constant attention to make our staying in Petrosani as
pleasant as possible.