On January 20 – 27, 2012 Donata Judickaite, Lukas Burba and Karolis Juskauskas, students from the form 10B , and English teachers Jurgita Arbutavičienė and Lilija Mikalauskaitė – Džiumajeva participated in the second meeting of the project taking place in Italy.

On a very early, snowy and cold Friday morning we took off from Vilnius international airport and via Frankfurt headed to Florence, where we landed at about 10 a.m. When we left the plane, we were greeted by warm sunny weather and felt as if we had returned several months back to our early autumn… Our destination was Pontedera, a small town having 24 thousands of inhabitants and known of “Piaggio” factory producing world – famous motor – scooters “Vespa”.

In the morning our hosts, students and teachers for Istituto Commerciale e per Geometri  “Enrico Fermi” met their guests from 9 countries in the hall of their school. ITCG Fermi is a vocational secondary school, students start attending it when they are 14. We’ve learnt that students have lessons on Mondays – Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p. m. At school we were welcomed by Christina Cosci, the school headmistress. Later we watched presentations about our schools, prepared by the meeting participants, and were impressed by the number of various scooters beginning with the first ones and ending with the last models which we saw on the display in “Piaggio” museum…
In the afternoon together with Annalisa, an English teacher from ITCG, we travelled by local train to Pisa, one of the magic places during the meeting. Walking through the old town we headed for the Piazza del Duomo, where the famous leaning Tower stands beside a Cathedral and Baptistery, richly decorated in carvings by the Pisano family… Really a very impressive place… Of course, the most popular souvenirs from Pisa were magnets and key – rings with the Leaning Tower on them…

A visit to Florence, where lots of art works and Renaissance style buildings are concentrated, was impressive too. It is said, if being in Florence you have time to visit only one famous place, let it be Duomo Cathedral… We had time to visit the Cathedral as well as Ponte Vecchio and the Palazzo Vecchio overlooking the Piazza della Signoria with its copy of Michelangelo’s David statue. Although most of the Palazzo Vecchio is now a museum, it remains the symbol of local government: since 1872 it has housed the office of the mayor of Florence, and it’s the seat of the City Council… One more magic place with lots of beautiful sights, lovely sunny atmosphere and friendly people…

Monday morning started with participating in different activities at Centro Poliedro in Pontedera. All students were divided into three groups and each group had different activities such as working with clay, baking waffles according to the medieval recipe or doing medieval writing or parchment paper. The activities were held by Giovanni Fascetti, a history teacher from ITCG Fermi, Daglef Sieger, an art teacher from Germany and Katarina, Comenius assistant from Germany working at ITCG Fermi. After having tried themselves in different activities at Centro Poliedro and refreshed themselves with substantial meals at “Easy Food” restaurant, students and teachers headed for ITCG Fermi, where we continued participating in other interesting activities. This time it was archery, medieval cryptography and Renaissance style dancing.
In the evening while students were resting and enjoying their time with the host families, teachers travelled to a small village of Montefoscoli, where they visited the Museum of Farmer’s Culture and the Temple of Minerva, the former meeting place of masons, one more very impressive and really magic place…

Tuesday morning started with a trip to Lari, a small town of Etruscan origin situated in the Tuscan hills covered with vineyards and olive trees. We had the excursion in the Castello dei Vicari, an important historical fortress in the centre of the town, existing since ancient times but enlarged and changed into a powerful fortress in the Renaissance, which hosts today the Museum “Filippo Baldinucci”. Later we watched how pasta is made at Martelli family pasta factory. We have learned thet Martelli pasta is made by slowly kneading the best durum – wheats with cold water. The bronze – drawing gives the pasta a rough texture,  then pasta is dried for about 50 hours and the result is a tasty and porous pasta which allows the sauces to be absorbed well. Of course, we all couldn’t resist the temptation to Martelli pasta as presents from Italy to our family members…
In the afternoon students and teachers, participants of the meeting, gathered again at ITCG Fermi. The hosts prepared the display of the paintings “My Dream Castle”, painted by the students in the 10 schools participating in the project. From Lithuania we brought two paintings of the dream castles for this display: one drawn by Greta Mateikaite, form 6B, and the second one was made by Vaidas Dabravolskas, form 10A. Representatives from all 10 schools participating in the project had to choose the best painting “My Dream Castle”, it was the painting from Cyprus which will be used as the logo of the project.
After that we listened and watched to the presentations of the students’ works about the coats of arms and heraldic symbols and the most beautiful castles in their regions. It was really hard to decide castle from  which county was the most beautiful, all of them were beautiful in their own way…

We also enjoyed visits to two more magic places – San Gimignano, the town of towers, from the town walls of which we could see the breathtaking views of Tuscany landscapes, and to Siena having one of the most beautiful cathedrals and hosting Palio, a traditional medieval horse race run around the Piazza del Campo twice a year…
The time of our stay in Italy was already coming to the end, all participants and especially we and our neighbours, Latvians,who have arrived from the northern and more cold regions, were spoilt by nice, warm and sunny weather, we also tried lots of different kinds of pasta, seen various magic places and were looking forward to the magic party at Vicopisano Castle the following day…

The village of Vicopisano was the last magic place which had visited during our stay in Italy. The visit to Vicopisano started with going and seeing the parish Church of Santa Maria dating back to the 12th century. Then we turned to the Brunelleschi’s Fortress (15th century). We listened to the history of the fortress told by Giovanni Fascetti, a history teacher from ITCG Fermi and later we examined each hall and each tower in the fortress, it was important as in the afternoon we were going to have a magic party in the fortress… But before the party we refreshed ourselves at the oil mill called “Azienda Agrocola “Il Frantoio”. The hospitable hosts of the oil mill showed us what they are growing (kiwi – trees, olive – trees) and how the olive oil at their mill is made. We also were treated to a typical Tuscany meals: white bread toasts with olive oil on them, Tuscany region soup, salami and ham and dessert of Ricotta cheese and kiwi jam made from the kiwis growing on the farm…
Later it came time for the magic in Vicopisano Castle. The magic started with the procession of the students and teachers dressed as Draculas, Devils, Ghosts and Alchemists going along the village streets to Vicopisano Castle. The procession was led by Wizard Giovanni, who was hardy recognizable in his beautiful mask… A large bonfire was burning in the inner yard of the castle, Draculas, Devils, Ghosts and Alchemists were dancing medieval dances round the fire, others were baking waffles on the burning fire… Everyone could learn something about his/her future, Wizard Giovanni was predicting only good things…

It was a difficult day. Due to the train strikes taking place in Tuscany that day we had to leave Pontedera three hours earlier than it had been planned before. So, we took the 8 – o’clock train form Pontedera to Florence, it was so full of people going to work and to their studies in Florence that it was hard to find a free seat, and at each stop more and more people entered the train. When we arrived to Florence railway station, we saw that all trains were cancelled. Fortunately buses were going on, we took the airport shuttle to Florence Peretola where we had to wait for some time till our flight again via Frankfurt in which we spent long hours waiting for our flight to Vilnius… Vilnius met us with lots of snow and freezing temperatures of  – 16C…  We reached our home town at 3 a.m., that already was the early morning of January 28th…
Good – bye, Italy! Hello, Portugal!