Workcamp in Deutschland

Storkow Workcamp 2010

By Louise Piffaut

We were 15 people of all ages between 16 and 26 years old, but the average age was around 18 years old.

How we spend the day

The day was divided in two parts : The work for the town in the morning during 4 hours and the lessons in the afternoon (2 hours).  We did many different things for the town: We repainted playgrounds, we cut plants that were invading the roads, we helped moving a school ( kindergarten) to another building, we moved chairs for a concert, but we really enjoyed ourselves because we were with people we learned to know during the 3 weeks. Every day, 2 people were not going to work, and they went whopping for the house, and they did the cooking.

Making friends in the “Dorf”

The inhabitants of the “Dorf”, in which was the house we were all sleeping in, were very welcoming : The first day they made a barbecue, and we had meet for 3 days, and regularly, a neighbor was coming to take news from us, bringing fruits with him.

Many times, some other neighbors came and asked if we wanted to play a football game with them, and because the World Cup was on, we went a few times to watch the games with them.

International spirit

An aspect that IJGD encourage and that I think is very important is to learn new cultures. The camp was very international: There were 2 French, 1 Belgian, 2 German ( the “leaders”), 1 Algerian, 1 Mexican, 2 American, 1 Estonian, 1 Slovakian, 3 Italians and 1 Danish. So you can imagine that everybody cooked different meals from their country, and we had very good moments. We learned to live together, and most of us became very good friends!!!

Freetime activities

We had very very good weather as it was always more than 34°C.

Our house was near a lake, so we could go swimming whenever we wanted :).

The camp was situated near Berlin ( 3/4h in bus and then 1/4h of train ) which allowed my group to spend the Saturdays in Berlin, doing tourism, visiting, shopping, going to museums etc…

I think everybody enjoyed himself during these 3 weeks of volunteering, made friends, learned German, and most of all had a good time.