June 29-July 11, 2005 was held the International Youth Camp 2006 (Jugendcamp-2006) in the sister city Lüdenscheid (Germany). The campground brought together school students from
Lüdenscheid's 6 sister cities
- Calderdale (U.K.), Den Helder (Netherlands), Leuven (Belgium), Myslenice (Poland), Romilly-sur-Seine (France) and Taganrog (Russia).
This was the first experiment of the kind in Europe. The camp was held in connection with the FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. The organizers adopted the World Cup's motto "A time to make friends"
TM ("Die Welt zu Gast bei Freunden"
TM).
The official start of the Youth Camp was given with team presentations, and many acknowledged that our production was one of the most memorable and impressing. Team Taganrog aired a short video film, which focused on the connection of Taganrog with the common European cultural heritage and history, telling about the places of interest, famous people and Chekhov memorial sites. The culmination was a performance with linen sheets of three colors, symbolizing Russian tricolor.
In Lüdenscheid, the participants stayed in the Bergstadt Gymnasium (BGL). The camp launched a specially dedicated web site at
http://www.jugendcamp-lued.de, featuring news and photographs. The program of the youth camp included a visit to the Movie Park Germany, canoeing down the Ruhr, disco, open-air cinema, several sport competitions, and, of course, watching FIFA World Cup matches live on a wide screen.
Our team gave a great performance, being leader at most competitions. The boys' team (Andrey Lakeev (C.), Kirill Yatsenko, Vitaly Brekhachev, Mikhail Stepura and Artem Sokolov (GK.) won the mini-football tournament, winning the final match against Belgium, 2:1. The Taganrogers also took the first two places in the night-basketball contest (streetball), with Taganrog Nuha taking over Taganrog Falcons, and Dutch team celebrating the third place. Young people from Taganrog gave the presentation of the Russian national game "lapta" and tried themselves in various sports of other countries. The friendly disposition from the first day in the camp ground following the World Cup's motto helped Russian children win many new friends.
The organizers and participants are unanimous in the opinion that the Jugendcamp-2006 has been a very exciting project, which would hopefully find further support from the E.U. in the next year.
