VIE+W | Veliko Tarnovo... a city in the Middle Ages

Bulgaria is not a very big country, but it has a curious variety of landscapes and corners. You can get to know the shores of the Black Sea or the origins of present-day Bulgaria, as well as drink good wine or discover what traditional costumes are like.

This time we are going to discover Veliko Tarnovo. So that you can locate yourself, it is in the north-eastern part of the country, very close to the border with Romania. To get to this beautiful town you can go by car, by train or by bus; If you don't have a car, the fastest option is the bus. Go to the central bus station in Sofia, very close to the center, and buy a ticket at the ticket office. The price per trip is 17 leva and you can pay in cash or by card. At the bus station, you have different places to eat or drink.

Ready for the trip? After approximately three hours of travel, you arrive at the Veliko Tarnovo bus station, which is located on the outskirts of the town, a 30-minute walk from the old town, and which is the most beautiful part of the town.

Ideally, you would spend one night in town to give you time to see everything for two days. On these two days, you can visit the town simply by walking and visit its different churches and bridges. You only need to follow the main road, at the end of this is the Tsarevets fortress, the main attraction of the town. Beyond the fort, there are a couple of churches next to the river.

As a recommendation for lunch, dinner, or a drink, the Malkia Inter bar, with constant movement, a different decoration, innovative cuisine, and affordable prices. Another option is Shtastliveca, possibly the most famous restaurant in Veliko Tarnovo. The food is excellent and daring, but the attention is lousy. Likewise, if you want to eat something different, it is a wise option. To have a coffee and breakfast some sweet Samurai Specialty Coffe Shop, a specialized place, with good service and a good breakfast.

Beyond the recommendations for eating and drinking, the most important is that you simply walk looking at the streets, houses, and typical places. Veliko Tarnovo has a great tradition of craftsmanship. An inexpensive destination where you will feel like in medieval times.

Paula Barriga Perez

Intern@ICDET

VIE+W| Sustainable Architecture

Sustainable architecture is architecture that seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings by efficiency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, development space and the ecosystem at large. Sustainable architecture uses a conscious approach to energy and ecological conservation in the design of the built environment.

The idea of sustainability, or ecological design, is to ensure that our use of presently available resources does not end up having detrimental effects to our collective well-being or making it impossible to obtain resources for other applications in the long run.

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VIE+W | “RETURNING TO SCHOOL… BUT ON THE OTHER SIDE”

My colleague Alice and I joined one of the Druzhba’s schools to assist and cooperate in an interactive lesson with a middle school class. According to the Non Formal Education principles and in collaboration with an art teacher and a psychologist, we created a creative educational environment to learn by having fun and experience.

The main activity was about painting and cooperation: the children had to reproduce "The Sunflower" painting from Van Gogh modulating their works with the ones of their pairs. The task for each child of the entire class was to reproduce only a little piece of the painting, depending on the place they were seated. The main final goal for the children was to be able to coordinate the different paintings by creating an ending harmonic drawing.

It has been interesting to be there, observing how children can work together to find common solutions and stimulating the process of cooperation and coordination to arrive at a shared result that doesn’t leave anyone behind.

During the activity we touched another important point of Non Formal Education: Alice and I joined the activity directly when the art teacher asked us to paint a piece of the whole figure; we were feeling like little children in school again sitting on those little chairs. We tried to build a symmetrical learning relation characterized by cooperation, respect, trust, appreciation, equity and parity between us and the children: we underlined the existent reciprocity between us putting ourselves in the position to learn something from them and this activity. While we were drawing we mainly stayed with a Korean child that was put apart from the other companions because of her shyness, her different ways of living and the language barriers. We searched to integrate her with the other children that were very curious about her disclosure toward us.

Throughout this experience I learned how alternative ways of teaching can be a useful way of expression and connection for people with different backgrounds, above all in children that in the age of middle school tend to create ingroups and outgroups (including the similarity and excluding the diversity) to better define their identities. I improved my awareness about the interesting match between creativity, art, teamwork and psychology and I will treasure it for my future ideas and projects!

“Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, involve me and I will understand”

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Ilaria Staltari, intern@ICDET