Within the Generation Europe network, the local youth groups from Bochum and Nordhausen (Germany) work closely with their respective international project partners. But Bochum and Nordhausen are twin towns, so the two groups have also formed additional connections.
As in the previous year, the group from Nordhausen invited the Bochum group to the traditional Rolandsfest. The three-day city festival is an important cultural reference point for the Nordhausen group’s local work, which they are happy to share with the Bochum group. Before visiting the Rolandsfest last year, the group from Thuringia had already visited their friends in the Ruhr area.
Escape game for international youth work
On Friday, the Bochum group was given a warm welcome. After dinner together, the participants tried out an escape room game that is particularly suitable for international encounters: The game ‘Festival in Danger’, developed by the International Youth Service of the Federal Republic of Germany (IJAB), is designed for multilingual groups to puzzle together and support each other language-wise. As the escape room was designed as a bilingual game, it was introduced and played in Thuringian dialect.
Connections on rails
On Saturday, the group took a ride on the Harz narrow-gauge railway, with a historic steam locomotive. The trip was an experience for both the Bochum and Nordhausen groups. On the train, the mixed youth group also met the official delegation from the city of Bochum, which was visiting its twin town Nordhausen on the occasion of the Rolandsfest. The trip provided an opportunity to exchange ideas with them.
Climate crisis up close
The trip on the steam train to the southern Harz Mountains was not just a leisure activity. The Nordhausen youth group wanted to show their guests from Bochum the current situation there, where the effects of the climate crisis and centuries of other human intervention are more visible than in most other places in Germany: drought, storms and bark beetles are leading to the death of trees in the Harz Mountains. Since 2018, the Harz National Park has lost more than 11,600 hectares of its spruce forest. In total, around 90 per cent of the former spruce population in the national park has now died.
Support for local projects
The young people from the two groups also exchanged information about their local activities in Bochum and Nordhausen. They told each other what they had been doing, what was working well for them and gave each other tips on how to do some things differently. In the evening, the Nordhausen group accompanied their friends from Bochum to the traditional Rolandsfest, where they got to know other young people. The mayor of Nordhausen, Kai Buchmann, was also at the festival and took a photo with some of the group late in the evening.
Even though the encounter was only brief, everyone enjoyed spending time together and is looking forward to another joint activity at the end of the year.