Bilateral meeting of Belgium, Italy and Germany in Rostock, March 2007

Rostock

In March 2007 the partners from Belgium, Italy and Germany met for a bilateral meeting in Rostock, Germany. The main goal of this meeting was to learn to use tools concerning the website, to discuss about and make proposals for dissemination and tools of publicity.

This is the Belgian report.

Thursday 22nd of march 2007
After a rainy day of driving, we arrived in Rostock at about 16:00. First we made a short visit to the city centre and had a quick lunch in a shopping centre in Rostock. At 17:00 Volker welcomed us at Anova. There we had a short meeting, visiting the workspace of Anova and studying the program of the bilateral meeting. Afterwards we went to the hotel with Volker to check-in. We visited a beer pub in the centre of Bad Doberan and waited a while in the hotel lobby for our Italian partners to come. Due to weather circumstances, they arrived at the hotel late at night. At that time we were sleeping already.

Friday 23th of march 2007
On Friday around 8:15 we met the Italian colleagues, Mary Grazia and Giovanni, in the hotel lobby for the first time. They had arrived in the hotel around 1:30 in the morning (flight delay caused to snow and ice). At 9:00 we started the first meeting. Volker introduced his boss Prof. Hansgeorg Meissner and Thomas. He started with an overview of the activities during the following days and presenting the area where we staying, the German region of Mecklenbourg Western Pommerania and the city of Rostock. Then Thomas gave a presentation of the interior design program (Ambiente) made by Anova. Giovanni explained the structure, goals and ways of working of the Italian partner, the institute ANFE (National Emigrant Family Association). We did the same for CVO-HIKempen. 
After this another piece of software made by Anove was presented: it concerned an instruction program (on CD-rom) for people working with elderly people. In this program the user is thaught how to help in situations where an older person has been fallen down or how to help elderly people with problems eating or drinking.
We had lunch in the Mensa of the University.
In the afternoon we went to the Maritime Simulation Center in Warnemünde (a place even nearer to the sea then Rostock) where we followed an exercise concerning a rescue simulation with 4 boats. Afterwards we went to the Baltic Sea in Warnemunde for a walk. Around 18:30 we went to a restaurant to eat and listen to live music.

Saturday 24th of march 2007
On Saturday we started to work at 9:00, together with two colleagues of Volker (Petra and Christian). A brief introduction concerning the different institutes was given by Pieter and Giovanni, so that the colleagues of Volker knew what the partners of Italy and Belgium are involved with. The first item on the agenda was an explanation of the editing tool for the stellla website (TYPO3) by Christian.
Afterwards we discussed the content area ‘Activities’ on the stellla website. We agreed to put the following items of each institute we visited under the topic ‘Adult education’:
• Name of institution
• Mission of the institute, photo and logo
• Activities (courses, subject, certificates, …)
• Target groups (unemployed, student, professional, …) and number of students
• Methods of e-Learning used
• Location, contact address, website, …

Giovanni together with Christian made a test-page with the above mentioned items of the ANFE-Trapani site.
At noon we went to the restaurant ‘Freibeuter’ for lunch and in the afternoon we had a discussion about making a logo and a flash movie of the project. During and as a result of the discussion Petra made a logo proposal. It concerned a rectangle with a blue background and three identical yellow L’s. This letters were made of 7 yellow stars (symbolising the 7 partners).  Under the rectangle the name steLLLa was mentioned. We agreed that this was just a proposal for the project’s logo and that the partners are free to make other proposals for the logo of the steLLLa project. The final decision of which logo will be definite shall be taken at the meeting in Cyprus.
In the afternoon we had a guided visit at the city centre of Rostock. Afterwards we had dinner in the restaurant ‘Der Alte Fritz’ in the company of Prof. Hansgeorg Meissner. At the end of the evening the Certificates of Attendance were given.

Sunday 25th of march 2007
On Sunday we had a tourist trip around the largest German island, Rügen. At this trip we foreign visitors were accompanied by Volker, Christian and Carsten.

Short reflections by the Italian partecipants

It was the first time in Germany for Giovanni and me. Usually when people think about Germany several stereotypes come to mind like cold, lack of sea, no sun …instead I found out that it is exactly the opposite!! The sun was very bright and we, the Sicilian people, had a sunbath. Beaches are very long and very white, we could be jealous of them. The only stereotype we recognized is that Germans are laborious people, they are very efficient and precise like company ANOVA that hosted us.
Rostock is a very nice and charming city. I liked very much its historical centre with its facades in different colours. It is like a bijoux…. I was really impressed by food!! Fish is very tasty!!! I ate more fish in Germany than in Sicily!!! I'd like to thank the LLP Programme for changing our minds about German stereotypes and thank you all because you  gave us the opportunity to seize nuances and aspects about your traditions and life-style ignored by us!!
And, the last but not the least, thank you Volker for the organization that you set up and thank you ANOVA for hospitality.
I look forward to seeing you again in Cyprus!!!