Active8-Planet Adventure in picturesque Salzburg
We had known from the start that the final section of the Active8-Planet project would be a meetup in Salzburg. Before heading there, we had several online meetings with the other participants discussing our related projects and how we could fill our Salzburg trip. This filled us with excitement for what was to come, and the experience sure lived up to expectations. The path for us in the Swedish team was firstly by plane to München, Germany. We then headed on a beautiful train trip from München to Salzburg. Even though we struggled with finding the right train tracks at first, we got our first taste of local culture right there at the train station when we stopped for pretzels. We arrived in Salzburg around dinnertime. We met up with some familiar faces at Augustiner Bräu for a taste of the local culture, and of course, the beer! We then headed to our hostel for a good night’s sleep, and in the corridors we would meet the people who would become our friends in the coming days.
The following morning, we were guided to the house labeled quite mysteriously as ”activities”, that would be held at the event location: a beautiful, spacious old building very close to where we had stayed overnight. We went through a few ‘getting to know each other’ exercises and got to talk with our peers about our surprisingly related projects. Later we got to explore the city together, and got to see its wonderful architecture. The city is split down the middle by a river, whose bridges we had to cross to get to different locations. We made the most of every opportunity to explore the city. We looked up the best café in the town and enjoyed some great coffee, and they also served beautiful little chocolate animals. The city was a particular treat for me, as I’m a bit obsessed with old facades from different time periods. We were both fascinated and amused with the cultural differences compared to home. At one point I was questioned by a waiter for only ordering the small beer from the menu. That would never happen in Sweden! We ate a lot of fried food too, it was simply everywhere. And the airport hotel breakfast on the way home even served sour pickles! But I’m getting ahead of myself.
When we were not exploring the town we had different productive and trust-building activities at our event location. Since we hadn’t met each other before, warming up with different name games and other exercises really made it easy to communicate. Josine, the event leader, had a great lecture about different cultures and cross cultural communication, which helped further. Although considering everyone was a university student, the differences weren’t as big as they could have been. We also got to present our project works and give feedback to the others, to practice group presentations. Even though each of the groups had distinct focuses for their project works, we all shared the common denominator of sustainability in mind. This gave us a great baseline for feedback, and even though we were mostly done with our projects it was a great learning opportunity.
Many of the other activities were also focused on allowing us to develop tools for further project work. We learned methods for seeing other group members’ perspectives on things. When collaborating towards a mutual goal, developing a joint vision seems to be key. One of the ways we got to practice this was through an exercise involving drawing up scales representing different features of what we were developing, such as “sustainability” or “shareability”. Each team member then got to mark wherever they felt we were on the scale. This in turn could be used as a starting point for making a more unified vision of whatever was being developed.
After two days filled with food and drinks, great scenery, and new meetings, it was time to head home again. When trying to find our booked trains, it turned out the railway company was on strike! We simply had to find another solution. Very grateful for our smartphones, we looked up another company that operated on the same route, and the conductor on board was incredibly helpful. Back in Sweden we returned to our daily duties, wrapping up the final parts of our thesis work. Still, the sense of purpose these kinds of projects can give you is astounding. One might even learn a thing or two about navigating international railroads.
