Change 4 Green
Change 4 Green
On December 9, 2022, a group of seven Slovak adventurers met at Vienna Airport to begin their journey to the “Paris of the Baltics,” the city proudly bearing this nickname, the capital of Latvia, Riga. After initial anxieties about meeting, our worries quickly dissipated; we immediately clicked and were already looking forward to the next 8 days we would spend together. After landing in the capital of Latvia, we were briefly delayed by the need to watch the penalty shootout in the World Cup match between Croatia and Brazil, and after this obligation, we definitively stepped, full of anticipation, into a world unknown and distant to us...
We landed in Riga in the evening, so on the first day, we only managed a quick dinner and met other people who then spent this unforgettable week with us in Riga. After breakfast at our hostel, we nervously moved to the Mercury hotel, a 10-minute walk away, where the substantial and most important part of our stay in Riga took place. Everything was managed by Rosana from Italy, who handled her role of leading this project with immense grace and elegance, for which she deserves our huge thanks, and she undoubtedly contributed to the smooth and trouble-free course of our stay. The meetings were held under the motto of “sustainability.” We tried to collectively understand the meaning of this word more deeply and, through various activities, discussions, and games, find answers to various climate change problems. Thus, we also understood the necessity of starting with ourselves by changing our consumer lifestyle, ideally as soon as possible, as our planet is suffering greatly from our behavior and does not have much time left...
We had these meetings every day except December 13th; this day was designated as free, so we spent it wandering around Riga and watching the World Cup semi-final match in the cinema in the evening. If I am to evaluate this project overall, I personally had concerns mainly about meeting new people and my English, but fortunately, neither fear was confirmed; I communicated excellently and made friends, probably for life. The most difficult moment came during farewells at the airport, but the sadness of departure will be replaced by joyful memories of these unforgettably spent 8 days. We enjoyed every single moment of our stay, and I am sure that our Slovak group will meet again because, as one of our well-known proverbs says: “where one road ends, another begins”...