DBUD – the continuation of a great friendship

DBUD (Design Build Use Donate) – Szigetköz – 2023   

Miskolczy András 

In this Erasmus, for us, participants, not including teachers, the job was to socialize. We all met in this little place in Hungary, called “Dunasziget”. This tiny town is located near the Slovakian border, where the Danube separates it from Hungary. I could make a strong connection with some Lithuanians, who I got to help on this one-week journey.  
A lot of us together, as a team, we were able to build a functional boat from wood, with our bare hands and tools. We got to try the boat out when it was finished, unfortunately, this occurred on the very last day, because we may have overcomplicated some of the parts of the boat, so we couldn’t finish it earlier.  
We went on an exceptionally long canoe trip, that we enjoyed a lot. My canoe team was asked to be the last to help navigate the boat for those who were struggling a bit with it, so we couldn’t fulfil the plan we made in the beginning, which was to go the fastest we could. 
I learnt an awful lot of new games, and new words in other languages. We once played a game called “spider”; the process of the game is simple: there are two teams, one of the teams (A) stand in a circle with their hands touching each other’s shoulders. The other team (B) must jump onto the standing circle that the “A” team has created. With incredible skills but somehow easily, the “B” team has to get between one of the “A” team’s member’s legs, facing upwards, holding themselves on the person’s legs. After everybody jumped and made their way to this kind of difficult position, everyone has to walk the whole circle around, yelling “I am spider”. 
We had the chance to make a short movie about healthy lifestyle, we spent an entire day shooting the shots for the movie. We got to watch these at the end of the Erasmus, when everyone was together in our school. 

Overall, this week was very entertaining for me, and I hope for others as well. We asked our teacher to try to invite us to more of these kinds of projects, where you feel so free and entertained that you can’t even tell the time, nor do you even care about the time because that doesn’t matter. What really matters is that you’re there, finally living, and enjoying something that you don’t usually do in your normal day-to-day life. 

Nagy Fruzsi 
DBUD- summary  

During the week we had so much fun, we could try new things. For example, canoeing. We went on a 7-hour long trip. We saw beautiful places in Szigetköz. The trip was hard and exhausting. We got sunburnt because fortunately the weather was very nice.  
The first and the last night we slept in the school, so we stayed in Budapest. We tried to show our city, our culture and everything.  
Monday was laborday and, in Finland they have a really big celebration about it, so they showed us how they celebrate it. We had a picnic with typical Finnish food. They showed us a funny dance and nice music too. 

In total i am glad that i was part of this project. I had two very good weeks of my life, I had the chance to meet new people. I could improve my language skills and I learnt my own limits. 

Molnár Marcell 

I was looking forward to building the boat. The programs were nice and well organized even with the weather conditions. The place we were staying at was amazing, Szigetköz is an amazing and beautiful place with interesting places. I loved wandering around the nearby villages, I met lots of interesting people many of whom were not nice and didn’t like the foreign participants. I made a lot of new friends, I was a bit sad because the group only got together on the last night and the day before which made me a bit sad but it’s just the usual Erasmus way. There was not a thing that was negative only the small cultural difference, I noticed that the Hungarians were much more extroverted or loud which the other participating countries didn’t really like, or it just seemed like this for me. Other than that, everything was fine, and I loved the project and I’m glad that I could have participated in it. I’m really glad that I got the opportunity to participate in the project and want to say thanks to our teachers for the hard work and organisation. 

Borbély Ákos 

DBUD Hungary 

During this week we had an amazing time at Dunasziget, with our Finnish, Lithuanian and Latvian groopmates.  

As for the boat building, I realy liked it. During the days the development was obvious and thet made the process very enyojable. We used plenty of different tools and tecniques and we learnt a lot about woodworking.  

Regarding the group activities we had a lot of programes (energisers, kenuing…) where we had the opportunity to socialise and get to know each other even better. Fortunately I could use my english a lot, and by this it developed a lot.  

An other thing that I wanted to talk about is Culture Nights. At these nights we learnt about the other nations culture and water sports. It was a great late afternoon activitie.  

 Overall, I will miss this project a lot since it gave me a lot of memories and experiences in working in internaitonal groups and woodwoorking. 

Jaksa Juca  

Spending a week in Szigetköz with this project was a very happy week of my life. It was good to see the people I met in Finland again, and also to get to know the new ones. 

I enjoyed showing Budapest to our guests, it made me smile how much they loved it. The programs were also exciting, I worked with the campaign movie, but helping the boat seemed like fun as well. I feel like we became pretty close with everyone, the cultural nights were fantastic, when we listened to a country’s music and danced together. 

My favourite part was probably the canoeing, it was quite an adventure. I almost fell into the water, but I grabbed something in the last minutes. and after two seconds passed by, a bunch of these people came running to help me up. This is what I loved the most about this Erasmus exvhange, that during a lot of fun activities, we became a team, we learned and supported eachother through the week. All in all, I am really grateful that I could take part in this project, and I am hoping I will see these people again in my life. 

Erdősi Sisó’s summary 

It was the second part of this project, before that we were in Finland together which was super fantastic, so the expectations had been high. 

The Budapest part was exciting and stressful in a positive way for me, we showed the school and city to the foreigners. By the time we arrived to Szigetköz I had felt sicker than during the Erasmus I was ill. However, I was still really enjoying it with my illness as well and in my opinion, it says everything about the trip’s quality. Here in Hungary, we got to know each other more and we made real friends and mates. The whole vibe was peaceful, calm, moreover I felt timelessness which was absolutely relaxing. The most exciting experience was for me when we lost during the canoeing trip with some of the Lithuanians, although I loved the boat building (which did not sink!), the videomaking, the chatting, asking around the village based on a questionnaire and of course I was keen on the energizers. 

I am glad that I was part of this wonderful experience gaining week and I truly hope that I will meet with the people from this project again once.  

Dobos Bogi 

I’d say this week was a very good opportunity for me. Not only were the programs great and well organized, but i had such great fun! We had the opportunity to build a real boat. We had to work with wood and real tools. It was a very first for me. We had the chance to discover the village. We walked through three villages, all of them were small, cute and great. We had to ask locals some questions, which was a huge fail, because usually people were very rude for us. But still, we managed to do that task too, and we met some good people as well. We met some local students as well, they were nice.  

When too many people were working on the boat we got some other assignments to do. One of them was filming a motivational video for young people to go out in the nature. I love acting, and there were two Lithuanian guys who loved filming. We quickly formed a team and made the best short film of our lives. (probably not true, but we enjoyed it very much) 

An other project like this was making each other a small treasure hunt. I loved that every task needed our imagination and creativity.  

On Thursday we could finally go rowing. I was the translator to the Hungarian guys, István. The sight was beautiful, we all had fun. We stopped at multiple very interesting places. One of them was a fish latter, and there was a bridge where we could jump into the water and swim out in the high flow.  

When we got back to budapest we had to do the art project. We graffitied our Logo on the wall in our school, then we put a big paper put on which everyone could draw their favorite memories. After that we ate the best pizzas of our lives (thanks to Rob)! We went sightseeing once again on our ls evening, then we went back to sleep at Poli. Although I couldn’t sleep much, because J had to take Latvians to Kálvin square at 2AM and Lithuanians to Népliget at 7AM, it was still a pretty good night. We played boardgames for a long time.  

After all, this was a very good week of my life. I think I made some life ling friendships.  

Csikós Rozi 

Szigetköz 

The hungarian week took part from the 29th of April to the 7th of May. On the first day we collected the teams at the airport, bus station. That night we slept in our school and ate delicious gulyás soup and mákos guba made by Rob. We also had some time to walk around and show some places around the city.  

On Sunday we began our trip and trawelled to Szigetköz by train and bus. We had a really nice way there with the view. We were all living in one house close by the river. We had a cook who took care of the meals. We mostly tasted hungarian flavors. Most of the days we worked ont the boat, made tasks related to the project. We made a questioner, motivating films. Every day after breakfast we started with energyser games which were very fun. We also played in the afternoons sometimes. 

 One day we went on a canoe tour with a local gide. We rowed on very interesting sections of the Danube. Many times we had to go through very narrow parts, through large tree trunks. We also had the opportunity to take a dip in the water. In the evenings we had cultaral nights. We got to know some more about water sports in each country. We tasted some national foods, listened to music and learned national dances. We menaged to finish the boat till the last day, so we put it on water and tryed it at night. It was dark so we had to use lights, it was very cozy and the boat didn’t fall into the water. 

 We got back to Budapest, tot he school in the early afternoon on Snday, so the guests had a lot of time to discover. We made pizza that night and watched the films we made during the days. The last night was really nice and a bit sad because of the end. Next day we accompanied the teams to their starting points and said goodbye. 

Leader Perspective 

The Hungarian leaders were exhausted at the end. It was an eventful 9 days. We ran the gauntlet of dealing with participant, well being, illness, emotions, stamina, cultural differences, etc. It was amazing.

Most of the participants already knew eachother from the Finland stint. The few changes in project membership were easily handled, with the new comers feeling welcome immediately. Here in lies one of th key elements of Erasmus+, the shared experience. It fosters cooperation, understanding, dialogue, openness.

As for the work itself, the weather was a bit warmer than Lapland but that did not deter anybody from working hard on designing, planning, building, using and donating a small boat. Seeing the participants faces when they paddled their own boat around the bay on the Danube backwaters is all the proof one needs to understand that these projects rae a seminal element in the future lives of the participants.