Erasmus Plus Project in Varazdin

Goetheschule’s ‘Flying EU Classroom’ is on tour again! The fourth transnational week of our Erasmus Plus project ′Transforming Europe’ will take place in the north of Croatia from Sunday, 17th of September, to Saturday, 23rd of September 2017.

Students and teachers took a plane from Düsseldorf on Sunday and flew via Munich to Zagreb. At four in the afternoon Julia and Franziska (Year 11), Patrick, Zouzou and Liza (Year 10) arrived with Mr Boergen and Ms Heup in Varazdin. The Croatian host families were already waiting and five minutes later everyone was gone to explore what will be their new ‘home’ for the week.

History teacher Ivan Loncar welcomed all project participants from Croatia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland and Germany in the modern wing of Prva gimnazija Varazdin (Public School / Privatgymnasium Varazdin) on Monday morning. While English teacher Ivan Lajnvas started with an introductory session for the students to help them get to know each other, the teachers were given a brief tour of the school.

Long before the ‘gimnazija’ became an IB World School, the school was founded by Jesuits in 1636. A new school building was erected in Preradovića Street in 1870, where the school is still situated today.

More than just a footnote in the school’s history is the fact that today’s classrooms served as a hospital during WWI and WWII. This is particularly interesting, because the research of the German delegation had actually gone into a similar direction: while preparing the project, the students had worked with the German Red Cross to find out about the treatment of wounded soldiers in the Ruhr Area during WWI. → Erasmus-Besuch im DRK-Museum in Essen

Since Croatia used to be part of the Austrian-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, the school has a collection of German literature, philosophical essays and encyclopaedias from the 18th and 19th century. Apart from English, German is still the most popular foreign language taught at the school.