Virtual meeting of youth from sister cities

The second meeting of students of the Institute of Foreign Languages ​​of Petrozavodsk State University with young people (students and schoolchildren) from our sister city of Tubingen took place.
The meeting was held in the videoconference mode on the ZOOM platform and was a continuation of the online youth exchange project “Tubingen-Petrozavodsk”.

The second of four planned meetings within the framework of the virtual bilingual round table “Tourist Karelia”, organized annually under the guidance of Associate Professor of the Department of German and French Languages ​​E.N. Vorotilina and senior lecturer of the Department of Foreign Languages ​​of Humanities O.O. Nikolaeva, was devoted to the demonstration and discussion of the video filmed by the students of the Institute of Foreign Languages. One of the initiators of the meeting was the Karelian Foundation for the Development of People’s Diplomacy, headed by N.V. Lavrushina. The meeting was moderated by Stephan Klingebiel, an expert from the International Relations Department of the Tübingen City Hall.

The students of Petrozavodsk and Tübingen met as good friends, because all the time between the scheduled meetings on the ZOOM platform they found the opportunity to communicate using a variety of telecommunication means. During the meeting, the participants had time to discuss numerous issues related to the sights of the twin cities, the historical memory of the German and Russian peoples and the pressing problems of student life.

Quizzes about Tübingen and Petrozavodsk attracted great interest, which included puzzles with possible answers, such as: How many Nobel Prize winners studied or lived in Tübingen? What writer has never lived in Tübingen? In honor of what event is Petrozavodsk City Day celebrated annually? When did Petrozavodsk and Tubingen become sister cities? and many others.

At the end of the meeting, a plan for further actions was outlined: in the next two weeks, before the next meeting on April 29, both sides will continue to work on creating videos about the sights of the twin cities, which will require turning to local history materials and cooperation with the relevant department of the National Library of the Republic of Karelia, as well as improving foreign language competencies.