I just came back from my first APV (Advance Planning Visit) as Group Leader for an Erasmus+ KA1 Youth Exchange. Needless to say, at my age I no longer qualify as a young person by Erasmus+ standards (13-29) and by any other standard.

What made it even more interesting for me, was that I have never participated in an APV, so I did not know what to expect. Actually, I was not the only one, because Doina, the young person travelling with me for the APV had never had a similar experience either.

So what is an Erasmus+ APV? A 1-2 day visit of one group leader and one young person in preparation of an Youth Exchange which usually takes place about one month later.

Luckily, the host organisation was kind enough to book our flight from Bucharest to Warsaw and the domestic transport from Warsaw to Lodz by bus. This is quite unusual because, in general, host organisations reimburse the travel cost, rather than booking transport from their end (otherwise they may end up paying for people who never show up at the APV).

Since I travel internationally at least one a month, I am pretty aware that for a 2 hours flight you may spend a whole day travelling (you do the math: 15 minutes to the railway station + be there 15 minutes before the train leaves + 2.5 hours by train + 30 minutes waiting for the airport transfer bus + 1 hour by bus from the train station to the airport + being at the airport with minimum 2 hours before the flight + 2 hours flight + 1 hour into the arrival airport + 30 minutes waiting for the next bus + 2 hours by bus = 12 hours!!).

When we arrived to Lodz, our contacts at the host organisation was waiting for us. Again, this was an extra care, because I would have expected to get the local public transport and go by ourselves to the hotel which was reserved to us. However, 3 people greeted us upon our arrival and drove us to the hotel.

The hotel was really above expectations for this kind of low budget projects: 3 stars, cosy, clean, quiet, right in the center of the city. We literally just dropped our luggage into the hotel rooms and went out for dinner, just around the corner, in a nice little restaurant with Italian cuisine. The food was really good and plentiful. As we were told, the same hotel and restaurant will be used for the youth exchange, which is always a good practice. Without further dues, after dinner we went straight to bed after a long day.

I woke up early in the morning (as I usually do @4am) and I was pealsed to discover that the hotel provided free coffee any time (including @4am when I usually wake up). For me, that was a sign of a good day to come. After sending some 30 emails and doing various tasks left over because of yesterday’s travel, I had a quick breakfast (which was a delicious buffet by the way).

At 9am, our hosts met us at the hotel lobby and we walked for 5-10 minutes to their premises for the formal meeting. At the office a group of enthusiastic people from the host organisation were waiting for us: the legal representative, the project manager and project assistant and two young participants. The atmosphere was really relaxed, perhaps also because the project involves just two organisations and thus we are able to communicate and to know each other better.

According to the meeting Agenda, we started with the admin side of things, which is always a necessary evil. Because I am a professional project manager, I enjoyed facilitating discussions. We went together through a lot of points, to make sure that we will all be prepared for the forecoming youth exchange. We topics covered included the selection of participants, domestic and international travel, gender equality, accommodation & food, safety, special needs, required paperwork, etc.

Then we discussed about the mobility activities which will be organised with and for the young participants during the youth exchange. In essence, we understood that each participant will start producing multimedia (photo & video) on the topic of human rights prior to the youth exchange. Then, during the youth exchange, all participants will do indoor and outdoor activities where they will get more multimedia materials which will be later post-processed.

Busy with all the preparations described above, we had soon realised it was lunchtime. A take-away lunch was served on the spot; I liked the traditional Polish soup by the way!!

After lunch we had a session to present our organisations, core competences, resources and activities. We found lots of common ground and synergies for future projects. Our office-based meeting concluded with formally signing a strategic partnership agreement between our organisations and the traditional group photo.

The second part of the afternoon was outdoors, dedicated to getting to know the city and the places where some of the activities will take place. We had the chance to visit so many beautiful places (the below photos prove my point) to take photos and to get to know the local history, people and culture.

During the evening we had a nice Polish traditional dinner with “smalec”, “pierogi” and a cup of “grzaniec galicyjski”. Just enough for a good night sleep and a full day travel back home.

Dziękuję Edu4You & Poland for such an unforgettable experience!