On the 22 of October we (Line, Denmark and Andrea, Austria) started our voluntary stay in Cluj the biggest city in Transylvania. It is a quite old city with a lot of history and we noticed already the first day that in every street there is at least one church. It can be a reformed, a catholic, or an orthodox church. Those three are the most common religions in Transylvania.

We lived and spend most of our time with the Hungarian organisation IKE (and the student part of the organisation FIKE) a religious organisation that is not supported by the state because it belongs to the reformed church and not the official religion of Rumania which is orthodox.

IKE’s religious foundation also meant that their activities mostly had something to do with the Bible. We went to different bible studies first in a bigger group and then in a private home which also gave us an idea about how they live. There were also an English and German club in the organisation to improve the language skills of the members but it is optional.

It is some of the members who themselves study language that teaches. A very lovely German Class especially for Andrea who helped organise it one week.

Sunday morning we went to the Sunday school, the children were so quiet instead  running around like we are used to.

We also visited the reform high school where we participated in both a religion and a German class. Again Andrea was happy that she after some month in EuroClass finally was able to talk German with someone. Everyone simply just loves German.

We went to a little village to see the life outside the big city. It was like going 100 years back in time except for the satellite dishes a few houses had.

In the village there was a big street children’s home funded by the reformed church in Ireland. In Cluj there was also such a home funded by the IrishChurch just a smaller one called Aksza. We worked there for 3 days taking care of some of the smaller children.

A great experience for the both of us because you can really feel that they need someone. It was great fun but so hard to hear the background stories from some of the children. We cannot imagine how you can possible treat a child like that.

Beside the work in Aksza and IKE we explored the city and had a lot of fun.

All in all a very different place that we have learned something from and we can only advise future EuroClass students to take the chance and go there.