Every year people wonder, where and with whom to spend New Year’s Eve. Go to the neighbour from your housing estate? Visit relatives in Cracow? Go to a pub with friends? For sure you wouldn’t stay at home with your grandmother and watch the most commercial and common TV programme. Five people from Poland - Paulina, Gosia, Zuza, Cyryl i Michał decided to spend it in more sophisticated way. One of the best New Year’s Eve’s parties was for sure this in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The variation was changing the currency from Estonian crowns to Euro (still before new year we had to pay in crowns) and the fact that Tallinn has become the cultural capital of Europe.

A group of 30 people from Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Estonia and Poland were spending a week in Viimsi, the townremoted 15km from Tallinn. There isn’t any visible border between these towns. Driving the road to Viimsi you can see the Baltic Sea. At a certain moment you turn left to reach the Athena hotel.

We started very gaily – Zuza, the youngest participant of the exchange, had her birthday on 28. December. After the morning session and general integration we went to celebrate the event in the city centre. On our way we complained a bit about dinner which was soup. And only soup. After all, the evening dancing gave us energy for the next day and a round table with the president of Viimsi and former Minister of National Education of whole Estonia. We found out a lot about life of immigrants in Estonia, we focused also on the issue of integration of Russians. Then came the time for the session + migration through my eyes, the summary of the meeting with politicians and international evening – Greek olives were brilliant!

Next day in the morning we went again to the Youth Center, a place where we had our sessions. Honestly, it was like conquering the North Pole. We had snow above our knees and it was getting higher and higher. We didn’t see the road and we could easily go the wrong way. If you stepped out even a little from the road you fell down in snow to the height of waist. The Tunisians saw snow for the first time, what a shock! We passed all that way on average two times a day to talk about the future of immigrants in Europe, their situation in our countries, to explain the definitions – refugee, expatriate, immigrant, emigrant…

It took us almost a whole to prepare an act out in one of the biggest city centres in Estonia. It was great – we were dancing, clapping, we painted faces of people with henna. We did even a performance about immigrants. After all of that out Polish group made PIEROGI with vanilla cheese. They were the easiest and the fastest to make. If you have time and the kitchen to prepare, we recommend them for international evening.

4 January was the day of goodbyes. You know, what goodbyes look like, especially when the group is so integrated. And common experiences were abnormal. Well, New Year’s Eve happens only once a year.