Cyprus is for me a synonym of warm. When I was invited to participate Cypriot workshop of the CHANTICA programme, at the same time I realised I had not been flying but I also had been excited because I had never been a participant of a cultural workshop. Sometimes we danced for EU programmes held in Stropkov but to be a participant it would be something different. I cannot speak English and I was worrying of any communication with other young people.

The beginning was not good. Our plane had a small break down and the captain decided to fly back to Vienna and we were delayed three hours.

Thanks God we found Slovenians there and they started our communication. Suddenly I realised my poor English helped me a lot. I have never realised before the disadvantage. Wherever we were there was always somebody who could communicate on our behalf there and I suddenly I had to look for English words in my brain. I was ashamed. I used my hands, legs but we understood each other because we wanted to understand. Maybe my body language was very good.

Slovenians helped us very much. All of them could speak English very well and we had to rely on our leader, who could not be everywhere anytime.

We were not separated because we were Slovaks. We did not separate according to nationalities or ability of communication. We worked together, we danced together, we helped to each other, anybody could ask for help to anybody.

Young people from five countries had a good time; they prepared fashion show for domestic people but also for themselves. We prepared beautiful costumes and in spite of the fact none of us was model everybody was satisfied and we could see an interest of the audience and we were also pleased to be fashion models.

In the beginning our Slovak group danced our pair dances, very vivid and temperament. We were exchanged by a Cypriot folk dance group, which introduced a line dance, which is typical for Balkan countries. We could see and felt we became immediately very popular among villagers. Most of them did not know anything about Slovakia, but hopefully, they will remember Slovak dances.

We learnt Greek dance Zorba and Cypriots learnt our Werbung dance.

In the end of the last performance we danced together. Cypriots, Slovaks, villagers and CHANTICA participants. Beautiful time, beautiful people, beautiful hospitality until late night.

I am very sorry we have not more opportunities to cooperate with foreign young people. I would really like to repeat it.