In the week from May 30th to June 2nd, the Erasmus + Global Week 2022 was held in the Portuguese city of Coimbra, organized by the Polytechnic of Coimbra under the slogan Erasmus + outside Europe – Moving Further.
Coimbra is located in central Portugal. It is 200 kilometres from one of the oldest European cities and the capital of Portugal, Lisbon. But it won’t go wrong either if you head to Coimbra from the famous tourist city of Porto, which in turn is located 150 kilometres north of Coimbra. This place has been known for centuries as a city of students and has a strong historical and cultural heritage. Coimbra, with its population of just under 150,000, rests on one of Portugal’s largest rivers – the Mondeno, which springs on the slopes of the Serra da Estrela and empties into the Atlantic Ocean.
Polytechnic of Coimbra is a public higher education institution founded in 1979. It is one of the ten largest Portuguese higher education institutions with about 11 thousand students, 750 teaching and almost 400 non-teaching staff. It consists of six components covering a range of areas, from agriculture and the environment, education, communications, tourism, the arts, management and accounting and marketing, to health and engineering.
Aspira University also participated in this year’s Erasmus + Global Week. Our programs and faculty were represented by Danijela Čepo, coordinator of the Zagreb teaching centre. How she felt, read below in a short Q&A.
What did Global Week look like and what activities did it include?
Global Week started on Monday with the Welcome Session where we learned more about the program itself, the city of Coimbra and the faculty. After that, accompanied by a faculty professor, we headed to see the Historical Roadmap of the Agrarian School exhibition. At the end of the first day, an International Picnic was held where we tasted food from 19 countries as many as participated in this international week. It was also a good opportunity for us all to get to know each other better in a less formal edition.
The second day, the morning of the third and the whole fourth were filled with various lectures and presentations related to the topic of mobility and higher education in general. Some of the speakers were Ana Afonso and Henrique Quintino from the national agency Erasmus +, an excellent lecturer – Professor Luciane Stallivieri, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil, then Thomas Lorenzana, Universidada de Alemeria in Spain, Ana Tavares, Incoma and many others.
A great event they organized as part of the week was the International Fair which was held on the third day in the afternoon. During that day, all participants represented the institution they come from, so then I shared the story of Aspira, our programs, cities where students can study (Split and Zagreb) and everything that makes ours special and different from others. This fair was attended by a large number of their students, teachers and participants of Global Week itself.
In addition to the formal part of the program you mentioned, did you have any other activities or visit any places in Portugal?
Yes, of course. The week was really filled. The organizers did their best to make us feel good, but also to learn and experience as much as possible. After the “working part” of the second day, we headed to Quinta de Encontro. It is a winery located about 30 kilometres from Coimbra. Their building looks like a large wooden wine barrel in the middle of huge vineyard fields, and inside it there is not a single step but on levels above but also below the ground lead long spiral corridors. At the top of the “barrel” there is a lookout point where we could taste wine with traditional snacks from that region. They told the story of the production of their wines, and we also saw the cellars where they are stored. Fifth, the last day was reserved for a day trip to the nearby town of Figueira da Foz. In addition to tasting local food there, we spent time on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean which is truly breath-taking.
