Category: Archives

It had been several years in the making but finally it happened. Bridgwater’s 5th town twinning was with the Italian town of Priverno. But the twinning trip was not without incident…..

In June 2015 4 ladies from the Akropolis Family Centre and offshoots around the Uherske Hradiste region dropped into Bridgwater for another visit as part of their ongoing Erasmus programme linking up with Bridgwater College. 

The programme went like this;-

A regular visitor to our shores is Eva Kordova from Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic. This summer Eva brought a group of Czechs on a mini tour of the South West. Her trip included the legendary ‘Bridgwater Big Bash’ event in Castle Street.

It went something like this;-

In August we had a visit from Zdena Biggsova and group of teachers from the Czech town of Kladno, some retired, some still teaching. This time Zdena decided she wanted to have a look at the South of England so we went from West Lulworth in the West to East Eastbourne in the East. And of course to London.

The programme went something like this

September is the time of the Uherske Hradiste Wine festival.We try to take a Mayor over there if we can. This year (as we usually do) we succeeded. Hence our civic group was Cllr Leigh Redman (Mayor) Mrs Tracy Redman (Mayoress) Cllr Brian Smedley, Cllr Peter Johnstone, Mrs Janet Johnstone, Mr Tim Mander, Mr Dean Fox and Mrs Karen Fox.

The group flew from Bristol to Prague, spent a couple of nights there and then headed east for Moravia. The programme went something like this;-

At the end of September 2015 we took a group of about 40 singers from Devon and Somerset to Prague and Ceske Budejovice where they performed several concerts helped by Pavla Pracnova in Prague and Eva Kordova in Ceske Budejovice. The group was the Sheldon singers and the programme went something like this;-

Each year Yvette Staelens  and her community choir of naturist voices (sic) jet off to some interesting country, sing with a local choir and then come home. This year it was Slovenia where, thanks to the lovely Stasa Slapnik we found the lovely Tanja Jamnik and with the further help of the lovely Janez Medja we even got some lovely busses and hotels out of it.

Here’s what actually happened

So for Carnival time this year we had a visit from the Uherske Hradiste Mayor and council plus a couple of Czech Police officers, a Czech teacher from the UH Gymnasium , a couple of itinerant Canadians and Luigi from Italy.

This is what we did

A new venture of ours is a partnership project with Bridgwater College whereby we arrange transport, accommodation, meals and touristic programme whilst the College provides teachers, classrooms and lessons for the week. Our first experiment was with the Moskevska Zakladni Skola in Kladno, Czech Republic. The group stayed at Model Farm.

This is what they did

For the third time this year we’ve hosted the ladies of the Akropolis family centres in Uherske Hradiste and Kromeriz. Dagmar, Natalie, Marie and Ivana. Linking up for a full weeks job shadowing at Bridgwater College and related programme they stayed with host families and drove around in the fat car of the fat councillor.

Here’s what they did.