Today, our day started as usual, with breakfast, but the program did not take us to other cities. We chose to explore the town of Turnhout, but that was after a few unusual encounters.

The first of our stops was at one of the four bike parks that can be found in Turnhout https://fietspuntturnhout.be/. Here we did not just rent bikes, but were also asked to talk to the local press about our project. Several journalists asked us questions and took pictures with the whole team, and we actually received the bikes as a sponsorship.

After answering all the curiosities that appeared, we started towards the next stop, which was actually a short meeting with the local Romanian community. In Turnhout and in other cities or towns, there are committees of Romanians and a member offered to give us a tour of the city. The gentleman in question was not Romanian, but originally from Belgium, and even so he understood a few words from our native language.

Before we started the tour, however, there were still a few things we needed to do, the most important of which was finishing this year’s documentary. On our bikes, we headed to the nearest park, and there we took group pictures and each of us had to say one word, which for them describes the whole project. We stayed at a great distance from each other, so this part of the documentary will be a surprise for us too.

There was lunch break, and then we all met in the big town square to start the tour. We first headed to the suburbs and cycled along the waterfront and through the trees that made up a small forest at the edge of the city. We learned that each apartment in these new neighborhoods is allocated at least 20 square meters of green space, precisely to encourage people to come even closer to nature and try to educate them about the world’s environmental problems, such as global warming.

We continued on our way, passing a lot of historical buildings and monuments, learning more about the history of Turnhout.

When we really reached the main square again, we said goodbye to the nice gentleman and thanked him for this tour, showing us the beauty of the city where he lives.

As it is our last night in Belgium, we decided to have dinner together and spend the evening in each other’s company. The last sounds before lights went out were our joyous laughter, as we spent our last moments in Belgium before returning home.

It has been an incredible experience in every way and we thank everyone who helped us, and we are convinced that each of us left with a little more than what we came with at the beginning of this project. We have accumulated a lot of knowledge and we hope that all the dedication, energy and time we have invested in the project will serve as the first step towards a change for the better in our city and maybe even in our country.