A gathering of students of Slovenian language classes was organised on Saturday, May 23 and Sunday, May 24, 2026, by the Association of Slovenians Lipa Prijedor.
Students from Banja Luka and Slatina (11 students) and Prijedor (5 students) attended the event. The gathering took place in the pleasant surroundings of Kozara mountain. We were accommodated in the Kotlovača mountain lodge, which was rented for this purpose by the Lipa Association.
Upon arrival, we were introduced to the rules of the lodge, settled in, had lunch, and the program began with an interesting workshop prepared by the host of the meeting, the president of the Association of Slovenians Lipa, Alenka Uduč. The students got to know Slovenia in a very special way. Alenka read the story Magical Slovenija, in which the main characters appear, the married couple Slov and Enija, who have seven daughters. They link each of them to one of the Slovenian regions, which they also present in an interesting and educational way. With the help of the map, Lovro the bear travels around Slovenia, and during the reading we traveled to all the places presented in the book. The students had to remember a geographical term or landmark that was presented in the story and tell us something about it. Also, we briefly celebrated the World Bee Day, which was on the 20th of May, with some interesting facts about the importance of bees and beekeeping. Each student received two brochures about bees. After the workshop, there was a fruit snack, and then we collected dry branches in the forest to prepare the evening campfire. After dinner we lit a fire, around which we set up benches, grilled hot dogs, played various board games, and ended the evening by playing hide-and-seek. Pleasantly tired, we quickly fell asleep.
The next day, we first had breakfast, and then the last activity before the end of the gathering - hiking to the Zečiji kamen viewpoint and the Zofik waterfall. Upon returning to the mountain lodge, the tired hikers were greeted with French toast, which the students and their companions ate with pleasure. Before leaving for home, we summarized the experiences of the two days on Kozara, and we all agreed that it was wonderful, fun, educational, and most importantly, that it was possible to survive without sweets, snacks and phones with a lot of activities in nature. And so the children declared the game of hide and seek and the hike to Zečiji kamen the best activities at the meeting.
The measure of the success of such events is certainly the happy and smiling faces of the children, who would be happy to extend the meeting for another day.
On behalf of the Triglav Association (represented by President Ivan Memon and his wife Ljiljana), I would like to thank the organizers, the Lipa Association, President Alenka Uduč, members of the Lipa Association: Lidija, Tanja, Bojana and Maja, who are also members of the Klekovača Mountaineering Association, and the caretaker of the Kotlovača lodge, Draško, for the excellently organisation.
Metoda Perger, Slovenian language teacher
