The interdisciplinary project "Train & Travel! Experiencing, exploring and documenting different learning and working environments in Europe to enhance intercultural skills in education and vocational training" for students, trainees and teaching staff is on the one hand based on the fact that we have a growing range of organisational, logistic and financial opportunities to open up and discover Europe as a space for learning and on the other hand on the motivating awareness that we are life-long learners, regardless of age and status who have to move within increasingly internationalized networks. Enlarging knowledge already acquired, discovering something new and being able to look at familiar things from a different perspective and to put them into question during an exchange with people from other cultural backgrounds, these are skills which are of increasing importance in view of a rapidly changing and globalized world. The objectives of our project are therefore: - Giving incentives to move - Sensitizing participants for different structures and approaches by taking a different point of view - Enhancing intercultural competence by "immersing" in complex and different professional environments and situations - Developing and strengthening self-confidence and empowerment by engaging in different everyday lives and working structures and by getting to know and experiencing different value systems - Enhancing perseverence and the ability to remain calm when coping with unfamiliar situations - Getting to know the languages and approaches of colleagues, business partners and customers and learning how to work and communicate in these languages without misunderstandings - Providing learners and teaching staff with competences which enable them to adapt more easily to technological and organisational changes within complex social structures and a diverse and multilingual information society - Improving the quality and efficiency of vocational training by exploiting the plurality of learning environments both at home and abroad - Improving chances, flexibility and competitiveness - employability - of young people in different professional fields on global labour markets - Encouraging learners and teaching staff to actively "live" mobility and cross-border cooperation by widening their perspective and their personal and professional range beyond national borders: Feeling "at home" elsewhere in the world - Giving teachers the opportunity to explore the common work and learning place called Europe and to initiate and shape Europe-wide learning cooperations and networks - Enhancing the international orientation of our school and integrating it visibly into all its fields. The participants come from different job and training backgrounds but they all have something in common: They all learn, study and work in a multicultural environment characterized by diversity. Taking part in this project will enable them to work more efficiently in internationally orientated enterprises and organisations, especially with regard to people coming from different cultural backgrounds and speaking different languages. For the teaching staff the project offers the chance to enlarge their intercultural competence both professionally and personally in a European context, to get new input and ideas for their work and to review and reassess familiar concepts. All in all: Our main objective is to motivate students, trainees, trainers and teachers to get to know people in different cultural contexts , to exchange knowledge and experiences, to discover something new, experience diversity, broaden their horizons as much as possible and use the qualifications, skills and experiences thus acquired as a basis for further learning and training. The most important topic of the project is to encourage people, regardless of age and status, to stay open-minded and curious, to discover the diversity of ways of life and of approaches, to change their familiar point of view and their learning environment which means to increase their mobility by acquiring more competences enabling them to cope with rapidly changing situations and to communicate with people world-wide. During the project different procedures and measures will be carried out, e.g. work placements for students and trainees or assignments for teachers to initiate cooperations with colleagues in Europe to exchange professional knowledge, ideas and materials. Thus preparation measures which accompany the different project flows vary according to participants and include for example intercultural training and language courses. During the implementation and follow-up of the project different ways of documentation will be used, e.g. presentations, releases in the media or printed material. The results of the project will ensure a sustainable development and growth of each participant's personality and provide evidence for vocational training structures in a European context.