It was fantastic.

We had a total of 45 participants and 8 staff members. The participating countries were:

• Lithuania (4);
• Russia (4);
• Poland (4);
• Finland (4);
• Czech Republic (4);
• Slovakia (1);
• Turkey (2);
• USA (1);
• Germany (21).

Four Hot Air Balloons have made a total of 29 flights lasting 54:27 hours, covering 340 km and carrying 148 (!) Persons. That means we had an average of 3 Hot Air Flights per person.

Three Gas Balloons have made a total of 5 gas flights lasting 14:07 hours, covering 75 km and carrying 44 persons. That means almost everyone had a Gas Balloon flight.

We had 8 new timers, who did their first flight in the youth camp.

This was the only week this summer, where there was excellent weather. We had only one rain day, which we spend in Prague sight seeing. The temperatures were almost too hot for flying, but excellent for a camp.

We had rented 5 cabins in a beautiful area. We had the possibility to launch right from in front of our cabins. The staff of this place was very open and helpful and made Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner at any time we liked to. A very nice place to have more ballooning activities there.

• Introduction to safety at the balloon;
• Introduction of Hot Air and Gas Balloon inflation;
• Weather observation;
• A visit to the peak of the highest hill (744m) and a hike down;
• Visit to the pool;
• Tour through Prague with a visit in a maze, to some sights and a little boat tour;
• Building of model balloons (one definitely broke the record of duration for AX 0,1 with staying 10 minutes in the air);
• Watching of the Gordon Bennett video of Willi Eimers;
• Sitting at the camp fire and singing songs;
• Having a barbecue at the camp fire;
• Volleyball tournament;
• Visit to a castle;
• River Rafting, etc.

After the staff was being attacked by some participants with water guns, we decided to throw the leader of the "rebels" (USA) into a close by pool.

He was 1,95 m and a weight of 150 kg. The story ended with all persons lying with all clothes on in the pool.

No major injuries occurred during the camp.

We have been on nation wide TV with a 5 minute report which was broadcasted in the morning show of a Czech TV station

Due to the support of the DFSV and the CIA we made only a loss of 700 DM, which was taken care of by the DFSV. We needed less money as planed for cars, fuel and hydrogen (Linde took most of the costs) and much more money for propane.

It was a very harmonic camp with some known and some new faces. Everybody did his part to make this camp successful. We did not have anyone who would have worried us. The few instructions we had to give where followed with no problems. We think this camp really enforced friendship among the young balloonists of different nations a lot and as far as I have heard, there is still intensive contact between some of them. We will be happy to present either a slide show or even a small video to you at the next CIA conference.

Our special thanks go to the Pilots who donated their time and gear for making this happen:

Ernst Bauer, Walter Mueller, Bernd Pulzer, Joerg Schellhove, Klaus Weissgerber and Martin Wulff

Astrid Gerhardt and Tomas Hora