The students at the Tiberiu Morariu School in Romania studied Romanian explorer Dumitru Dan for a project on 500 years of travel. Dumitru Dan walked over 100,000 km around the world over six years dressed in traditional Romanian clothing and sandals. He visited 1,500 cities in 74 countries on five continents, crossing oceans and equator multiple times. His goal was to promote Romanian culture through folk performances in each location. He wore 28 folk costumes and went through 497 pairs of sandals on his journey, becoming one of the least known but most dedicated Romanian explorers.

1. SCHOOL “TIBERIU MORARIU “SALVA
COUNTY BISTRITA-NASAUD,ROMANIA
PROJECT ERASMUS + B.L.E.N.D
2017-1-FR-01-KA219-037364_6
500 YEARS OF TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD
DUMITRU DAN-ROMANIAN EXPLORER

2. DUMITRU DAN-ROMANIAN EXPLORER
• In our school we questioned students
about the importance of travels and
geography in their daily lives.
• We initiated our activities “500 years
of travels” with drawings, creative
writings, searches on books,
geographical and historical readings
about the travellers and the
consequences of these travels with
tools and learning apps.
• From the gallery of Romanian
explorers the students selected the
one that is less known and
contributed in an original way to the
image of the country in their journey
around the world.

3. DUMITRU DAN-ROMANIAN EXPLORER
The story of the Romanian explorer who has
traveled 100,000 km on foot dressed in
traditional clothes and traditional Romanian
sandals was the most voted character by the
students .
With preschool and primary teachers we
initiated actions to stimulate the sciences,
especially robotics and coding, using new
technologies such as Lego We do 2.0 /Lego
Boost or some digital applications, carrying
out interdisciplinary geographical activities
with literacy, foreign languages, sciences using
project basic learning method.

4. DUMITRU DAN-ROMANIAN EXPLORER
Dumitru Dan had little in common with
the world’s most famous globetrotter,
Phileas Fogg. Jules Verne’s English
gentleman was an accommodated
traveller who went around the world in
eighty days using whatever means of
transport he could to win a wager with
members of the Reform Club, while the
Romanian walked 100,000 kilometres
around the world for six years, dressed
in folk costumes and wearing peasant
sandals, putting up folk music and
dance performances to earn his bread
along the way.

5. DUMITRU DAN-ROMANIAN EXPLORER
It was 1908 when Touring Club de France initiated a special
competition to promote tourism: groups of travellers from
around the world were invited to sign up, and the selection
was quite rigorous. Four Romanians who were already in Paris
as undergraduates became interested and decided to
participate: Dumitru Dan and Pavel Pârvu, both students of the
Faculty of Geography, along with Gheorghe Negreanu and
Alexandru Pascu, at the time enrolled in the National
Conservatoire of Dramatic Arts. Their proposed itinerary, set
according to the change of seasons in the northern and
southern hemispheres, so they could travel mostly during
summertime, was found interesting. And their plan to keep
walking, pedometers strapped to their feet, on board the ships
that took them across oceans between continents was
considered very clever. In the end, those two innovative ideas
got them selected among the 200 finalists. There was a prize,
too: one French franc per kilometre – in total, 100,000 francs.

6. DUMITRU DAN-ROMANIAN EXPLORER
Over the following six years, their journey, carefully
recorded by Dan in his journal and certified by the local
authorities of the places they visited, took them first up
north via Hungary, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway,
Sweden, Finland, Russia, then south-east to Iran, Syria,
Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Ethiopia,
Madagascar, where they boarded a ship to Sydney, landed
and walked around the sunburnt country, reached New
Zealand, then headed up north again to Singapore, Sri
Lanka, India, South Africa, Africa’s west coast, the Canary
Islands, once more by ship to Brazil, around South America
(Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador), up along North
America’s west coast, then from San Francisco to Japan,
Hong Kong, China and Siberia, crossed to Alaska, went
down to San Francisco again, did Mexico’s east coast, then
travelled to North Africa, around Europe (Italy,
Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, the United
Kingdom), back to Canada, along America’s east coast,
then down south to Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, the Dominican
Republic, Puerto Rico, and across the ocean to Portugal,
Spain, Malta, Athens, Sofia, Belgrade.

7. DUMITRU DAN-ROMANIAN EXPLORER
At the end, this extraordinary feat’s figures
speak volumes: with or without his team,
Dumitru Dan visited 1,500 big cities in 74
countries and 30 colonies on five continents
around the world. He crossed the equator six
times, the Atlantic four times, the Indian
Ocean twice and the Pacific once. Last but
not least, during the whole of his voyage he
used 28 folk costumes and wore out 497
pairs of peasant sandals. And he remained
fond of records, since after his voyage around
the world he delivered no fewer than 2,000
talks popularising it, with its fantastic ethnic,
geographical, cultural and historical richness,
around Romania.
https://vimeo.com/341384326

8. THANK YOU FOR ATTENTION!
TEACHERS:
VASILICA GAZDAC
ALEXANDRA SAS
STUDENT:
ROBERT GAZDAC
THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN FUNDADED WITH SUPPORT
FROM THE EUROPEAN COMISSION. THIS PUBLICATION
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