Chance to live history first-hand

Tauranga Girls' College teachers Mark Elliott, Rita Perigo and Murray Armstrong will be travelling to Russia, Poland and Germany with a group of students. Photo / George Novak

A group of Tauranga teens will be undertaking a "40,000km adventure" to experience the places they've been learning about.

Twenty-one Tauranga Girls' College students and teachers will travel to Russia, Germany and Poland on July 4 where they will visit historically significant locations they have been learning about over three years of history classes.

The group will visit sites significant to the Cold War, the Holocaust, World War II and the Russian Revolution.

The college's head of social sciences, Murray Armstrong, said the group was going on a "40,000km adventure.

"The scale of this trip is something we've never tried before."

Starting in Russia, the group will go first to Moscow then St Petersburg. The students then fly to Berlin in Germany before travelling to Poland to take in Krakow and Warsaw.

They will stop in Dubai on their way home.

"They are visiting those areas that feature in their topics of study. The Russian Revolution for example, we're visiting St Petersburg. We're going to visit the elaborate Tsarist palaces there and we're going to go into the Political History of Russia Museum.

"The Cold War is also a big topic hence Moscow and Berlin. We're visiting the Kremlin, Red Square and the Cold War Museum."

Mr Armstrong said that in Berlin there would be a visit to the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, Topography of Terror and Potsdam.

"Then we're on to Poland to Krakow, said to be the finest medieval town centre. We're going to be meeting some Holocaust survivors at Auschwitz, we will be taking a tour there. We want to go to the Jewish Quarter in Warsaw which was the ghetto we studied."

Mr Armstrong said the group also wanted to go shopping in Berlin and at the Warsaw bazaar.

They would also go to the Moscow Circus and to the Russian Folk Dance Festival.

The students did some fundraising as a group and most also did their own individual fundraising to help pay their way. The total cost for the trip for all 21 in the group was about $140,000.