‘SaWalk Is One of the Most Wonderful Events in HSE Extracurricular Life’

For the second time, HSE University in Perm has held SaWalk—a quest walk dedicated to the 300th anniversary of Perm and the city’s history and culture. More than 170 participants from 37 teams took part in this large-scale event.

The SaWalk route ran through sights associated with Perm’s culture and history. The participants almost travelled back in time by visiting the Young Spectator's Theatre, the Pushkin Library, the Perm I railway station, the Chekist House and other city attractions. During the quest, the teams solved puzzles about the city’s historical figures, found important monuments, performed creative tasks and had a great time.

The organisers focused not only on the competitive part of the event, but also on the educational side. For example, the participants visited the Perm Museum of Antiquities, where they solved a puzzle prepared by the museum, learnt about unique ancient exhibits, and took pictures.

SaWalk helped students to immerse themselves in the unique atmosphere of Perm and learn its history. During the quest, they spent time with friends and got to see the city in a different way. The event was organised by the HSE Perm Student Community.

Olesya Bolotova, member of the Couch Analysts team, 1st place

This time was more difficult than last year, but no less fun. I liked looking for bears. When we saw them on the way, I shouted in the street: ‘BEAR!’ We found them on windowsills on the third and fourth floors and stealthily ran after people, trying to take a picture with the bears on their backpacks. This time there were no extreme adventures, but we walked more and felt very tired.

It was fun. We tried to take more or less creative photos. I was surprised by our determination—despite the fact that our legs hurt, we could not walk, we were tired, and we ran out of water, we still walked, ran, and thought about the optimal solutions to the puzzles. Everything worked out, and we are ready for new victories!

Anastasia Petrova, member of the Couch Analysts team, 1st place

SaWalk is a great opportunity to spend good time with friends, learn more about your city, and look at it from a different point of view. This time the puzzles were more complicated, but solving them was fun; it only made them more fascinating.

Mikhail Gladko, member of the UPI team, 3rd place

I have participated in SaWalk two times before. My impressions are very positive—it was organised well. I’m glad that we managed to take second place two times in a row, and someday I hope we’ll win. The puzzles were more difficult this time, while the historical tasks were easier.

Valeria Sukhinina, member of the UPI team, 3rd place

SaWalk is one of the most wonderful events in HSE extracurricular life. The organisers are super cool! You learn unusual facts about the city, see it in a different way, feel excited, and five hours of activity just fly by. As soon as you take a rest after this dynamic walk, you start planning the next SaWalk and think about the fact that you live in a very interesting and beautiful city.

Vitaly Galkin, SaWalk organiser

I was one of the event organisers. I took part in all the activities, creating puzzles, drawing up the route, finding partners, and supervising the teams. At first, none of the potential partners answered and it seemed that we were writing into the void, but at some point they all started responding to messages. In the end, we had a lot of cool sponsors.

The day of the event was the most important and difficult, since it was necessary to manually monitor several teams at once. Naturally, there were some overlaps, but still we coped and took a lot of things into account in order to make SaWalk better and more interesting in the future.

Stepan Gutsol, SaWalk organiser

It's not the first time I've helped host a Student Community event, but it was my first time organising SaWalk. We spent more than a month preparing the event, and I constantly had to work, come up with new ideas, and finalise them.

Despite the fact that SaWalk is a rather difficult event, I really enjoyed organising it and I will definitely organise the next one!

Ekaterina Baydina, SaWalk organiser

This time I took part in SaWalk as an organiser and had a great time. It was very interesting to follow the progress of the participants and cheer them on their way!