Talented students

WorldSkills, the bi-annual youth contest for newly graduated students of 40 professions was regularly organised in the past 80 years. This year Calgary was the host and Hungary sent representatives of 13 professions (one competitor with an accompanying expert). Zsolt Berki earned the right to participate this spring; his mentor was chef Tamás Tóth. Trade magazin: – Who participated in the Hungarian preliminaries? Zsolt Berki: – Any skilled workers and vocational schoolers under the age of 23. Tamás Tóth: – Participants were given a task form earlier WorldSkills contests. T.m. – How did you prepare? Zs.B. – From April until the end of August I went from Siófok to Békéscsaba at weekends where Tamás and Károly Varga helped me. We planned the menu and prepared it twice. T.m. – What was the contest like in Calgary? T.T. – It was hard work: competitors had to prepare 6 modules in 2 days. There were 2.5 hours available for each and 3.5 hours for the surprise module. Zs.B. – I was lucky, because I could use my duck concept for the surprise module where the task was to prepare a rabbit dish. T.m. – What do you think of the jury? T.T. – They were objective and correct. Criteria were divided into two categories – objective and subjective; in the latter 5 experts evaluated, in the former 3. T.m. – How did you score? T.T. – Zsolt finished 19th, a great success as he beat the Italian, the Spanish and the Belgian contestants. Competition was strong, the first 20 scored above 500 points, Zsolt got 504. T.m. – Did you learn from this experience? T.T. – Absolutely, though fora were not organised for the accompanying experts. Next year a EuroSkills event will be organised, in Lisbon.