Our contacts and exchange programmes with other European countries have shown us how important language skills and cross-cultural competence are for our students. To be able to offer our students a high-quality education in these areas, we consider it essential to regularly send our teachers to advanced training courses in other European countries. Courses dealing with didactics and methodology are equally important as courses dealing with content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and also as to those relating to the geography, history and institutions of a country. This year three of our colleagues have decided to take part in courses in the country of the language they teach (England, Ireland, France) and which focus on the methodology of language teaching of advanced learners on the one hand and on the other hand, address historical, cultural and social issues. It is the aim of our colleagues to improve their personal knowledge and teaching skills and then to pass on the newly gained ideas to their colleagues in their departments. Thus, all of our colleagues teaching modern foreign languages will benefit from the advanced training courses. In the short-term, we hope to gain new ideas and input from the advanced courses enabling our colleagues to improve their teaching skills and thus making the lessons more effective and enjoyable for our students. In the long-term we hope to establish further contacts with teachers and schools in Europe which would be of great benefit to our students, teachers and the school as a whole.