If you wander around AEGEE for a certain period of time, it is hard to miss the countless stories of Summer Universities (SU). Fellow AEGEEans might describe them as the best experience of their life, a great place to make life-long friends from other European cities and – for some – even a place for romance. SUtopia: An AEGEEan Myth organised by AEGEE-Ankara brought all of this to its participants. The combination of an ancient and modern culture, beautiful nature, the warmth and the most hospitable people imaginable, helpful organisers who were willing to face every challenge to make their participants happy, and a great and diverse group of people made this event an amazing experience for everyone involved.
The Summer University started out in Ankara, where the participants got a taste of the student life by being hosted on the campus of one of the best universities in Turkey. Some of the interesting features of student life in Ankara – among which a statue of a goat that was stolen by brave students from the mayor of Ankara, and the tendency of the students to hitchhike across the enormous campus – were proudly presented to the group by the organisers. After a slightly awkward arrival day, some of the organisers and helpers decided to break the ice by covering their poor participants in smashed chickpeas, shaving cream and chips.
As a reward for all the brave people who went through this, the program also involved visiting beautiful castles and other sights in Ankara, experiencing a Turkish mosque and hammam and finally chilling with some narghile (also known as shisha) and Turkish coffee.
Drinking Turkish coffee became an interesting experience thanks to the fortune telling skills that the organisers released on the remains of the coffee, skills they were even willing to share with the group. For the party animals within the group, the event started out great with the Turkish organisers presenting some original Turkish dance moves in the bus and got even better as participants could release their creativity on the countless thematic parties – among which a mythology party, a sailor party, a sexchange party, a karaoke party, and of course the European Night where there was also an exchange of traditional dances.
This came in handy when the group stumbled upon a real Turkish wedding and decided to crash it (well, of course with permission from the bride and groom – AEGEEans are decent people). Before the participants knew it, they were playing beer pong with the groom and dancing the polonaise with the bride. A Turkish wedding was not the only thing that was crashed though, as one of the most infamous incidents of the SU was the crashing of a golfcart by one of the female organisers.
After a wealth of impressions and the breaking – or rather smashing – of the ice in Ankara, the group went to Mugla, a touristic getaway with beautiful beaches in the South of Turkey. The program was less packed, but this wasn’t a problem as participant Reinier from AEGEE-Delft commented: “We were too busy fighting and gossiping to talk about what we were doing.” Indeed, the gossip box, that was previously been filled with dirty jokes – revealing some level of sexual frustration – as well as remarks about the lack of physical activities, started to be filled up with stories about couples emerging. As Anneli from AEGEE-Tallinn remarked “Forget about Paris. Turkey is the new country of love.”
The perfect blue water and sandy beaches combined with beautiful ancient cities did form quite a scenery for romance – although it might also be blamed on the convenience of the double rooms. 
Apart from visiting beaches and ancient towns, the participants were also spoiled with an amazing day on a boat, a very smelly, but in the end refreshing mud bath and a visit to a bazaar – where some of the participants ended up tasting Turkish delight and smoking narghile with the friendly shop owners for hours.
The time spent on the beach and in the sea became quite enjoyable due to the inventive new games made up by organisers and helpers. One of the most famous was the “die b*** die” game, involving a lot of hugging in swimwear as well as attempts to drown each other. When people needed to relax from all of this, there was the bus which also became known as the place where most of the sleeping happens, the place for Turkish dancing and the place for singing the “cup song”.
In the end, this is a story about a group of people who travelled from the beautiful castles and mosques of Ankara to the ancient cities and mesmerizing beaches of Mugla. They went from being covered in smashed chickpeas during a language workshop, to being covered in sweat and shower gel in a Turkish hammam (the sweat coming partially from the heat and partially from fear of the scary Turkish masseuses), to being covered in smelly mud and bright blue salty seawater in Mugla. Their gossip went from sexual frustration to a gossip box filled with stories of summer romances. And the participants went from a group of individuals from different cities in Europe to something that can almost be described as a family, a close-knitted group of people completely comfortable with each other and a group of new friends.
Written by Lucy Hoogland, AEGEE-Utrecht