Art you ready to surprise? Summer University Düsseldorf and Bamberg

It all started on the 28th of July in Scottis, a lovely motel-bar in Düsseldorf which was to be our home for a week. After some ice-breaking games, many attempts to pronounce each other names correctly and a very useful German lesson, at night the group was finally complete and most of us were enjoying the third round of beer of many, many others! However, the tight schedule (remember we were in Germany) barely allowed us to rest from our journeys, and our first German breakfast was awaiting us very early in the morning, but who needs rest in a SU anyway?

The program also included a city rally, where we had the chance to sing along in German with some locals, to pose as sculptures and to do pirouettes in crowded squares. However, the best part of the day was yet to come: the famous and much awaited European Night (EN) was being prepared by our awesome organizers. Undoubtedly, there are many things to say about EN, but I reckon that it belongs to those kind of events that are better to experience than to read about. For the time being I will say it was one of the best nights of the SU. Nevertheless, as a famous song goes, the show must go on: challenging our tiredness and our hangover, we continued with the schedule, that included a trip to a nearby city, Essen, where we ended up in the Unperfekthaus until later that it was planned.  Thankfully, the organizers forgot about the strict German punctuality and switched instead to Spanish timetable. Said house was an enormous museum-house that you could explore and roam about for hours on end and where we played the piano and the guitar while singing along to The Beatles, Abba, German drinking songs, The Rolling Stones and other types of music under the joyful and surprised stare of the occasional passerby. After a nice and interesting workshop day and a funny pub crawl, we also visited Köln, the “rival” city of Düsseldorf, and Bonn. In this city, former capital of Germany, we had the chance to explore the German National Museum of Contemporary History, that is Germany’s history after World War II. It was in this museum, in an area dedicated to America, where we danced like crazy, 50’s style, to Elvis’ music while being watched with amusement by the tourists. I think that moment will last long and fondly in our memories… After waking up to a sunny sky, and equipped with beer, Kartoffel salad and swim suits, we headed to the river Rhin to enjoy a relaxing day at the beach, but in the middle of the day, and without expectation it started raining in a matter of seconds! However that did not stop us from having fun, and some of us even danced in the rain! On our last day in Düsseldorf we visited Benrath Castle, where a thematic fair was being held. With flowers on our heads and smiles on our lips we went back to Scottis for the final workshop and the first goodbyes.

On Monday we headed to Bamberg, stopping along the way in Frankfurt, where we enjoyed a quick city tour. Four trains later we arrived in Bamberg, and after a very enthusiastic welcome by the organizers, we got to meet our new headquarters. Despite our tiredness, the schedule did not slow down on the second part of the SU, not that we wanted to, for we were already in love with the busy schedules, the non-stop activities, the sleepy breakfasts and the waking up music. The program did not miss a city rally in Bamberg, which had been prepared for the first day, and some parties. I can’t help but mention our first night there, when we had the chance to listen to live music in a town bar, the Live Club, and of course, the second night, when some participants got the chance to be DJs for one night. But of course, the schedule also included theater workshops, and in fact we enjoyed very much a couple of them about improvisation theater, when we had to make up dialogues as they came to our minds, try to sell golden and reusable toilet paper to the other participants and imitate Arabic language just by the way it sounded. But we also took advantage of the fact that Bamberg was built around a river, the Regnitz, and we enjoyed a bathing afternoon and a canoeing day, which did not go by without any incidents, but, nevertheless, we had great fun!

As our SU was, indeed, a Travel Summer University, we kept traveling and visiting other places, and in this part of Germany we had the incredible chance to visit the famous Nürnberg, where we did a city rally, visited a museum, napped in a lovely park next to a lake and, as partied until late. We also had the opportunity to become Bavarians for one day, breakfasting on beer, sausages, Kartoffel salad and pretzels, dressing as Bavarians and playing Bavarian games in the park. Sadly, the last day was upon us, and we spent it in the Jahnwiese Park, where we played short theater plays about Europtimism, created by us. The last party, also known as the “Kartoffel Party” was held in a modern pub in the center of Bamberg.

We left the next morning, but each of us knew that, although it was the end of a great story, it was also the beginning of another one, for none of us really came back from the SU: all of us changed in some way during those days. I think it was because we took home something that was not material or valuable in any way, something more than some photos, some souvenirs, some flags or some memories; we took home a tiny part of each one. All that I have left to say is a big THANK YOU to the awesome organizers, to the AEGEE members of the cities we visited that came by to show us their city or just to say “Hallo”, to the people that mentored us in the fantastic workshops and, of course, to the sponsors, all of whom made this fantastic and thrilling SU possible. See you somewhere in Europe!

Written by María Eugenia Casariego Artola, AEGEE-Oviedo

Photos by Angela Gocevska, AEGEE- Skopje; Camilla Fuccaro, AEGEE- Genova; Alice Nitsch, AEGEE- Bamberg; and Melanie Garwolinski, AEGEE- Düsseldorf