Polar bears can not only be found in the Artic Ocean: in Aachen you can find many as well!
Board members of AEGEE-Aachen, Tim Mollenhauer and Katharina Hartz, tell us about the story behind their famous mascot, their ways of keeping members active, and much more!

The AEGEEan:  Could you tell us about the establishment and the current structure of AEGEE-Aachen?

AEGEE-Aachen board: AEGEE-Aachen was established 30 years ago. From then on we grew constantly, and today we count over 160 members working on many projects. One of our biggest projects at the moment is the orientation week for Erasmus students coming to Aachen for the next semester. However, we have much more amazing projects we constantly work on. For example, our Summer University “Extrem deutsch: How to say “Streichholzschächtelchen!”” which takes place in July, or our meeting with our great twin-antenna Lviv next weekend. Another project we are currently working on is our video project “Europe at Eye Level” where we interview people from all over Europe to get to know their personal stories regarding being a European citizen.

Which typical, local traditions do you have?

AEGEE-Aachen is a very tradition oriented local. The polar bear, our mascot, is pretty much present all over the network. For example, in our famous polar bear-costumes, in our bear-bags and bear-shirts and not to forget about our lovely stickers. The polar bear even has its own Facebook page!

What is the history behind the polar bear as your mascot?

Approximately ten years ago AEGEE-Aachen thought for the first time about having a mascot. At that time, real costumes were too expensive for our local, so we took an old, and rather undefined, costume from one of our members. The animal which was probably most similar to that costume was a bear and so our first mascot was born. In 2011, when the EBM in Riga took place with the motto ”Black and White” the board members of that year came up whith a very smart idea how our mascot could join the party even though its brown colour didn’t fit. They simply ordered a polar bear costume that was totally suitable to the party. Since then we never changed it back, so that the polar bear still parties with us on EPMs, and many other amazing AEGEE events until today.

AEGEE-Aachen organises a lot of different types of activities every year, like city trips, weekly meetings and tutoring workshops. How do you keep the quality of all these activities high?

Since we changed the structure of our working groups we have a committee that always has an overview over all our projects, besides the board. Moreover, we work on most of our projects during our working group meetings, which we have twice a month. In this way, people meet in one place for planning and stay informed about all the other running projects. Additionally, a big help is our well-structured Wiki and Google Drive cloud where we can look up nearly everything.

How do you persuade locals to join AEGEE at an European level?

Of course we advertise European events strongly in our weekly Monday-meetings and ask experienced members at the European Level to share their experiences with all of us.

How do you think it affects the organisation that a substantial part of the active members are Erasmus students?

Actually, not that many of our active members are Erasmus students so that it does not affect us that much. At the moment most of our new members are students in the first or third semester, who are going to spend some more years in Aachen. Because of this, the high fluctuation of Erasmus students is not really a problem for us. What we notice as an advantage of Erasmus student members is that they are highly motivated, Europtimistic and bring fresh and good ideas we did not think of before. And of course with their presence they contribute to this special “international AEGEE atmosphere”.

How do you try to keep members active within AEGEE-Aachen?

We try to keep our members motivated by organising engaging events and interesting projects in which members can participate, but also by giving our members space to realise their own ideas. Another thing that we focus on is improving the connection between old and new members. We do this by organising events that older members are still interested in as well, so that newbies can benefit from their experience. Connecting old and new members makes working together easier for everybody, and we keep having fun together and stay motivated.

If I had to describe my local in three words, they would be:

Polar bears, cheers!

Is there anything you would like to add?

Bear bags and shirts are still available! You are always welcome in Aachen – so come and catch some!

Written by Susan Nijsten, AEGEE-Groningen

Surely all of you have already encountered the famous mascot of AEGEE-Aachen somewhere in Europe. Now, the German local became the Local of the Month. The AEGEEan talked to two of AEGEE-Aachen’s new board members, Leonie Riebesam and Malte Berrenberg, about the antenna, their recipe for success and their potential plans for an Agora application.

With around 120 members, of which about 50 are active, and also a lot of secondary members all over Europe, AEGEE-Aachen is quite a big and also very active antenna. In the city of Aachen, one of Germany’s most western cities, the local is mostly known to us for their awesome Erasmus parties and the Erasmus tutoring programme. Throughout the AEGEE-Network, the Aacheners are famous for their active participation at the local as well as European level, their sense of humour, and their mascot, the AEGEE-Aachen polar bear.

“Some people might think we have a good ‘sense of humour’ because we wear polar bear costumes. Maybe this is a good opportunity to set things straight here. We are not dressing up as polar bears, we ARE polar bears”, Malte lets us know. Aacheners seem to take things quite seriously when it comes to their mascot. Besides the fact that the AEGEE-Aachen bear is “super cool”, Malte answers, it is the members themselves and the amazing spirit within their local that makes AEGEE-Aachen special. “We really are a group of friends. Even though we can have really strong discussions and different opinions, we can always sit down, drink a beer and laugh together”, Malte states. “Our members are just super open and welcoming”.
And that seems to be quite appealing since the number of members that AEGEE-Aachen attracts is rather high for a German antenna. But also at the European level, the name of the city is famous. There are many secondary members all across the Network and many members working at the European level: the Summer University Coordination Team (SUCT), the Network Commission (NetCom), the Mediation Commission (MedCom), and the CD are infiltrated by Aacheners right now. And two of those members that are currently taking part in some of those groups, namely Damien Latacz from MedCom and Philipp Blum from SUCT, even became Members of the Month in 2015. “Their enthusiasm and motivation to change things for the better and actually do something can really rub off on others”, Leonie tells us. “But we have many more active members that we are very proud of!”

Leonie and Malte themselves are quite active; they have just both been re-elected into their local board. In their opinion, the board members are a good mixture of people with board experience, with experience from other student associations, and new members. All of them are very motivated to spread the AEGEE spirit and Leonie is sure that “a great year lies ahead of us”.

For example, they want to repeat the last year’s awesome SU. Aachen’s Summer University has a long tradition, offering a German-course almost every year, often ranking quite high and therefore, proving that a language course is actually very satisfying for the participants. Moreover, they will have a Christmas party and they will organise a European Day of Languages event and a Local Training Course (LTC). Also, their constitutional drink and their birthday are coming up. “Most importantly we want to have more events with refugees”, Malte says. Already more than once they arranged meetings between refugees and AEGEE-members and still go on planning to keep this up.
One last idea might make the upcoming year especially interesting: Might AEGEE-Aachen apply for Spring Agora 2017? “We are thinking about it, yes. But before we apply, we want to make sure we are able to provide the best possible logistics for everyone”, Leonie reveals. “At the moment we are mainly doing research on possibilities, knowledge transfer with the team of Agora 2008, and preparing the concept”. The Network will have to wait patiently and the AEGEEans will need to cross their fingers for this idea to become reality.

Until then, the antenna will continue with its local work. The three working groups (WGs) will go on organising debates, members’ weekends, LTCs and at the moment, even an event for refugees to show them some German Christmas traditions (Human Resources WG), they will go on managing their tutoring programme and interesting events for incoming Erasmus students (Erasmus WG) and last but not least, they will also design awesome stickers and other PR material (Public Relations WG).
If you want to visit Aachen, do it! Right now, they are trying to set up a hosting database, but “as long as it is still in work, you can just send us an e-mail if you are coming to Aachen, and we will try to arrange something”, Leonie concludes. They are looking forward to it.

Written by Katja Sontag, AEGEE-Aachen

For the first time, we collected nominations for Local and Member of the Month during the Autumn Agora Kyïv Fair. We received a lot of nominations and, after some consideration, we elected our Member of the Month (MOM) – Agora Edition. The recipient turned out to be Philipp Blum from AEGEE-Aachen, who is also the newly elected IT and Publication Responsible of the Summer University Coordination Team (SUCT). We asked him some questions to get to know him better. 

The AEGEEan: Philipp, please introduce yourself!

Philipp: Always a kid, sometimes serious. I’m 24 and doing too much for AEGEE. Full of sarcasm and inappropriate jokes (but I was forbidden to use in this interview): being politically correct is not my style.

How does it feel to be nominated MOM – Agora Edition?

Amazing! It was an amazing Agora for me, where I think I was very active and visible, but I didn’t expect this. Motivation for even more to come (he smiles, ed].)?

Who do you think nominated you?

What about you, Eri?

You were President of AEGEE-Aachen. How was the experience of running the local?

It’s been an amazing year, in which I learned a lot and had a lot of great feedback from my fellow board members. It’s definitely a great feeling to lead and not to follow. In the beginning, I was not sure how the fellow board members and I would handle the situation, because most of us had been in the board already, which meant a change in the hierarchy. Luckily, this went very well and we had great times together. Towards the end, there was a very tiring period where my head was constantly full of dates and checklists. A lot of tasks were concentrating at the same time, we had meetings almost daily and we had troubles finding people for a new board. All in all, it was a bit hard to let go in the end, because it was an awesome year.

What is the best memory you have about being President?

When I first met our Summer University participants, I was actually celebrating a good friend’s birthday in a pub, and they by chance came to the same bar. The responsible was like “and this is our President” and everyone came and said hi to me and we had a great night. That was a very happy moment for me and I think it finally made me realise what it’s like to be a President.

This year you were Creative Director of Key to Europe. Tell us more about your job and how the final product turned out?

That was a great experience. I was very happy to work together with Vincent Bass (AEGEE-Enschede), Erika Bettin (AEGEE-Verona) and others in the team which made it acceptable even if at 2am all your files seem corrupted. When in Kyïv, I couldn’t wait to see it and I think I was just looking through it for two hours. The colours really looked gorgeous, and I am very happy with it.

Why did you decide to apply for such a position?

When I saw the previous Key to Europe, I knew that I didn’t want pixelated images to happen again. This, combined with the fact that I planned to quit the board and would have time, was basically it.

During the Agora you were elected in the SUCT and for one year you will cover the position of IT and Publication Responsible. How did you prepare for the role?

I bought a handbook “PHP for dummies”, so I think I will be able to manage the website (he smiles, ed.). No, to be honest, I am doing freelance web development, I did my Bachelor project in PHP and study computer science. I enjoy it, and I am confident I can manage the website. As for the other task: I often have to order materials for our local, and I know what it’s like to have a deadline for those, because otherwise they are just not around. After working for the Key to Europe I became confident enough to apply for the position of Publication Responsible for such a big project.

You have already started your term with a team meeting in Bruxelles. How are the vibes so far?

That was a really short-term idea, and I am really happy it worked out. I didn’t know Yevgeniya Gagarina (AEGEE-Kyïv) and Carolina Alfano (AEGEE-Salerno) at all, so I was very curious how it is going to be working together. Until now, it’s awesome. It’s only the beginning of November, and it feels like we already did quite a few things. But in the big picture, I see that we have a lot of work ahead, and I am happy we started early.

Seven candidates and four positions and yet you smashed it, receiving the impressive number of 233 votes out of 260 available. How thin is the air up there?

I went trekking in Nepal two years ago so I am used to it.

Always smiling and in a good mood and energetic. This was one of the reasons why you were nominated. What is your secret?

I drink champagne for breakfast, my motto is “Why not?”, and I am pretty much an optimist. Mostly, there is no reason why you should believe something will not work, so believe it will.

Last but not least, let’s play a little game. Explain you and your personality using the letters that compose your name (I.e. P as Pacifist, H as hilarious, I as iconic).

Perfect

Humble

Intelligent

Lazy

Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona

Since only ten days, the carnival season in Germany is over. Many people went crazy, celebrated for days without a pause and of course, a lot of carnival parades took place. In Aachen, one of the most western cities of Germany, 35 AEGEEans took part in the three-hour-long procession and spread Europtimism throughout their motto “Europe is colourful, and it’s good this way”.

Carnival is an important celebration in Germany, especially around the Rhineland and Mainz. It is so big that most schools do not even open on the so-called “Rose Monday”, the highlight of the celebrations, or even the following day. Monday the 16th, in German “Rosenmontag”, big parades marched through many of the North Rhine-Westphalian cities.

In Aachen, 168 groups took part, one of them being a group of AEGEE-Aachen members. The motto of the 35 participants was “Europe is colourful, and it’s good this way”. While most groups in such parades pick the same costumes for all their members, the AEGEEans all looked very different since their aim was to depict a Europe with many variants. This is why their costumes showed all kinds of European stereotypes, from a “typical” German Bavarian, over Greeks in togas, a Norwegian Viking and an Irish leprechaun to a Dutchie with orange hair and a bike, and many more. Of course, there were also some polar bears since they are a necessary addition to Europe as well. Even some guests from their Twin Antenna, AEGEE-Warszawa, took part in the parade and enjoyed it as well!

In the nicest of sunshine, the members of AEGEE-Aachen had a great time while they walked through the city where around 260.000 visitors watched the parade. Leo Büsch, main organizer of the event simply calls it “fantastic“! “We got recognised by the people as a very colourful crowd and got greeted by Aachen’s major and one member of the European Parliament and former major of Aachen with huge pleasure.”

The parade went on for around three hours and while the AEGEEans gave out kilograms of sweets, as it is the tradition, they also handed out 2000 colourful stickers with their slogan in German. Especially after recent demonstrations in Germany, the topic of xenophobia had to be tackled and by doing it in a fun, yet very public way, AEGEE-Aachen definitely accomplished their goal.

Last year, they had already taken part with the motto “Show your flag for Europe” and also displayed a very colourful group which consisted of people wearing different European flags. For next year, it is sure that they will be part of the parade again: “We had 20 participants last year and 35 this year, so I count for over 60 participants for next year and hope to have even more international guests”, Leo concludes.

Find more pictures in their Facebook album!

Written by Katja Sontag, AEGEE-Aachen

In less than two months, the Autumn Agora in Cagliari takes place and all participants will have the chance to see how AEGEE-Aachen and AEGEE-Warszawa will become twin antennae. To find out more about this German-Polish friendship and the apparent love between their mascots, The AEGEEan spoke to Joanna Pankowska, president of AEGEE-Warszawa.

 It all started as a classic twin antenna love story: AEGEEans from Aachen came to Warszawa for an exchange in May 2013. “Maybe it was the bears, maybe the fact that we were not experienced in doing exchanges. The fact was: it felt like something more than just an exchange”, Joanna tells us. Less than a year later, AEGEE-Warszawa organized a pre-event shortly before the EBM Lublin in February 2014. After a great time with some Aachen people – wearing their famous bear suits, naturally – the two antennae spent even more time together during the EBM itself. It was there, during the last night, that they decided to stay at the gym and chat instead of going to the party. And it was in that night that they came up with the idea to become twin antennae.

So far, AEGEE-Aachen and AEGEE-Warszawa had two exchanges, visiting each of the two cities once – both times having a lot of fun. However, Joanna is sure that the best is yet to come, meaning the next exchange, which is going to take place at the end of September in Aachen. Members from both locals are looking forward to this event, where they will be able to spend time together and get to know each other. Joanna emphasizes that another important fact in the course of the locals’ collaboration will be that they “are trying not to forget about sharing good practices, knowledge transfer and such”. Both locals are quite strong and experienced with organisational duties. It will therefore be interesting to see if they will become even more successful when they can share their knowledge.

Moreover, the twin antennae-to-be have something else in common: they are both proud owners of very beary mascots. While the members of AEGEE-Aachen are rarely seen without a white polar bear costume on them, AEGEE-Warszawa people keep good care of their cute little panda bear called Wanda (the panda). Although this is just a very handy coincidence, one cannot get around the fact that the two bears form a cute couple. The mascots seem to agree and take their relationship to the next level. No one speaks about “becoming twin antennae”, but just about “the wedding”!

One can be curious about what the two locals will come up with to celebrate this moment during Agora Cagliari! All in all, Joanna concludes: “I believe it is just the beginning of our love story”.

Written by Katja Sontag, AEGEE-Aachen

One of the goals of the former board of AEGEE-Aachen was to have a Network Meeting taking place in their beautiful city. Their plans became more concrete during the Spring Agora in Patra, where they told the former NetCom Holger: “Yes, we will do it!”. Anna Isabel Ramones, board member of AEGEE-Aachen, was in the well-known Agora ‘I can do everything spirit!’, leading to her volunteering to be the main organiser. The AEGEEan spoke to her to find out more.

From the 9th till the 12th of October, before Autumn Agora Cagliari, AEGEE-Aachen will be looking for 50 motivated participants to join them in the German city of Aachen. “We are still working on the content”, says NetCom Julia Fuss. “But it will probably be focused on networking to share best practices, strengthen cooperation between antennae and individually reflect upon AEGEE’s impact on oneself, as well as become aware of one’s own impact in AEGEE. Additionally, we would like to continue the work on project ideas that were developed at NWM Bamberg, such as an idea to organize workshops on the life of refugees or if possible even go and visit an asylum ourselves. Of course this NWM will also offer a great opportunity to prepare delegates and discuss topics for Agora Cagliari as well as get to know European level bodies!”

Next to the workshops, the local is already planning a social program. “Of course there will be a city tour to get to know our beautiful and historically interesting city of Aachen. The boarder triangle (Netherlands, Belgium and Germany) is also close and definitely worth a visit. Next to that, the parties will of course be BEARtastic!”

The local already has a lot of experience in organizing events, like the Agora in 2008, an European School I in 2012, a Summer University every year and of course the Charlemagne Youth Prize Event. For the Charlemagne Youth Prize, eight young and enthusiastic writers, photographers and future journalists were invited to Aachen to cover the Youth Charlemagne Prize and Charlemagne Prize, spreading the news in their own language and countries. The event was requested by Aachen’s Major and AEGEE-Aachen’s Patron, Marcel Philipp, to give a more international stage to this prize for European Unity. “We are looking back at a very nice event where we met new friends but also actively worked on a very important AEGEE issue – EurOptimism”, Anna says. We cooperated succesfully with Europe Direct and OneEurope (Forum of future journalists in Europe) and gained the experience of how much work it is, to care for only eight persons.”

There’s always a new challenge though, because right now AEGEE-Aachen is busy with their Summer University,  “Get Trashed the Green Way”, where they will show 25 enthusiastic participants their city while learning them more about environmental issues and the German culture. “We have two different main organizers for the SU and NWM”, Anna says. “Of course both share their knowledge and experiences and already worked together in the board and on specific events. An active local will support them both during the events. For now, two weeks with 25 participants from all over Europe, 1000 new experiences and a lot of fun and different activities are waiting for us!”

If you’re still wondering why you should apply for this NWM, Anna has listed out all the reasons: “Our antenna is well-known in the whole AEGEE network for always having a lot of fun, for being in every event and for always taking good care of our guests! For example, we had three exchanges this spring and all antennae were really satisfied with their stay here and the hospitality of the polar bears! So we want to show more people that polar bears are simply the best!”

Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen