Day 17 – 18 – 19 – Köln, Mainz-Wiesbaden and back to Brussels (3rd – 5th March)

Tekla with AEGEE-Köln

As all good things come to an end, CD on Track is also finishing soon for all of us: for me, the last two stops were in Köln and in Mainz to visit AEGEE-Köln and AEGEE-Mainz-Wiesbaden, which are among the older locals in our Network.

My second to last stop was Köln, where I spent a nice Saturday brunch with the Board and the members of AEGEE-Köln. We mostly focused on how to plan the semester for the members to keep them active and how to participate in Erasmus+ exchanges and trainings as a local. The afternoon continued with a trip to Mainz, where I observed the General Assembly of AEGEE-Mainz-Wiesbaden and introduced who is in CD 54 and what are we doing in Brussels.

Tekla with AEGEE-Mainz-Wiesbaden members

In the evening, I returned to Köln to discover the city a bit and to prepare for my last train ride back to Brussels on Sunday in order to return to office work from Monday.

Even though the trip has ended for me, it brought a lot of experience, memories and things to reflect on for the upcoming months of my term. I would like to thank once again all the locals and AEGEEans who took part in this journey, hosted us, had a meeting with us, showed their cities or just dared to ask questions and be open to know more about AEGEE.

Written by Tekla Hajdu, Network Director

During the Autumn Agora in Cagliari, Jorge Sánchez Hernández took the stage to present AEGEE-Dresden, which was at that moment still a contact. After his speech however, he signed the Convention d’Adhesion, transforming his contact into a contact antenna. Looking at the endless amounts of time, work and motivation he put into re-founding a local in Dresden, The AEGEEan thought it was about time to find out more about him! 

The AEGEEan: First of all, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who are you, and when and why did you join AEGEE?

Jorge: I’m Jorge, a 21 years old Spaniard living in Dresden. I love traveling, meeting people from different countries and cultures, food, beer, and AEGEEans. I joined AEGEE-Alicante on the day of the deadline to apply for a Summer University in 2013. I wanted to go to the SU in Helsinki, but it was the one with the most applications that year, so I decided to go to the Dutch-Deutsch Adventure organised by Enschede, Utrecht and Köln. The experience was so good that I became active right away. AEGEE has been very important in my life since then.

You are the re-founder of AEGEE-Dresden. What made you decide to start up a contact?

Made by Marco Müser, AEGEE-Köln

Since I moved to Dresden being a fresh member, I wanted to experience more in AEGEE, I had some experience with the European level, but no local level experience. AEGEE was such a good platform for me to develop my skills and meet awesome and inspiring people, that I just had to found a contact in Dresden to be able to share this opportunity with other students. It was quite hard to found a contact in a different country, without a network in the city, without proficiency in the language (I moved to Germany in November with no knowledge of German and founded the contact in March), and being alone at first. A month later however, Ingo from AEGEE-Aachen (who is now my flatmate) came, and we got Nora from another program, and everything started to grow. With four to five people, we were managing a buddy program for almost 400 students, as well as organizing a Regional Training Course, an exchange, building a web page and a long list of stuff. It has been a lot of work, and it still is, but we do it with passion!

Do you have any tips for other contacts who want to become a contact antenna too?

First of all, we would love to help any contacts who need help, so they can contact us and we will try to understand their situation and try to give our best advice. My tip would be to start organizing events. Even if you feel like you don’t have enough people (even if you’re just one), things will eventually work out and if you put passion into it, people will join you. Find something that is missing in your city, what other associations are not doing, and link it to AEGEE to attract new members. A good relation with the university is a must to grow fast. We get a lot of support since we became part of an official body of the university. We have an office and some financial support, and they also promote some of our projects. What is most important for me to grow, is that there is a good atmosphere in the team. Without being real friends and doing things together, I don’t think it would work so well.

What are your plans with AEGEE-Dresden in the upcoming months?

We just organised a Regional Training Course called “Develop Yourself!”, taking place from 11th – 14th December. In January we will host thirty AEGEEans from AEGEE-Krakow, who come from the 8^th until the 11^th to spend an awesome weekend with us in Dresden. Some days later we will also have an important meeting with the international department of the city hall to present our projects, and we will have our local Agora. After that, plans are still being discussed, but we have two other exchanges, a Travel Summer University, as well as some Local Training Courses coming up!

What have you done in AEGEE so far, besides setting up a contact in Dresden?

I was a helper at ZarAgora, taking pictures of all of you sleeping in plenaries. They will come to life when you expect them the least… I also was the Secretary of the Environmental Working Group (EnWG) last term, and I am still active in AEGEE-Alicante. But since February, AEGEE-Dresden has taken all my AEGEE time and I don’t have time this year for any European Projects, maybe next year again, but I like the local level as well.

Is there something you still want to do with AEGEE?

Of course I have dreams in AEGEE, but maybe I will keep them for now. If they become true, you will know! I would love to get some time and people to work on the CIA and change the situation of the contacts and contact antennae, since it’s not so convenient right now. It’s a lot harder to be a contact or a contact antenna since you don’t have many members, funds or experience, but the antenna criteria make it even more difficult.

What is the most fond memory you have of AEGEE?

I don’t think I could choose one, so I will choose three even though it’s still hard. One was being a helper at ZarAgora. It was really amazing to see so many people from so many countries, meeting people with unpronounceable names (yeah, it’s like the pot calling the kettle black) and it was an incredible surge of inspiration and motivation. The second was the Cantus I had with AEGEE-Enschede in my first SU with Paul Smits as Senior. It was really such a good experience I will never forget in my life. They were super creative and original. I recommend everyone to go for SU to Enschede, they are very professional. The third one, and maybe the one I will remember the most, was signing the CdA at Agora Cagliari. Lots of things accomplished with my team to reach that point. But, I can’t finish this without saying that the most valuable thing that AEGEE has given me is all the amazing people I have met on the way. All these people inspire me to keep going forward in all the projects and also outside of AEGEE, even when things don’t look so bright.

Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen

If people start thinking about travelling there is always a question that comes to our mind: which is the best way to travel? This Summer University gave us opportunities to try several different types of travelling.

Arriving in Eindhoven was easy, we got picked up by organisers who drove us to the scouting place that would be our home for the next few days. The environment in Eindhoven was perfect as you can see. To make the day even more interesting we started to play a Saboteur game while being dropped into the nearby town from where we had to find our way back. It was quite a fun game as we were divided into groups, we had to find our way back to the accommodation while texting with the other team in order to get the coordinates. The start of our SU was awesome, we were taken to an historical open air museum, where we could feel like people from the early iron age. We had the opportunity to try to light a fire with flint stones like cavemen and to dress up like a warrior. There, we had some old school punishment devices, which were used if the participant was not behaving well.

After this I felt confident that I can survive in medieval time style the whole SU, but I dropped that idea as soon as we had to cycle a few kilometers to the next park. I did not feel like walking the whole way, so I went back to the 21st century. After lunch we had a chance to play the second part of the Saboteur game, which consisted of walking around the park and looking at pictures of people we didn’t know, but who apparently were really, really famous in the Netherlands. The peak of the day was our evening Saboteur grand finale that consisted of carrying big barrels, burning a rope until it breaks and filling a 1.5 liter water bottler with our mouths. It all went well until my team’s saboteur accidentally spilled our whole water bottle and we lost. Despite that it was a good day.

Then we went to Nuenen to have a tour about Van Gogh. It was fun, we saw cows and a windmill that was featured in some of his paintings. After the tour we headed to our new accommodation place where we stayed the rest of the time in Eindhoven. The next day we got a university tour from where the brightest minds of Eindhoven come. Since most of us were quite new to the AEGEE scene, we had a great presentation about AEGEE to learn the basics.

The next thing that was waiting for us was Amsterdam. Amsterdam was for me one of the highlights of the Dutch part, I am quite sure that I was not the only one. It’s because everything was a bit different there, many things were legal, which are not in other countries. We used the train to get from Eindhoven to Amsterdam, which was easy and fast. Mostly we preferred to be as Dutch as possible, so we had bikes that we used to ride many, many miles. We actually had a bike trip from Eindhoven to Venlo that was about 60km long. After Venlo we had to go to Cologne not by bike, but by hitchhiking. For most of the people it was their first time doing something like this. Despite that, everybody was really into it and all went well, everybody arrived safely to Cologne. Most people said it was a really fun experience, although a bit boring because it depended of luck if you got picked up or not. It took me over three hours to get a ride.

Heading to Germany we had great hopes, because the previous part organized by Dutch people had been wonderful. And we were right, the German part was as awesome as the previous part. If you thought the Netherlands was a beautiful country, don’t forget about Germany. It was as pretty as the Netherlands, even on a rainy day.

After arriving to Cologne we went to our scouting place, which was a nice house with a big garden were we had a huge tent to sit and relax in. The second day in Germany started out fine, everybody was up in the morning… well, sort of. We went to the city to have a great city rally (which my team won of course), it consisted of making a fake tour guide to the people near the Cologne Cathedral, finding Wally, collecting Kölsch laws and words and many more wonderful things. The evening ended with all the group members going to a karaoke bar. A big part of the group said that they couldn’t sing, it changed instantly when well-known tunes started to play, almost everybody sang at least one song, the best of us sang more songs than I can remember. The next day was going to be even better, because in the evening there was an event of which you may have heard, it was the European Night. Every nation’s finest AEGEE members brought the best of what they had to offer for us. People who had already done a great warming up in the European Night continued to go out to a club, where everybody could let themselves free and just dance like there  is no tomorrow. And they did, they danced. Then, a day at the lake. Well that was the original plan, but the weatherman thought otherwise and it rained the whole morning. So we dropped the plan to go to the lake, because we had our own little lake in the backyard. Sadly no one tried it. Instead we went to discover Cologne. Everybody was quite sad because it was quite the bad weather, but it changed once we arrived to the Lego shop, people’s smiles got even bigger than Joker’s from Batman, even the Grinch’s smile was nothing compared to ours. Coming back the organizers had prepared a barbeque for us. It was good. The next day it was Brühl and Bonn time, Bonn was the old capital of West Germany. We were taken to the Brühl castle, everybody was really looking forward to seeing the mighty castle of Brühl. I am no castle expert but that was no castle, it was a big house that we might be called a palace. After Brühl’s “castles” we moved forward to the city of Bonn, birthplace of Mozart (which everybody already knew of course!), there we went to the House of History where we got really detailed information about the history of East and West Germany, and we saw a real original moonstone!

Sadly this awesome time ended. The last party was a white t-shirt party where we wrote good things on each others clothes. I hope that all of us can join together for at least once somewhere in Europe! Thank you all for this memorable summer!

Written by Valter Kamarik, AEGEE-Tartu

(Pictures are courtesy of Maikel Wagemans, Rodrigo Lopez Díaz and Anton Yeshchenko)

On the last weekend of June, six German and Dutch locals met in a small and completely unspectacular town in the Netherlands. There was no hosting local, there were no organizers and, officially, there was not even a program. Although the motivating title of this event was “Six in the Shitty City”, it was still the second time that this event took place. The AEGEEan spoke to Benjamin Feyen, one of the people who came up with the concept, to find out more about the event and all the word plays included in it.

In February 2013, several members of Dutch and German locals met in Eindhoven the day before they flew to EBM Valletta together. These members came from six locals, which were all located close to the German/Dutch border, namely AEGEE-Aachen, AEGEE-Düsseldorf, AEGEE-Eindhoven, AEGEE-Köln, AEGEEE-Maastricht and AEGEE-Nijmegen. Since they got along so well and because the distance between these locals is not actually that big, they decided to organize a non-formal get-together.

The name that this meeting should have was also decided upon during that discussion.”When we discussed where the meeting should take place, somebody came up with the idea to meet just somewhere in the middle between the locals instead of having a hosting local”, Benjamin tells us. ”Looking at a map, we found out that the six locals form kind of a circle, with the small Dutch city of Venlo right in the center”.  After somebody who apparently had already been to Venlo complained that this city was “really shitty” the event’s title was set: “Six [locals] in the Shitty City”. Benjamin claims that it was due to the memorable name that they instantly created a Facebook group and were motivated to organize the event.

And the event of 2013 was a success. People from every single local took part and enjoyed a weekend in Venlo including a City Tour. Due to the fact that the city center “actually wasn’t that shitty after all”, this year’s version of the event (Volume 2: “Shit me baby one more time”) was moved to a suburb of Venlo: Tegelen. Although the location changed, the concept stayed the same. Since organizing an event is a lot of work and mostly quite stressful, the people who came up with the idea of “Six in the Shitty City” decided to have “no organizers or responsible persons, but only participants (or shitticipants, as we call ourselves), who do whatever they feel needs to be done”, explains Benjamin. Mutual trust, reliability and contribution by everyone are of course necessary when an event is planned like this. That this can work, was proven by all the people taking part in the event.

The actual meeting in Tegelen worked out perfectly again. Almost 30 people from six locals (this time including AEGEE-Osnabrück instead of AEGEE-Maastricht) met and enjoyed two nights and a full day together, mostly by playing either soccer, “werewolves” or other gamesor, of course, by just talking and getting to know each other. Although there was not any official program, nobody was ever bored. Benjamin explains: “Basically it is a bunch a friends having fun together based on voluntary contribution by everyone, with the little difference that many of us do not even know each other personally before the event. Having the AEGEE spirit and believing in the concept of the “Shitty City” is what we share”. Still, “having a European Night is a must“, says Benjamin and this European Night in particular ended especially nicely by sitting at a bonfire and enjoying marshmallows and music. The favorite song of the whole group was most definitely “Everybody has a shitty time”, a song composed during the event and sung many times.

All in all, “Six in the Shitty City” is not as “shitty” as the name makes it seem! Benjamin concludes that although there were some people who doubted that this concept could work, it did! “And twice already. It’s for sure a very unique event in the AEGEE world”. People already announced that they will most definitely take part again when it is time for the next volume of “Six in the Shitty City”.

Written by Katja Sontag, AEGEE-Aachen

Not so long ago the Elections Observation Project (EOP) of AEGEE, which aims at training potential election observers and creating a sufficient capacity within AEGEE for international election observation missions, brought forward the initiative to be more involved in the recent European Parliament elections besides voting. This involvement in the elections got translated in becoming a volunteer, member of the pooling station commission, or in any other way being a part of the organisational process of the European elections. Hence, several AEGEE members were taken by this idea and now would like to reflect on their experience and share it with the whole network.

Gratitude from the Central Election Commission of Latvia for volunteering at the EP2014

I was a volunteer at the election station in Riga on the 24^thof May. Despite the wonderful weather which made that Saturday very tempting for paying a visit to the beach, I spent the entire day in the polling station meeting Latvians who decided to do their civic duty and vote on Latvia’s representation in the EU for the upcoming five years. Checking voters’ passports and IDs, making necessary notes in the voters’ list, welcoming the media and observers of the overall election process were among my responsibilities. The highlight of her day probably was meeting one of the most prominent voters – the former president of Latvia – Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga. According to my observations she spent quite a long time in the voting booth carefully scrutinising candidate lists. Mrs Freiberga had a substantial input in the country’s accession to the EU, therefore the former president must have been very cautious choosing eight Latvian faces that will soon be seen in the next European Parliament. Another positive observation suggests that youth, middle-age and elderly people’s participation in the elections was more or less equal in that particular polling station. I also met several confused and puzzled first-time voters, as well as few non-Latvian EU voters who confidently came to do what they are entitled to. Overall, the turnout in the polling station I was volunteering in was one of the highest in Riga (and actually slightly beat the EU average).

Tomasz Kowalski voting

By the end of the election-day, I also counted ballot papers and followed the electronic vote counting procedure, which allowed me and my colleagues from the election commission to finish the day earlier than it would have been in the case of manual vote counting. After the elections I must admits that working 7 am-11 pm was exhausting, but the experience was certainly worth it. Next time, for the Parliamentary elections taking place in October I will try to become a member of the polling station commission.

Tomasz Kowalski (AEGEE-Gdańsk) was the chairman of the election commission in a tiny Polish district. Being in such a responsible position he was in charge of various tasks: managing a team of six people, handling bureaucratic issues and filling in the papers, taking care of the overall voting process, as well as managing the vote counting procedure and reporting election results to the City Council. It was 2am when Tomasz took a sigh of relief, when his working day was finally over. According to Tomasz’ observations, youth participation in the elections was terribly low in his district.  “Sometimes I feel that only older people feel the need to vote, younger people don’t care about such things at all. It is really sad. Personally I’m in favour of a compulsory voting system, but Poles are not prepared for this”, he said.  Therefore, he thinks that Poles still need to learn the rights and responsibilities democracy brings.

Youth after casting vote for EP2014 in Riga, Latvia

Sadly, Tomasz had to admit that it looked like his co-citizens do not appreciate the fact that Poland has been independent and free for nearly 25 years and it has made an enormous step forward since then. “I hope that one day we will reach the normal voting attendance.”

In Germany, seven AEGEEans, as well as non-AEGEEans, were involved in the election process in Koln. For instance, Sophie Schwab (not a member of AEGEE) was quite disappointed by her experience, since she only counted envelopes and ballot papers, therefore she did not feel the real civic spirit of democratic participation. For others it must have been a different experience – various lessons learnt and conclusions made.

The EOP is proud of our members’ commitment for the European elections 2014 regardless of the level and outcomes of their involvement. The project will continue strengthening its efforts in engaging AEGEE members in election processes since we already saw the success of our endeavors.

Written by Diana Ondža, AEGEE-Riga

The AGORA is streaming live all the time, so all the ones, who by one reason or another couldn’t make it to Budapest, have the opportunity to keep up to speed with the official part of this event from home. But not for nothing do they say that it is the little things that count. So here are just some of the little things that you might have missed from the live streaming.

The AEGEEan was lucky to obtain top-secret information that will be only revealed tonight. You, my dear readers, will be the first to know. The Network Commission (NetCom) cups will be officially released. Now all of our beloved Network Commissioners (NetCommies) will not only have T-Shirt to unite them, but coffee mugs to help them wake up on the last two mornings of the AGORA. This obviously means that they just have to be on time and full of energy now. No excuses!

The opening ceremony can definitely be remembered for the Hungarian dances and the Hungarian Magician. Even though we may not have seen any true white magic, nevertheless, many got to laugh at the tricks with the rope and rings accompanied to all types of strange and peculiar songs. Some lucky ones even got to get a souvenir to take back home. We are sure that those cut off pieces of rope will be cherished in their homes forever… or maybe not.

The first two parties opened with a big bang. The clubs might have been a bit crowded, but what can you expect from such huge event? The Suit-up party was just a warm-up for the rest of the AGORA nights. Some truly went all out for the Bad Hair night. All the ones who couldn’t get a wig or spray their hair with any crazy color were able to improvise with ALDI bags, ponytails or just plain-old hair jelly.

The delay of the vice-chair, who was elected so smoothly, with no objections whatsoever at the Extraordinary Agora, cannot be left unmentioned. Thomas Leszke was told to have been dreaming of AEGEE-Düsseldorf while we were all already hard at work at the first plenary. Now this is a joke that really needs to be explained. To start off, Thomas is from AEGEE-Köln. When speaking about the relationship between Köln and Düsseldorf, one might compare it to that of Barcelona –Madrid or Moscow – St. Petersburg. Basically, if you ask for a Düsseldorf beer in a bar in Köln, you will be kicked out. The same is true the other way around. Now that the background story is in place, we can have our small laugh at the “punishment” Thomas had to endure.

Last but not least. The plush-toy flash mob was a very nice way to start this Friday. A good cause and a great way to help out. Thank you, dear organisers, for such a wonderful idea.

A separate thank you to Christian Bussar, AEGEE-Aachen, and Dasha Onokhova, AEGEE-Moskva, for the pictures. 

Written by Olga Volovyk, AEGEE-Kyiv

What is it that you expect from an AEGEE Summer University (SU)? Lots of fun? New people? Party till sunrise? If it includes traveling, then in addition to all before mentioned there also come crazy bus rides and amazing railroad crossings. This, however, was not your typical Summer University. It is true, we had it all, but not quite as you would imagine. The “I BIKE” SU by AEGEE -Koln  and AEGEE-Düsseldorf had a German biking twist to it.

For me AEGEE is about trying new things, trying to be someone new and falling in love with things you would never have tried otherwise. When planning this event, the organisers just had a simple idea – “Let’s do a bike tour!”. Even though none of them had ever done a biking tour themselves, they surely were brave enough to not only do it themselves, but to inspire 19 other people to join them and hopefully survive.

Amazingly enough, we all made it back home alive and well with memories and emotions overflowing while dancing on our bikes to the music of the passing boat. Let’s keep in mind that we all did travel through Germany, so one should not be surprised that we did our best to be as eco-friendly as possible. Sustainability! That’s what we were aiming at. This meant crossing fields and fields of solar panels, seeing the human size of the wind turbines, visiting a water plant and helping out in the community garden.  Special thanks to the workshop from the Environmental Working Group.

Apart from all of that, we biked, biked, biked and biked some more. At times we did have to arrive already way past sundown, but at least our rumbling tummies were always extremely well fed. After going over 90 km by bike you are ready to eat everything, but it comes as such a nice surprise when you are offered a delicious meal. The delicious dinners were the perfect icing on the exhausting climbs uphill and the dream-like and seemingly short rides downhill.

After dinner there were two options: either fall down, pass out and sleep or be one of the ones ready for extreme sports of biking all day after partying all night. Yes, we did have some mad men among us. Of course there was also an option of showering sooner rather than later and many (especially girls) were surprised at their ability to take a shower in only 4 minutes. Oh, the things AEGEE makes you do… However, regardless of how you decided to spend the night, the first 30 minutes on bike were always the same – “How in the world will I survive the day if I can barely move now?!?!”

Three countries (Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium) and countless small and big towns did we pass on our bikes. Every new boarder was a victory, but you can imagine just how many victories we had when we ended up crossing from one country to the other up to 20 times within a single day!

After a week of biking and more than 530 km behind us we were ready to enjoy partying, sightseeing and even swimming. However, nobody had expected crazy Russian dances to Balkan music in Germany. Nevertheless, we all got to improve ourselves together with Fabian Brüggemann, who obviously just enjoyed having us as his puppets for a couple of hours.

As warned beforehand we all did come back with buffed legs and aching bottoms. Surprisingly enough none had imagined that after a week of biking, hitting a rock while walking in the city would leave a bigger scar and leave a person limping than crashing into the bushes while going downhill on a bike. We will all have something to remember from this SU. Some will have their scars, but most will have memories, friendships and emotions that one just can’t brush away. 

A big thank you to the photographers: Christian Bussar from AEGEE-Aachen, David Martin-Gonzalez from AEGEE-Las Palmas and Danilo Pesenti Barili from AEGEE-Bergamo. 

Written by Olga Volovyk, AEGEE-Kyiv