The AEGEE House, located in Brussels, is not just a place to stay for AEGEE members, but also functions as the home and office of the Comité Directeur. To be exact, half of the first floor is devoted to the working environment of the members of the Comité Directeur, and two employees. Although a big part of the house functions as an office, it does not mean it is boring! Find out some fun facts about the house you may not know yet.

(Dis)appearing items
No one knows exactly why, but it is a common known fact that things disappear and appear again in the house at any given time. Most notably, and also most curiously, one of these items is a great number of forks from the kitchen pantry, leading to many jokes about the ‘fork shortage’ and creative ways to eat dinner. Forks are not the only thing disappearing though – it also happened before that clothes disappeared over night and were found back in another room – or even another floor – of the house.  Besides objects disappearing, there are also some that suddenly appear, sometimes more randomly than otherwise. Objects found during this year, for example, were a bell with a print of Queen Elizabeth and a toy horse. Although both of them are used every now and then by guests, it is not clear how, when or why they showed up in the house in the first place.  

Behold, the Basement

Aside from items, people also disappear inside the house. For some, so far, unexplained reason people suddenly vanish, only to turn up in the building’s basement. Not much is known of the cause for, or the reason behind, this inexplicable journey to the dark, private, cosy and secluded subterranean chamber of the house. It might be to discover more of the archives, which are also located in the basement and full of interesting materials, varying from old posters (all the way back to the founding period of AEGEE) to funny pictures of past Comité Directeurs or folders full of old letters sent across the Network. This is not the only attraction in the basement though, because those who are curious will also encounter an oil tank with 2000 litres of oil in it to provide everyone with heating. There is a small room under the stairs in Harry Potter style full of cables, computers and other IT tools, and behind the archives you can find a small, mysterious room that can only be entered through a little hall behind the archives, which is actually located right underneath the garden.

Curious Cuneiform
Embedded in the garden wall of the house, there is a large stone with inscriptions in cuneiform. None of the CD members know who put it there or why, or even so much what the cuneiform tablet means. Could it be an inscription of one of the ancient kings of Assyria, Babylon or Persia; Ashurbanipal, Nebuchadnezzar II or Cyrus the Great? Perhaps it could be part of the epic of Gilgamesh or the codex of Hammurabi. We don’t know, just like we don’t know the origin of a series of round tablets with Roman faces embedded in the wall next to the cuneiform tablet.

Beware the Oak
The AEGEE House lies on the ‘Notelaarstraat’ in Brussels. A ‘notelaar’, in Dutch, is a kind of oak tree, of which, like all other oak trees, one should be wary. Ancient tales warn a man or woman about sleeping underneath an oak tree, for in the best case they will have a prophetic dream, but in the worst they will never wake up again or will be visited by the devil. Part of this myth probably originated from the fact that the soil around many oak trees seems to become barren. This is because oak leaves are great at blocking out sunlight and their large roots out-compete other plants, like grasses, for water and nutrients. It is not known if the members of the Comité Directeur have prophetic dreams, although we can confirm that they do wake up in the morning.

Royal Living

While the decoration in the garden can best be explained as ‘curious’, the most suitable word for the decoration inside the house would probably be ‘royal’ or simply ‘beautiful’. The house is not only big, even though you would not say so from the outside, it is also heavily decorated, having chandeliers in many rooms and even Roman pillars in the entrance hall, probably indicating other ways the house was used in the past.

Don’t Lock the Doors
Do not try to lock any of the doors behind you in the house, for you cannot. The only door with a working key is the downstairs toilet. All other doors, including those of toilets and bathrooms, are closed in the good fate that they will not be opened.  Any open door you may enter, while a closed one is forbidden from being opened without permission. After all, once you open a door, you can never un-see the image that has touched your eye. So please, next time you visit the house… knock.

Written by Willem Laurentzen, AEGEE-Nijmegen, and Svenja van der Tol, Comité Directeur

The famous German composer, musician and educator, Carl Orff, referred to fate as the “empress of the world”. It is the ever-changing force that lifts everyone into the light, or plunges them back into darkness. With this wisdom, let’s take a look at four things that were either lost or achieved within the network of AEGEE.

Why organise just one? When it comes to organising statutory meetings, nobody beats AEGEE-Enschede. It has hosted three Spring Agorae, as well as one Spring Planning Meeting in 2003. Next are AEGEE-Amsterdam with three Spring Agorae, AEGEE-Budapest with three Autumn Agorae, AEGEE-Athina with one Spring and two Autumn Agorae (the former taking place on the island of Kos, near the Turkish coast in 1992), and AEGEE-Valletta with one Spring Agora and two European Boards’ Meetings (EBM).

End of the Dutch Streak. During each decennial anniversary year (meaning 1995, 2005, and 2015) a Dutch antenna organised the Spring Agora: AEGEE-Amsterdam in 1995, and AEGEE-Enschede in 2005. However, by organising AgorAsturias in Gijón in the spring of 2015, this coincidental occurrence was ended by AEGEE-Oviedo. The Dutch city of Leiden was one of the cities that hosted the 2015 revival of the Night of the Seven Antennae, but this event also showed a loss for AEGEE as a whole. Of the five cities that hosted the original Night, two of them, Nice and Strasbourg, no longer have antennae, and one, London, had its antenna revived only in 2013.

All Summer Universities (SU) lead to Amsterdam. The summer of 1997 was a remarkable one for the existing antennae at that time in the Netherlands. Everyone, except AEGEE-Nijmegen, organised a Summer University, but the content of their programmes was somewhat weird and monotonous. Almost all SUs (Delft, Enschede, Groningen, and Leiden/Utrecht) organised excursions to Amsterdam. Even the no longer existing antenna in Rotterdam organised a Summer University, which offered its participants, of course, a trip to Amsterdam. AEGEE-Enschede, furthermore, listed “everywhere” as one of their programme’s locations. And AEGEE-Utrecht, lastly, organised another SU in 1997, right after the one they had organised in collaboration with Leiden.

Members without antennae. Because of their merit, achievements within, or support for AEGEE some regular members can be recognised by the Agora as honorary members of AEGEE. However, due to the fact that  honorary membership is perpetual, these members are still part of AEGEE, even after the termination of their original antenna or their own life for that matter. Franck Biancheri, for instance, is thus still technically a member of AEGEE, despite being dead for three years. Examples of members without antennae are Kamala Schütze (AEGEE-Grießen & AEGEE-Termoli, both no longer existing), and Gunnar Erth (AEGEE-Szeged).

Written by Willem Laurentzen, AEGEE-Nijmegen

Many things have changed about AEGEE during its thirty year existence. However, instead of looking back at its rich history, this article will take a look at five things concerning AEGEE, and by extension Europe, from 2015 that you might not already know.

Improbable spelling. Everyone who is participating in the Agora in Kiev in October may have noticed that the local organising it is called AEGEE-Kyïv. This seemingly weird spelling has everything to do with the spelling rules for AEGEE locals. The rule, in a nutshell, is that all AEGEE locals must use the local or national name for the city, in which they’re located, hence not the English name for the city. Then this name has to be converted to the Latin alphabet, if it’s not already. This is why AEGEE-Киïв is written as Kyïv, instead of Kiev. Other examples are AEGEE-Москва as Moskva, instead of Moskow, and  AEGEE-Αθήνα as Athina, instead of Athens. AEGEE-Minsk, however, is still AEGEE-Minsk, because the transcription of the local name happens to be the same as the English one.

Not all countries are represented. Members from various locals have or are going to visit at least one of the two Agorae during this anniversary year, while some countries are not represented by members of their locals at all. Bosnia & Herzegovina, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Montenegro are, for instance, not represented, but to be fair, all of these countries have only contacts or contact-antennae. The two countries with AEGEE-antennae that have not been represented at either Agora are Albania and Lithuania.***

No locals in Scandinavia. AEGEE-Helsinki, of course, is still an active and vibrant antenna in the network. But Helsinki, or Finland for that matter, is not part of Scandinavia, but of the larger geographical region of Fennoscandia. According to the 2015 version of AEGEE’s map of the network, the last AEGEE local in Scandinavia, AEGEE-København, no longer exists, thus AEGEE’s presence in Scandinavian is missing.

King of democracies. One of the central themes, and slogan of the autumn Agora in Kyïv is ‘rebuilding democracy’. However, of all the countries in Europe that are considered to be “flawless democracies”, according to the 2014 democracy index, half are technically monarchies. These are Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, the United Kingdom and Spain. The three countries in Europe that by the same index are considered to be authoritarian regimes are Belarus, Russia, and Azerbaijan.

This land is mine. Considering the theme of ‘rebuilding democracy’, the most infamous land dispute in Europe of 2015 is arguably the question of which country has the rightful claim to the Crimean Peninsula, located in the northern waters of the Black Sea. This, as should be noted, is not the only disputed land area in Europe at the moment. Most notable are the self-declared independent regions of Transnistria in the east of Moldova, and the Nagorno-Karabakh in the west of Azerbaijan, and some disputed border areas between Croatia and Serbia. Some may know one of these unclaimed areas as the location of the self-proclaimed independent and libertarian territory of Liberland.

Many other interesting events concerning AEGEE, and by extension all of Europe, have of course happened in 2015. Feel free to comment about those you think that should have been mentioned below.

Written by Willem Laurentzen, AEGEE-Nijmegen

*** Data were retrieved using the participants list of both Agorae, that can be found here.