{"id":12771,"date":"2012-10-12T09:48:27","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T07:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/?p=12771"},"modified":"2012-10-12T16:04:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T14:04:25","slug":"su-story-aegee-soldiers-in-the-land-of-vampires-and-palinka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/2012\/10\/12\/su-story-aegee-soldiers-in-the-land-of-vampires-and-palinka\/","title":{"rendered":"SU Story: AEGEE Soldiers in the Land of Vampires and Palinka"},"content":{"rendered":"

The journey of brave AEGEE members from eleven different countries around Europe started on August the 2nd. During two weeks they were travelling through the west of Romania, discovering the enchantment\"\"<\/a> and hospitality of the people, and enjoying the beautiful landscapes of the mountains and the cities from this country. This trip started in Timisoara and passed over Oradea, the Ski station of Arisen, Cluj Napoca, Sibiu and Nadrag. Many activities and workshops were performed during those days, such as make your own TSU workshop, Romanian workshop, Army workshop, flying fox and much more.<\/p>\n

The hours of travelling between different locations were done in a wonderful bus that received plenty of names during the trip, such as \u201cThe Boiling Bus\u201d, \u201cNightmare of the Mechanic\u201d or as it is common in every Travel Summer University (TSU), \u201cThe Traveling Hostel\u201d. All the problems related to the air conditioning of the bus as to the suspension were fixed by the bus driver, who was also our DJ during some of our best nights as well as the European Night (EN) and the SexChange Party. During the time spent in this bus, many of the participants enjoyed the chessboard that Tatiana Galonza had brought with her from Kiev (Ukraine), and Raul Cu\u00f1arro from Oviedo (Spain) won the title of \u201cChess Master\u201d.<\/p>\n

During the TSU, participants were playing two different games: \u201cThe Military Competition\u201d and \u201cGame of the Angel\u201d. The organisers made five Military groups: \u201cMountain Brigade\u201d, \u201cMarines\u201d, \u201cAirborne Division\u201d, \u201cNational Guard\u201d and \u201cInfantry\u201d. In the different locations where the TSU was taking place, the organisers arranged some competitions between these teams with different prizes for each time. On the other hand, \u201cGame of the Angel\u201d was played during the whole TSU, in this case, the participants were supposed to protect and take care of another participant. Some of them knew how to play, and others just played during the last day. However, there was a constant flow of candy, flowers, animal toys, beer and p\u00e1linka throughout the TSU.<\/p>\n

As previously said, the start of this TSU was in Timisoara, a really nice city located in the west of Romania near to the borders of Serbia and Hungary with a population of around 300.000. The history of this city is \"\"<\/a>related to tHungary, as their typical drink is also p\u00e1linka. During the city tour, participants got to visit many places such as the Orthodox Cathedral and the central square of the city, where the group had a free beer for each one due to the celebration of the 800th anniversary of the foundation of this wonderful city. During the different nights and days that the group spent here, they attended different workshops and enjoyed the nice nightlife of the city, with concerts in the central square and spending their time in the pubs and clubs as \u201cEl Che\u201d, \u201cPhanteon\u201d and \u201cThe Dark\u201d.<\/p>\n

The next step was Oradea, a nice city in the North-West of Romania with around 200.000 inhabitants , with the wonderful Orthodox Church of the Moon. Here the group began to get to know each other better and better, and the competition between the different military groups during the city tour had different challenges that lead to the victory to the team leaded by Mathieu Roig from Toulouse (France). On Monday, August the 6th at midnight all the participants made a surprise birthday party for Alessandro Gallotta from Catania (Italy), with cakes, candles, a Hello Kitty hat and a pink helium balloon with the sentence \u201cBirthday Princess\u201d that became his nickname for the rest of the TSU.<\/p>\n

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And finally; the participants arrived to Transylvania when making it to the Carpathians; the first stop in this region was Arisen, a ski\u00a0station in the west Carpathians. The European Night (EN) took place there, and \"\"<\/a>the participants enjoyed different traditional products from the present countries, and learned how to drink Russian vodka in an appropriate way taught by\u00a0\u0415\u0432\u0433\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0439 \u041c\u043e\u0440\u0435\u0432<\/a>\u00a0from Sankt-Petersburg (Russia), also known as Eugen or \u201cthat Crazy guy from Russia who drank a bottle of Vodka at once during the EN\u201d. During the following days in this nice area of Romania participants took part in most of the workshops related to AEGEE, Europe, the environment and the army training. Ending the time in Arisen with the SexChange party, all the participants enjoyed a free sangria prepared by Raul Cu\u00f1arro, during this night the best costumes were the ones of Eugen and\u00a0Silvia Banyoi<\/a>, one of the organisers from Timi\u0219oara.<\/p>\n

Following the way along Transylvania, the TSU stopped in Cluj Napoca which is the city that is considered to be the unofficial capital of the\u00a0historical province<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Transylvania<\/a>. With Roman origins this city has influence from Germany as well as Hungary. During the night of August 10th<\/sup>\u00a0there was another birthday. This time it was time to celebrate for\u00a0Jelle Lyskawa<\/a>\u00a0from Amsterdam (Holland), also known as \u201cYellow\u201d by the participants, due to his nickname the birthday party was completely full of things in that colour, such as napkins, candles, chips, cups, beer, limoncello, bananas, lemons and a helium balloom. \u201cYellow\u201d was dressed as a wasp for the whole night with yellow wings and a yellow hat and after the birthday party the participants went to the club \u201cStuff\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Saturday night was spent in Sibiu, one of the most beautiful cities from Romania with a really nice old quarter. After the city tour, the participants went to a nice club near the hostel where the party did not stop until\"\"<\/a> late in the night. During the second day in the city the participants visited the salty lakes near Sibiu, where they relaxed after too many days of partying and they grabbed the opportunity to re-charge their batteries for the rest of the TSU.<\/p>\n

In the way back to Timisoara the bus stopped in the Corvin Castle, where Vlad II Dracula was prisoner during the war between Hungary and Romania, and it is said to be one of the places that inspired the writer of Dracula. That day the group spent the night in a small village in the mountains, Nadrag, where a club was opened just for the participants.<\/p>\n

Once the group was back in Timisoara there was just one final party left. It ended up being a party full of memories, and Romanian food. To top it off the organisers wore typical Romanian costumers.<\/p>\n

The last day was used for a workshop with the theme of about how to make postcards from the photos that were taken during the TSU and give the results as presents to other participants before most of the participants left Romania. It is difficult to summarise this event but in short, it was a well-organised event with nice organisers, good food and great accomodation, and lots of wonderful AEGEE spirit.<\/p>\n

Written by Angel Rodriguez AEGEE-Alicante<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The journey of brave AEGEE members from eleven different countries around Europe started on August the 2nd. During two weeks they were travelling through the west of Romania, discovering the enchantment and hospitality of the people, and enjoying the beautiful landscapes of the mountains and the cities from this country. This trip started in Timisoara and passed over Oradea, the… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":12960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[5,17],"tags":[708,38,42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12771"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12966,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12771\/revisions\/12966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}