The last day of Agora Enschede was eventful. Not only because of the fact that the results were revealed but also because the diplomas were handed over to the winners of The AEGEEans Choice Awards, two new Working Groups were approved by the Agora, and the day ended quite late, maybe a bit too late in accordance with the expectations of the organisers.
After the results were revealed, hugs were exchanged among the 700 participants, and most participants rushed to dinner, in order to be able to rush to the gym to shower and prepare for European Night. A European Night that will be remembered for many things, but for the Spanish participants the brightest memory of that night will be the outdoor party they managed to start.
Too little too late
Rumors have been going around that the Spaniards were denied access to the club which led to them starting the above mentioned party. There is some truth in that but also some things that need to be clarified. Alvaro Espinosa, who was one of the participants in the outdoor party, and one of the representatives of the Spaniards helped us clarify the situation. He was among the ones who believed that scheduling the European Night on the last night of the Agora should not be repeated. It is common that the last day is long: long plenaries, plenty of celebration of the results, and combining that with having to rush to dinner, shower and party is in some people’s opinion not a good combination. However, that is what happened. The last plenary ended at around 21 or 21.30 and then the preparations for the party started. After preparing for the party, the Spaniards left the gym to enter the club, at 23.00 o’ clock instead of 22.00 which had been announced. They were then told that they could not enter the club with the 10+ liter of Sangria that they had brought because there was no more space for alcohol inside.
Never denied access
It is important to stress that the participants were of course never denied access to the party; they were simply told that they could not enter the party with the amounts of alcohol that they had brought so they had to leave it outside. In order not to throw it away, they started the party outside. Nice music from the ongoing festival next to the club provided a great atmosphere, and soon the Spaniards were joined by German and Polish representatives who could not enter with their alcohol either. After a little while the clubbers heard about the sangria and joined the outdoor party creating an “extra” European Night outside with participants from Finland, Denmark, Spain, Macedonia, Poland, Germany, Greece, Turkey and much more.
A Split European Night
So despite managing to have fun outside the European Night, this did create issues for the participants of the Agora. As Alvaro Espinosa answered to the question regarding whether or not the organisation prevented him from enjoying the European Night: “Well, I missed half of the party so yes, it could have been better if everybody were able to bring their drinks inside the club. In addition, that night was really cold so people there really tried hard to make a good party. The point is that the organisation has to plan these kind of things, you cannot do this when people already bought and brought all the drinks from their countries. We had a fantastic night, but you cannot split people and leave some outside the club. Even if they did not deny access, it was obvious that people were not going to leave their drinks outside and go inside – that would not be a real European Night if half of the people tried to introduce their countries without their products.”
Hard to find a place for European Night
Anybody who has previously organised an event probably knows that finding a club to host it, allowing people to use the space of the club, asking to get specific music played and even bringing alcohol on their own is a difficult task. The organisers of the Agora found “Vesting Bar”, or VB in short. The owner of VB agreed for European Night to be organised at this place, but of course there were conditions. The first was that he required the organisers to try to limit the amount of alcoholic drinks brought by the participants. The second was that the participants’ alcoholic drinks should be removed by 23:30. Both make good sense if one were to see things from the perspective of the VB owner.
The participants already knew
One of the organisers Bart Koornwinder explained that he and the rest of the organising team felt that they did everything they could to very clearly communicate these limitations towards the participants. It was first pronounced at the closing plenary. Later in the gyms the intercom was taken in use, stressing that all the participants including German, Polish and Spaniards were aware of the limitations of that evening. When explaining what happened with this particular situation Bart says this: “Until 23:00 we were very lenient with the amount of alcoholic drinks brought in. Only after 23:15 participants with alcohol on them were denied access. This was because the owner of the VB told us to do so. The reason is that these participants were extremely late and were carrying shopping bags full of alcoholic drinks. They broke both ‘rules’; they had too much alcohol on them, and they would never be capable to drink everything within the given time.”
At the same time when that was happening, the organising team started cleaning up the European Night. No drinks were confiscated but instead the organisers helped the participants decant their drinks into plastics cups. This way they could finish their drink, without the VB’s employees knowing.
Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København