Besides the busy life of the Comité Directeur (CD) members focused on the development of our association, The AEGEEan had the chance to ask the CD members some personal questions. Have a look and get to know the CD personally.
1. What is the item from your home you could not live without when moving
into the CD house in Brussels?
Anna Gots (Financial Director): The pinky calculator from Espe (Remark from The AEGEEan: Esperanza Rodriguez Medina, the President of Audit Commission), which she presented to me at the Spring Agora Enschede.
Miguel Gallardo Albajar (Projects Director): I always travel with my Swiss army knife. It can be very useful during the transition barbeque to look really prepared for anything in front of some of our stakeholders.
Beáta Matuszka (Network and Human Resources Director): I was thinking for a while, as usually I am not really attached to anything, but then I realised what was half of my luggage: my Irish step shoes and my Italian/Hungarian coffee maker. It is really unfortunate that I cannot use the first one for a quite long period of time, but I do my best to get back on the track – at least my CD fellows don’t need to stand that I am dancing around in the house in those noisy shoes like Flatley.
Kathrin Renner (Vice President and External Relations Director): I created quite some laughter when I arrived to the house, because as I had the luxury of my parents bringing me with quite a big car, I took everything. The item that caused most amusement was my beloved mirror, white, baroque style. Huge. Yes, I brought a mirror. My second item was Winnie Pooh: I got him from the CD 2010-2011 when I left the house as assistant. Now he had to come back home of course.
Pavel Zbornik (European Institutions and Communications Director): I have a bit geeky answer, I brought with me my external drive where I have all my music, movies and other important data.
Lucille Rieux (Secretary General): I came by car to Brussels, so for once, I was not as limited as when travelling by car. For me it was very important to be able to carry my guitar along with me. I am not a professional player, but having it around makes me feel better, and playing guitar is one of easy ways for me to rest my mind and disconnect from everything just by playing a bit. I also figured out that it could be nice for my housemates to have some live music once in a while.
Luis Alvarado Martinez (President): My favourite item is my Ipod with my music.
2. What do you drink in the morning, coffee or tea?
Anna: Tea.
Miguel: I am more for milk with cereals… but if I have to choose, it will be tea.
Beata: Oh, definitely coffee! I love special coffees, their taste and smell, so sometimes it’s not just addiction, but state of art.
Kathrin: It depends on the mood, but mainly tea.
Pavel: Black tea.
Lucille: I am a tea-addicted, easy to decide.
Luis: Depends how much I have slept the night before.
3. How well do you speak French? If yes, how would you translate the following sentence: “The next year will be the best time of my life.”
Anna: Well, my French is zero level so far. Therefore, in order not to cheat, I’ll leave this sentence to my colleagues for proper translation.
Miguel: I have been living in francophone countries for several years, so even if my Spanish accent is still strong, I do speak French rather well. Writing it is another matter, as I haven’t had many opportunities to properly study French. Let’s give it a try: “L’année prochaine serait le meilleur temps dans ma vie”
Beata: I am deeply in love with the French language, unfortunately sometimes I feel that this feeling is not mutual. I was learning for some years and I have general and economic language exam, but the level I can speak now is similar to Joey’s from the Friends:
“Phoebe: Well this looks pretty simple. Ok repeat after me: “Je m’appelle Claude”.
Joey: (…) “Je de coupe plough!”
(Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0583457/quotes)
Kathrin: Well, I can understand some, but when I try to speak I mostly mix it up with Spanish. Therefore, according to tradition: “El año que viene será el mejor año de mi vida.”
Pavel: In French I can say “Je ne sais pas” and there my knowledge ends.
Lucille: I think my French level is quite good, but I still lost a lot of my fluidity in the last years.
I am half kidding, because I think I lived too much time outside of France, and now I sometimes have trouble in building correctly the sentences in French, because I am used to other languages structure…But still, I can manage the translation: L’année a venir sera sans aucun doute, la meilleure année de ma vie.
Luis: I did my Erasmus in France and of course having Lucille near allows me to practice a lot, but of course there is always room for improving!: “Le prochaine année sera la meilleure de toute ma vie.”
4. What piece of furniture do you like most in the CD house?
Anna: My bed.
Miguel: No doubt, the barbeques in the garden!
Beata: The tiger counts as furniture already, I would choose that.
Kathrin: My bed.
Pavel: I don’t have yet any particular piece of furniture which I like more or less, it is just furniture.
Lucille: As you might know, the house is not in its best shape, and there are barely good quality furniture around, but well, I’d say I love the water boiler.
Luis: My bed.
5. If you would have the chance to move the CD house to any other place in
Europe, where would that be and why?
Anna: I still believe that the place of CD house is definitely in Brussels. Though in case there were other options, I would have moved it to the country, where visa regulations are not that strict.
Miguel: Well, I think that even with the weather and grey sky, there is no most suitable place for AEGEE to be located than Brussels. However, instead of Schaarbeek I would love to have the house closer to the city center, in a cosy neighbourhood walking distance from the center.
Beata: Hm, I am not the best person to ask, because I would definitely say Ireland, but I don’t even want to explain this, everyone already knows my reasons behind. Or I would move it to the UK – same weather, but better surrounding.
Kathrin: Barcelona or Lisboa! Somewhere where the weather is better, the sky is less grey and living is less expensive for sure.
Pavel: We were in August in Grand Canaria and it is not such a bad place for the CD house.
Lucille: I guess somewhere sunny wouldn’t be bad, I think the weather definitely influences a lot on our mood, so I’d very likely move it to a southern country, let’s see, Portugal, Spain or Italy…or a central city wouldn’t be bad either, like Budapest or Berlin.
Luis: Las Palmas GC, of course because of the weather.
6. Is there a CD appointed person for your lovely rabbits in the garden?
Miguel: Well, Kathrin feeds them (a lot) and I chase the cats off the garden in my free time. Apart from that, they are not included in the task division so I guess it is more of a common task.
Kathrin: I guess my motherly instincts have taken over and currently I am the one that feeds them most.
Luis: Miguel because he is the biologist.
(Remark from The AEGEEan: The other CD members also answered that Kathrin is taking care of the rabbits.)
7. Personally, what do you wish to achieve within the next year?
Anna: Personal growth: new knowledge, new experience, new challenges to overcome; learn myself better in order to improve; find out what I want to do further; become more confident; learn how to live with somebody and how to cook.
Miguel: If by the end of the next summer I have some spin-off adventure planned (a trip around the world, an interesting job opportunity, a challenging project to carry on) I will be more than satisfied. But right now it is too early to know what and how. The year will be long and full of learning, so whatever I imagine now will differ much of the real happenings in the summer 2013. And I like it this way.
Beata: This year is a really outstanding possibility to learn those things I never imagined I have the possibility to try out in my life. What I want to achieve is all rather connected to AEGEE, I would be more than satisfied if I realised all the dreams and ideas I started my year with and maybe a bit even more.
Kathrin: A lot of things. First of all, my tasks as External Relations Director as such come with challenges which I am really looking forward to. External representation and negotiation with partners are fields where I can learn extremely much in terms of networking, professionalism, communication. Then, of course, I am looking forward to playing my part in managing the team dynamics, coaching the others and being coached, learning together and pushing each other to new limits.
Pavel: Enjoy Brussels, not to be slave of my inbox and have non-AEGEE activities.
Lucille: I am sure this year will be a great opportunity to expand my comfort zone, just because living together with your team of co-workers, who also turn out to be your friend, is not a simple story. I am sure I will become more self-aware of myself and my habits, whether they are nice or less nice ones, becoming more open-minded but also enjoying the potential of group thinking! Of course, after this year, I hope I will have a clearer idea of what is it that I want to carry out in my future, because I consider this year as a chance, to actually explore different topics, different situations. If in one year, if I have a clearer picture of who I want to be and what is it that I want to make a real change about for the next years, I will be extremely happy.
Luis: Finish the term proud of the job we have done and given to the association and having grown a lot.
8. What is your favourite type of chocolate/beer/ice cream?
Anna: Very dark chocolate (90%) or a bit lighter one with the walnuts.
Miguel: I like beers with character, so I am escaping the mainstream beers like Heineken whenever I can. Here in Brussels it is like a paradise for me, as they are proud of the beers and they really have a variety.There are more beers than opportunities for tasting them all. No stress!
Regarding chocolate, I like it dark and bitter. Combined with red chilli is great if the proportions are right.
Ice cream-wise: I like them all, but I prefer not to combine fruit-based ice creams with milk-based ice creams.
Beata: I didn’t have the possibility to taste the Belgian chocolates, so my favourite one is still the Cadbury (Brussels has one year to change my taste). Regarding the beers: I didn’t really buy that many kind of beers in Belgium yet but I went to a Belgian beer festival in Budapest in June and I fell in love with the Mongozo banana beer. But I prefer rather ciders than beers (e.g. Asturian sidra or Strongbow). Ice cream? Well, in Budapest there is a nice place where they make rose-shaped ice cream (near the Basilica), but the Möwenpick’s ice creams are also not bad.
Kathrin: Dark chocolate for sure/Castel Red, a dark cherry beer I discovered in Belgium and Ginger ice cream that you can get in a cafe in Passau.
Pavel: I’m not a big fan of chocolate or ice cream so I’ll answer about beer only. Belgium has many different types of beer and I would say that I mostly enjoy Lambic.
Lucille: I love milk chocolate, white beer and of course, chocolate ice-cream.
Luis: White chocolate always! Any beer will do! Yogurt ice cream!
9. If you would have the choice to learn the native language of one of your CD members, which language would it be and why?
Anna: I guess I would go for French, it sounds very good.
Miguel: I wish I could learn German just by wishing it, because it is a very useful one, but this has not been a strong enough reason to motivate me to learn it. On the other hand, learning to speak Russian has always been in my mind because of all the territory that it opens for traveling and discovery. And well, how cool it would be to speak a language like Czech or Hungarian!
Beata: I already started French and Spanish in high school and continued during my university year, it would be great to improve them. But if I had all the time of the world, I would learn all of them, I really like to feel confident in a country and one of the ways is to know the language.
Kathrin: French, because now I realise how useful it is. Spanish, because I can speak it already, but I would love to speak it perfectly. Czech because I always wanted to be able to speak a Slavic language. Hard to decide.
Pavel: It would be Spanish and Russian which at some point I started to learn, but didn’t get so far.
Lucille: Haha, I haven’t yet heard Pavel speaking in its native language, so I don’t know how Czech sounds like. I think it would be cool to know how to speak German, because it is a very useful language, and Germany is a country I’d be happy to explore. I should see with Kathrin if I can trade some French stuff for her German skills.
Luis: I would ask Anna to teach me Russian or maybe Kathrin to teach me German! Hungarian would be way too hard!
Written by Stephanie Müller, AEGEE-Heidelberg