There was a time in my life without AEGEE and I had no idea that a combination of four letters could change my life.
And you know what? It was like middle ages – a dark period without inspiration, adventures and hope. OK, maybe a bit less terrifying but most important there is a border: before and after the entry to AEGEE.
What I experienced then was extraordinary. Like when you get into Madurodam, Holland where you can see all the famous buildings of the country in mini version. If you go to an AEGEE event what you can see is whole Europe in one place. And when you enter this universe nothing will be the same. I am serious.
Alright, so I am writing this article about a European girl’s great discovery. Of course my first motivation was (like it was for many of us) to go to a Summer University just for the simple reason that I didn’t have meaningful plans for the summer. Then I bumped into a piece of colorful paper advertizing a beach, a lot of people from different corners of Europe who I could meet, and very attractively, reasonable prices. So I went for it. I remember myself sitting in a pub and crossing my fingers for my application. And after I read “you’ve been selected, congratulations” the stargate opened.
I was preparing very enthusiastically for my first AEGEE trip to sunny Alicante and when I arrived I immediately realized this was not going to be a regular Summer University. Here you need to be a superhero with a lot of energy. Actually all you need is (love…) energy. We laughed together, danced together, climbed together and cried when we had to leave. But there is a solution for everything in AEGEE, even for broken hearts so we promised to go to the next Agora to see each other again. Although it didn’t really work out but some of us were there and more or less we managed to keep the promise. What is more, we celebrated New Year’s Eve together.
Being an AEGEEan is like getting an identity, especially now after the AEGEE passport was created. I think most of us suppose we are way too little to change anything on earth. So did I. But if we work passionately on anything (except evil plans) we are automatically changing something. If not the whole world, ourselves definitely. So what an almost 1-year-old AEGEEan baby can suggest: dare to care.
Written by Kata Szabó, AEGEE-Piliscsaba