The Netherlands and Germany… One would directly think about beer, weed, and the Red Light District. The discovery made by some lucky participants could not be further from this! The Germans and Dutchmen like to discipline people. That is why between the 4th and 19th of July, participants realised what the word “justice” means during an AEGEE event. This was a surprising summer for those participants. A Summer University based on discipline? Welcome to Germany supported by Dutchmen!
How did it begin? Organisers from the hosting antennae, namely AEGEE-Mainz-Wiesbaden, AEGEE-Darmstadt, and AEGEE-Eindhoven decided to create a community of future masters. The task was difficult: how would they make 23 people from ten countries cooperate? Our troops need to keep together: eat, party, sleep, and… behave!
Our trip started in Mainz – a town located on the west bank of the river Rhine, and also included a visit to its twin city, Wiesbaden, which is located on the opposite bank. On one hand, these cities are connected by AEGEE, but on the other hand, we could notice a silent competition between the two of them. If you had asked which one was better, you should have taken into consideration with whom you were drinking beer at that moment – it was highly needed in order to avoid a conflict.
In Germany, a barbecue is definitely on the “must-do” list and we, of course, had a lot of those. We enjoyed traditional German beer and sausages; the best barbecue-maker was the handsome Zachi Großartig from AEGEE-Darmstadt – with a little assistance from his equally handsome brother, Eugene.
The traditional beverage for the barbecue was beer, but to my surprise, we also drank a lot of it in the wine region of Germany. But Germans don’t just drink it, they celebrate it! During our visit, we had the chance to experience a national beer game, called Flunkyball. This lovely drinking competition shows how discipline and beer drinking are combined in Germany.
Just take a look at the first paragraph of the Flunkyball manual provided by Benjamin from AEGEE-Mainz-Wiesbaden:
– Responsibility
(1) You are responsible for your beer.
(2) There should never be spilled beer. You will be punished if it is spilled, even if it is not your fault.
Our hosts invented some quite creative punishments. Some examples: if the Spaniards were late, they deserved a “spanishment ” – to push a car with the Dutch hosting team inside of it. If a Polish girl showered for too long, she had to catch a ball that people threw way too high for her. A group of AEGEE participants who secretly bribed one of the staff members and took a secret trip by car, had to roll on the grass all tied up together and pretend to be a car wheel! If someone wanted to make his or her way easier by taking a shortcut, our main mentor, Loek from AEGEE-Eindhoven, would catch them and assign a suitable punishment. That’s for sure!
I can tell you that the discipline building technique that Loek developed was successful. When we continued our trip to the Netherlands, I realised we had become a real SU community. During the second week of our SU, the punishments were much fewer, and one could see that all participants were united.
The most remarkable discovery I made during the Dutch part of the SU, was that the Dutch are the masters of creativity. The engaging activities that our hosts prepared for us were fabulous. They used everyday materials like cards, paper, or smartphones to make us experience virtual reality and engage in team games. My favourite one was when they asked us to spread in a square in the downtown of Eindhoven. Our host pre-recorded an audio track for us, which we listened to on our phones and MP3-players. Loek and Maikel Wagemans from AEGEE-Eindhoven, with their sexy voices, were giving us instructions on what to do and how to dance. An outsider could see 25 people spread in a square doing weird things at the same time; we definitely got some attention while bowing to the legendary Frits Philips, who meant a lot to the city of Eindhoven.
In the Netherlands, we had the chance to admire beautiful landscapes by cycling. We followed Vincent van Gogh’s path and visited the places where he created his masterpieces. Another time, we even crossed the border and visited a monastery in Belgium where the monks prepared a special kind of beer. I loved the idea of “bike and dine” – cycling to different places and being hosted for lunch by local AEGEE members. Besides the main theme of the SU, we had a chance to learn how to prepare traditional Dutch stroopwafels.
As we know, during our AEGEE events we often experience a “Spanish Ghetto effect”, but I have to say that this time, we truly enjoyed staying all together and no one felt excluded from the group. The best proof of it was that, at the end, both titles for the female and male “Best Participant” were handed to our Spanish friends: Lidia Conejo Garcia from AEGEE-Oviedo, and Gonzalo Hernandez from AEGEE-Alicante.
We were trained to be well-behaved and cooperative beautiful freaks. Finally, we all ended being masters at making the best Dutch-German cocktail!
During those two weeks of adventure, I met some wonderful people and experienced the real warmth of an AEGEE community. It was great to learn so much about the countries we had visited, but most importantly, I enjoyed sharing this experience with the others. Thank you guys!
Written by Dorota Stangel, AEGEE-Warszawa