It takes two bears to tango – NWM Aachen

A lot of fun, many interesting sessions, a beautiful house in the middle of the Eifel region, excited AEGEEans – these were my expectations towards the Autumn Network Meeting Aachen 2016 It takes two bears to tango. And I was not disappointed! We sadly haven’t had the chance to learn to dance Tango, but however realized how important it is to work together and how helpful it can be to share ideas and best practices.

To wrap it up: 50 participants from all over the AEGEE network – three including me from AEGEE-Dresden – gathered in Aachen in November 2016 to discuss not only AEGEE-related topics, but also political content. We had very intense conversations with politicians the organizers invited on the topic Brexit – has the cooperation in Europe failed? and related workshops later on.

Apart from those subjects, we learned a lot about team-building in the sense of learning by doing and on sharing best practices in smaller sessions. This was probably the part of which all of us profited the most, since it’s so important to be aware of challenges and chances within the own antenna. I was actually amazed by the fact that we had so many AEGEEans present who are active on the European level, so we had a lot of experience combined with some newbies and a lot of questions and space for talks on serious and fun topics.

The house we spent the weekend in was amazing, the polar bears a.k.a. organizers from Aachen were lucky to find a house in which all of us could sleep in real beds (<3) and could spend the breaks walking outside to the nearby lake.

The social program was amazing as well – after long days of sessions and workshops, everyone was excited about the parties. We had the legendary European Night, a Christmas Party, and a highlight for most of the participants – a campfire just outside the house. I am very happy to have attended this Network Meeting considering that I had the chance to meet many old and new friends from AEGEE! Big thanks for AEGEE-Aachen and everyone involved to have made this Network Meeting possible :)

See a video summary of the NWM here: