fredag 1 augusti 2008

CEMJA 2008 - Reception Weekend @Dresden

For those who doesn't know, the lovely intern here has been travelling the last month. Countries visited: Spain, Italy, Poland and Germany. Except for Italy, all of them had a little bit of AIESEC soul involved! :D

The whole idea about Spain came from Minna.
In Poland (Krakow) I stayed at the trainees building (almost 25 trainees there… amazing), just one week after the ITM Krakow(International Trainees Meeting), which seemed to be awesome (so nice that some trainees from other countries stayed there for one more week).
And from Poland I went to Germany with 3 more Brazilian trainees to the CEMJA 2008 (Central European Mountain Jumping Adventure), a Reception Weekend(RW) organized by @Dresden. And that's what I wanna talk about.


This is the kind of thing extremely common in the LCs from Germany. Almost every weekend there is a LC offering an event like this, taking advantage of the place where they are located. For example, now in August @Rostock is promoting a RW because they have a big maritime summer festival in the Baltic Sea, in September @Munich will promote another RW for the Oktoberfest.

But what's the whole point about a RW? At first, I thought it was an event to introduce the trainees working at that place to their own host city, with competitions, city tours and so on. But actually the whole thing is bigger than I thought. It is advertised among trainees from everywhere, and even non-trainees (member from other LCs, alumni, etc) come. The final result was almost 40 people from more than 20 countries. No sessions, no lectures, that's true. But, you know, sometimes it's not necessary. When you have so many people together having fun, getting to know each other, taking part in a nice Global Village and of course talking so much about AIESEC, the output is automatic. It's even a way of promoting the host LC and promote your city/country. From now on, I can recommend anyone to go to the Saxonian Switzerland(region where the RW took place - although it still is in Germany!!!) and nobody will regret.

Let me talk now a little bit about each day. We arrived at the site of the RW (30 min. from Dresden) almost at 18.00 on Friday. AIESEC rent a kind of hostel/house for that. Very nice accomodation. This first day was short but maybe the most important because we had the Global Village...more than 20 countries together is something at least interesting. People may agree that after some time, the Global Village became a Brazilian party, after all, we were the biggest delegation (5).

The next day
we woke up early to go hiking and climbing. The Saxonian Switzerland is breathtaking. After 3 hours walking, having some health competitions and following the “AIESEC way” we finally arrived at the place where we should climb. It’s harder
than I thought. Then 2 more hours hiking back to the
site.

Barbecue night, roll-calls, roll-calls and roll-calls, a nice night walking to see the moon and the stars, and of course a lot of talking about AIESEC.

On Sunday, the last day of the adventure, we had a river to go down by boat. Around 5 hours rowing under a hot sun! One more time, a lot of breathtaking sightseeing. In the end of the day, it was time to go back to Dresden and have some city tour. I couldn’t stay because I had to go to Berlin to catch my flight back to Sweden and I had already seen the main touristic spots of Dresden earlier on Friday.

Result: a lot of new AIESEC partners from every place you can imagine. When they knew that I was trainee in Sweden (the only one there) everybody was curious and really interested about knowing and travelling to Sweden. See? Not just Brazil has a good reputation. Maybe this is a lesson for a future event in Uppsala. Considering that the cities take advantage of important events to realize a RW, I can’t think in another thing that not Valborg to promote the same thing here. Maybe a good idea for next year.

I loved this RW and from now on the ones in Germany will always have a place in my schedule. After all, besides fun, culture and AIESEC, it’s cheap (in Dresden it was less than 400 SEK for accomodation, food, instructors for the sports, …)

Hope some day we reach the same popularity!

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