We met the best dancer in all of Central-Eastern Europe. (in progress)

The highlight of my trip to Strasbourg, France was...you guessed it, meeting the best dancer in all of central eastern Europe.

BCA promotes peace and justice as part of their slogan and once a semester BCA sponsors a conference open to all BCA students studying in Europe as well as European students studying in various countries. It's an all-expenses paid trip and is probably the highlight of this semester. BCA paid for every single part of our travels, including the buses we took in Barcelona and the trains we took to get to Strasbourg. It was great!

On Friday morning we all met up at the bus station to catch our flight from Barcelona to bum-f**k-nowhere Germany. Apparentley, the closest airport to Strasbourg was Germany...another country checked off the list. We boarded the plane...a RyanAir flight, we were so lucky. Being the intelligent RyanAir travelers that we are, we stood at the gate before anyone else did and were the first people on the airplane, it was great!

We landed in at the Baden-Baden airport in Germany. Strasbourg, France and Baden-Baden, Germany are about a one hour drive apart from each other. And, apparently, the closest RyanAir airport to Strasbourg. We were met at the airport by a BCA Strasbourg student who was very nice. We rode the shuttle bus from the airport to the train station, where I at streusel. Deeeelicious. We hopped on the train and headed for Strasbourg.

We were finally in Strasbourg, at 3pm in the afternoon. It was a nice day, so instead of taking public transportation, we walked to our hotel; taking pictures and being toursts. We immediately dropped our stuff off, sat for fifteen minutes and then headed to our first conference of the weekend. There were about eight of us from Etown, so it was really great to see some faces that I knew.

We met the panelists, six men, who are probably the smartest people I have ever come in contact with. After two hours of them using the biggest words I have EVER heard in my entire life, we headed to the BCA office for dinner and wine. It was so great to have everything paid for, not to mention the free wine. We managed to smuggle an unopened bottle out and drank it in our hotel room that night.

The next morning started out with FREE breakfast and then conferences all morning. The topic was about Obama and his affect on the European Union. There were students from Germany, Poland (the best dancer in all of Central Eastern Europe) and Greece.

After the second day of conferences we headed out to explore a little bit of Strasbourg and stumbled upon a little carnival where we ate crepes and played a couple of the games. Dinner was provided by the hotel, which was interesting to say the least. We´re pretty sure there was this cabage thing, which we all thought was onions that looked delicious, when in reality was awful.

The european students were staying at a different hotel, so they walked over to our hotel and we head out for a night of drinks with the germans. Because we were such a large group, and there were literally three bars in all of Strasbourg, we split up. I stayed with some of the girls from Etown and we ended up at an Irish pub.

The following morning was rough to say the least. However, the Barcelona girls decided to start the morning off early and walk around Strasbourg. We walked over to Le Petit France, which was really great. The houses were so picturesque. We then decided that we needed some coffee if we were gonna make it through the day. And then we happened to stumble upon a super fancy cookie place. 8€ and 20 minutes later, I walked out of there with four cookies. Probably not my smartest money decision, but well worth it.

 

We had conferences all day and ate free lunch. It was great. The conference finally came to a close. It was a lot of learning about not only the United States and the European Union, but about being more green, and how we can take what we´ve learned from the conference and spread it.

All in all, it was a great weekend. Who wouldn´t love an all expenses paid vacation. I really need to find a job like this. We had a flight out early Monday morning back to Barcelona, on RyanAir. We were back in Barcelona before 2pm. It was great.

To see more of my photos, check out the Flickr album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasecarrie/sets/72157623753928372/