Western European Platform (WEP) is an annual international meeting of delegates of ESN sections from UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium and Ireland. It is hosted by different city every year; in case of 2017 it was Munich on 5th – 8th October, where 2 sections from Munich - ESN MESA München and ESN TUMi München organized it together. Its purpose is to enable sections to meet each other, to share knowledge and practices with each other, to set up cooperation and to get in direct touch with ESN international by its delegate, this year it was Kacper Olczyk, communication manager of the international board.
Sorry for being so official, this was just to let you know that we are not a usual University-of-Glasgow-based student society, but a part of a wider European student organization supporting students on exchange.
Now let’s have a look on it from a participant’s point of view, as 3 of our board members – Nikki, Mhairi and Katka were lucky enough to be able to go.
Thursday
With sleeping deficit even before the event started as we set off from Glasgow at 5.45, we got to picturesque land of Bavaria where the Sun was shining, illuminating perfectly ordered German settlements at noon. After 45 min ride by train we finally arrived in Munich – Bavaria’s capital. The WEP wasn’t to start until 20.30, so we had some time to do sightseeing (or sleeping). Of course that Glaswegian weather pursued us even there, so by 16.00 it was rainy and windy just like in our beloved Glasgow.
This didn’t matter though, as the majority of programme was going to take place indoors, beginning with Bavarian Night in Augustiner Keller, which is popular “Biergarten” (beer garden) near the city centre, where we were able to start networking with our fellow ESN colleagues, namely 3 board members from Utrecht, Netherlands (and have a traditional Maß (or 1l) of beer with pretzels).
Friday
Friday was the first day of plenaries, which took place at the Technische Universität München (TUM). After the opening of the conference by Kacper Olczyk chairing team introduced themselves and then Kacper presented mission, visions and values of ESN and introduced the international board, who are a group of dedicated volunteers living and volunteering full time in Brussels. Next presentation was by ESN alumni, association for graduates who “have ESN in their DNA”.
After coffee break we had ESN fair where internationally-based committees, who help sections and national boards, presented themselves in their stalls. During another presentation back in the lecture theatre we were reminded of our international partners, who offer discounts for all the ESN cardholders, so be sure to check them out if you have a card! Those are for example Ryanair (since end of May 2017 when partnership was signed, 10 000 cardholders have made use of this discount!), Logitech, Ultimate Ears, Dr Walter, Woutrip etc.
Then we attended the presentations about long-term ESN projects like electronic learning agreement for Erasmus students, which should make the process of applying for exchange require less paperwork. The second presentation was about Erasmus+ app which is being developed and enables you for example to sign previously mentioned electronic learning agreement electronically or to see events happening near you.
Another project is Erasmus Without Paper, which would make results of exchange students transfer automatically between universities, but this one is more difficult to implement because of the differences between computer systems of universities.
After lunch we were showed a presentation about change of the ESN’s logo which will happen by the end of 2019. Yeah, I know, we’ll miss the old logo, too, but life is a change, eh? Especially for ESNers I would say. And, funny fact, did you know that when you turn current logo upside-down then there’s written usa? Currently a new logo is being developed by award-winning Dutch company Koeweiden Postma, the same company which made the design for the city-dressing of Amsterdam during inauguration day of Dutch king in 2013.
Finally, at 15.00 we attended something else than presentations! It was a colleagues meeting with delegates from other ESN sections working at the same position in their board as we are. Here we could exchange our knowledge and practices and advise our colleagues if they had any questions or problems.
Then we had another coffee break followed by hour-long workshops of maximum 25 people about topics ranging from social impact measurement to how to master the Satellite (basis of our website).
Last round of Friday’s presentations was the Showcase – 3 best sections’ practices were selected to be showed at the WEP and then each section (e.g. ESN UofG) had to vote for the one they liked the most. This year’s chosen sections were ESN Geneva, where they organize a rally around the city pairing 1 exchange and 1 home student, ESN Lausanne, which create groups of exchange students working out 6 days a week and ISN Leiden which lets exchange students found their own clubs like cooking club, book club etc.
The last point of Friday’s programme at TUM was speed meet me with a group of delegates from other sections where we had 3 minutes to talk with each one about a particular topic, mainly issues in our sections and how we deal with them.
At last we returned back to hostel, but not for very long time as we had to pack all the food and drinks we brought from UK and head to Eurodiner, where every delegation had its own table presenting their national food and drinks. UK had for example Tea Cakes, Caramels, Cheddar, Irn Bru, shortbread, gin and tonic and much more. My favourite table was the Swiss one though, as they didn’t fly to Munich hence weren’t restricted to certain amount of luggage, their table was full of chocolate and cheese, not to forget fondue prepared over candles. However they didn’t have enough bread, which could be resolved easily by first visiting German table with traditional German bread. In addition to all this, Organizing Committee decided to give us a gift – free Bavarian beer throughout whole Eurodinner. What a perfect night!
Saturday
I the morning we had another 2 rounds of workshops. This was quite a good idea as everybody was still tired from previous Eurodiner night. In workshops I chose we had to identify causes of ESN and compare them with causes of other international institutions such as Council of Europe, AEGEE and EU Youth Strategy and to decide which causes we should deal more with.
The second workshop was about team-leadership and self-leadership. In teams of 5 we got instructions modelling an origami factory. After certain amount of time we analyzed our teamwork and different models of leadership as every group had different type of leader which caused different results at the end.
After lunch the review of ESN started as logo is not the only thing ESN plans to change. It is also its structure, which needs to adjust to growing number of new sections. This took us basically whole afternoon.
In the evening we had got back to hostel, dressed up and headed to city centre of Munich, where we had a fancy gala dinner celebrating also 30th birthday of Erasmus+ programme.
Sunday
In the morning we had to finish the ESN review. After then Rosie Birchard, former president and co-founder of ESN UofG, who now lives in Rotterdam working for Housing Anywhere, had a presentation about this international student accommodation platform enabling renting out rooms to exchange students and helping exchange students to find a place to rent during their exchange.
During another coffee break we voted for our preferred practice from previously-mentioned showcased practices. After then a delegate from ESN Lausanne introduced International Erasmus Games, which is the international sport competition with exchange students participating for the country they’re doing their exchange in. It is held in a different city every year, last year it was Porto (Portugal).
This was followed by another presentation about the housing problem occurring mainly in Netherlands, but also in other countries. This is one of the biggest challenges exchange students and thus ESN has to face. The issue is caused by lack of student housing which also increases the price of accommodation not talking about the fact that statistically 17% of exchange students face attempts of frauds when looking for an accommodation.
The results of the best practices showcase were then announced and something unexpected happened. Not 1, but 2 practices won, as the ESN Lausanne and ISN Leiden had both the same number of votes. This did not lead to any clash of sections though; we as the Western European region of ESN are going to have 2 sections representing our region in the final alongside with winners from other regional platforms.
Unfortunately, this was the last point of programme of the WEP. In the emotional ending we were able to thank the chairing team and organizing committee and they also expressed their thanks to us, the participants.
As the last gift they provided Bavarian Weisswurst with a pretzel, sweet mustard, potatoes and nothing other than more free beer.
As we still had the whole afternoon ahead with our flights mostly in the evening, a part of UK delegation did a walking tour around city centre of Munich passing around Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (another one of Munich’s biggest universities) and Siegestor, which is Munich’s triumphal arch, then walking through the Englischer Garten – a park called also “Munich’s green lung, and the Eisbachwelle, an artificial wave on the river in the said park where people are surfing basically in the middle of the city. Next to it is the Haus der Kunst (House of the Art) which we also visited for about 15 minutes. We also passed through the Hofgarten surrounded by buildings of Bavarian parliament proceeding to Marienplatz via Odeonsplatz. Marienplatz is one of main squares in Munich; the spectacular city hall is located in there. We finished our walk by approaching the Frauenkirche, which with its 2 towers reaching the height of 98m above the city dominates the Munich’s skyline.
We then finished this amazing journey at around 2am on Monday when we got back to Glasgow.
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