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Budapest, Braintrainer, Brilliant

Intro

In July this year I, Jesper, travelled together with Anton to the Braintrainer anniversary event in Budapest. With us both being just inaugurated as board members of LG Groningen, and only having had just one (awesome) experience with the Poznan Exchange, we decided that it would be a good idea to discover ESTIEM during a ‘real’ event. And where could we do that better than in the sunny Budapest? I will not give a standard day-to-day report of this event, but will explain our experience on the basis of the aspects that make an ESTIEM-event an ESTIEM-event.

The Trip

Travel costs are most of the time the biggest expense when going on holiday. With ESTIEM this sure is not always the case. To begin with, Lugus provided us with 75 euro compensation on travel because it was our first official event. In combination with smart booking of flight tickets you can keep the costs low. Especially when travelling to east-European countries such as Poland, Bulgaria and in this case Hungary you can get your ticket cheap. Most of the time it’s smart to fly with a low-budget airline. When flying to eastern Europe WIZZ-air is almost always the cheapest. It maybe won’t be the most amusing travel for your legs but it’s all worth it! Also for the more popular countries cheap tickets are possible if you are early with booking and take weird departure times for granted.

Budapest

Budapest is just extremely awesome. The moment we arrived at the metro-station we experienced the “open”-vibe the city has. In the summer months all the streets are crowded with students from all over the world. Every evening we spoke to people of at least 10 different countries. Our hostel was just around the corner of Déak ter, a park in the middle of the city. This was the only location where it always was allowed to drink in public. With a wide collection of cool bars in the middle of the park this was the ultimate late-evening spot. The cost of living was really low. The price of a beer was around 0,50 - 1,00 euro. The Public transport was also cheap; a monthly unlimited card costs around 10 euro’s. From our hostel to the university was a 15 minute trip including the tram. With the daily temperature being over 35 degrees, it sure was a hot week. Luckily Budapest was prepared for these extreme circumstances. All terraces were equipped with mist-fans which ensured you could enjoy your cold beer without getting soaked from sweating. The nice thing about visiting a city during an ESTIEM-event is that you don’t see the city as a normal tourist but as a student. Don’t think you will miss everything that the city is known for, you will still see them. But the Estiemers of the Local Group (LG) will always show you things you would never had thought of yourself to visit.

Braintrainer

The event was in honour of the 5th anniversary of the Braintrainer, one of the ESTIEM-projects. It focuses on self-improvement through different trainings with an overarching theme. For illustration: the next Braintrainer in Gdansk, Poland, from 26 November till 2 december has the theme “Hidden between the lines”. The main subjects are communication, emotional intelligence and body language. The Braintrainer in Budapest was a special one because of the anniversary. There was no theme and the focus was more on partying, reflection of the past 5 years and looking forward on what is yet to come. Off course, there still were some training’s, which were of different themes.

Activities

When we were not being trained the LG had a lot of nice activities for us. Every ESTIEM-event knows some standard-events such as pub crawls and drinking game-night. But there is one activity that is so epic and almost always is the best night of the event; the International Night. All countries present bring specialties and drinks(especially drinks) from their home town. Mintu from Finland, Rakia from the shed of the grandpa of a Hungarian girl, Limoncello from Sicily, and of course our beloved Groninger Hooghoudt Jenever. Combined this leads to an awesome night which mostly ends with memory loss. Besides this classis ESTIEM activity, LG Budapest had a lot of surprises for us. The most epic was the spa-visit in the morning after international night. Budapest is known for her great variety in bathhouses. After a night of heavy drinking the herbal baths and saunas restored us completely. But that wasn’t what made the spa visit so epic, this spa was located next to the Danube, and had an amazing panorama pool which gave you a perfect view over Buda and Pest(the both sides of the Danube).

Brilliant

 Anton and I had an awesome week. This event showed a lot of what ESTIEM has to offer. For me the perfect mix between serious and fun events, which fitted perfect in my summer holiday. For a first ESTIEM-event I would strongly recommend a similar event, where there is plenty of room for non-serious events. Europe3D’s are a good example of that. Another great opportunity is of course the yearly exchange which will take place in March this year. More information will follow soon, stay tuned! And as always, ask everything you want to know about ESTIEM to someone dressed in orange.

- Jesper Neeleman