Blog

by Steffen de Beuker

For students in Groningen, the everyday experience is never boring. However, the last week of November was extra special, for a group of crazy Spaniards joined us to take a look in our glorious city. Five days filled to the brim with awesome tours, the occasional informative training and of course nights with the necessary beverages.  After dropping off the luggage, we started off the week with a test of everyone’s singing skills in the Karaoke night. This was the perfect opportunity to show everyone why they should be happy you didn’t pursue a singing career.

The next day we took our sore throats to explore the grounds of the SuikerUnie. We learned everything about the route of plant to sugar and finally to syrup, which we splash on our pancakes. We continued the tour from the SuikerUnie to show off our canals, our beloved student societies and many other interesting sites around the city like d’Olle Grieze, also known as the Martini tower. For our dinner, we went to a far-away area also called the Korreweg buurt. This is where we taught the Spaniards that throwing dice is not a matter of mere luck, and that the bottleneck for drinking beer is not made of glass. Afterwards we somehow managed to safely bring everyone to the city center to go to the various bars and clubs that Groningen has to offer.

The following morning everyone could do a bit of sleeping in to recover from the night, and prepare for the Language Course. One of the things that helped me recover from the hangover was hearing a Spaniard try to pronounce: “Wij smachten naar achtentachtig prachtige nachten bij achtentachtig prachtige grachten.” Afterwards we relaxed and played some pool and prepared our brains for what was about to come. Because in the evening our knowledge was tested in the pubquiz. Luckily, we we’re joined by our fellow Lugus members to bring some actual competition to the quiz.

On Friday we had a training about stress. We taught the Spaniards what types of stress there are, what causes it and how to turn it to our advantage. This came in handy for the city rally in the afternoon, where they had a limited time to complete as many crazy assignments as possible. This resulted in hilarious footage of getting bitch-slapped by random people, dancing with strangers and strawpedos in underwear. After dinner came the most radical night that is included in every ESTIEM event. We asked the people from Madrid to bring whatever foods and drinks are common in their region. As the tradition is that everyone who attends the event brings foods and drinks from their region, we brought our own as well. The result: delicious tapas and sandwiches richly laid with various meat types or interesting tomato spreads combined with copious amounts of Sangria and Dutch liquors like Berenburg and Goldstrike with a dessert of stroopwafels and pepernoten. Then it was time for agenda point: “Helemaal naar de getver.” (getting completely wasted)

On the last day we started extra late, and we discussed the night before while floating around in a swimming pool. There were talks of hot passion, awesome memories, lost memories and a tiny bit loss of teeth. In the afternoon there was some free time which was used to appreciate all the green that we have in Groningen and to prepare for the Gala Dinner. With fancy men and beautiful women, we celebrated everything that happened the past week and ended the trip with one last glorious night.

After getting to know everyone so well, saying goodbye was not my favorite part of the event. However, we will soon see them again when Groningen visits Madrid! All in all, this was an awesome week made rightfully so by amazing people.