Low Lands Meeting 2006 in Eindhoven

Before to start to explain you the Low Lands Meeting, I'd like to write a few numbers :
3 (days : from friday to sunday), 2 (nights), 7 (hours of sleep during those three days), 170 (participants), 10 (Local BEST Groups : Eindhoven, Ghent, Leuven, Brussels (VUB and ULB), Louvain-la-Neuve, Liège, Paris (Ecole Centrale and ENSAM), Nancy), 40 (cents, the price of one Hollandia).

Now, I can start !

Thursday 19th

Once upon a time, I left rainy Torino (thursday 19th) for still more rainy Bergamo, going to a youth hostel - good and cheap BTW. There I met another Erasmus (a Spanish guy, from Saragossa, but studying in Viena) and spent one night before to go to the airport of Milano-Bergamo.

Nice view of Bergamo, from the railway station. You can't see them, but in the back there are green hills. It's really beautiful.

Friday 20th

The Alps mountains. I think (but I'm not sure at all) you can see the Mont Blanc.

A big lake somewhere between Italy and Switzerland (one bottle of limoncello for the one who gives me the right name).

In the morning (friday 20th), the weather was still cloudy in Bergamo, but anyway I was leaving Italy and going to Netherlands, where the weather was - exceptionnaly - better (i.e. not rainy and even a bit sunny !).
So, arrival at the airport of Eindhoven, travel to the station, lunch, and trip to the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e).

The main building of TU/e.

The Netherlands, the country of the bikes...

In the main building of TU/e, you can easily find the BEST office : just ask to somebody, or look at the messy office downstairs. Actually, when I saw it, I thought about my sister's room during exams (that is a lot of mess, not easy to imagine). You can find almost everything there : computers, fridge, chairs and divan, maps, deodorant and several kind of alcohol (and Hollandia beer of course !).

The BEST office of Eindhoven...

... where you can find (almost) everything!

A trolley full of Hollandia. Now, you mutliply it by a huge factor, and you get the amount of beer for the LLM.

Initially, the participants coming by train (or by plane as me) had to go to the Eindhoven station, then take a bus till the middle of nowhere, and then call an organiser to pick up them from this bus stop and bring them in place called "rukbunker".

The rukbunker

Tents close of the rukbunker (there was not enough place there for 170 people).

Dear reader, because this blog has also an educational goal, and also because most of you don't speak Dutch (or not well enough) I'll explain you what "rukbunker" means before to continue this story. Open the brackets.

In Dutch from the Netherlands, when you want to speak about a place in the middle of nowhere, you add "ruk-" before the name of the place. So, "rukbunker" means "the bunker in the middle of nowhere". Actually, it's not really a bunker, it's a kind of farm, but very rustic ("back to the basics" was a part of the slogan of the LLM...). For instance, there was only three showers for all the 170 participants, and I won't speak too much about the toilets...

However, in Flemish (i.e. the Dutch from Flanders, the Northern part of Belgium), "ruk" is coming from the verb "rukken" that means "to masturbate". So, I let you translate "rukbunker"...

I thank Jan for this explanation, that permited me to understand the little subtilities existing bewteen Dutch and Flemish.


OK, now we can close the brackets and continue the story. On this beautiful friday 20th of October, all the public transports were working well, except - of course - the buses from the railway station of Eindhoven till the LLM place because of a short strike. Now, you can maybe understand why I want a car when I'll finish my studies!

Anyway, as I said before, I was in the BEST office of Eindhoven, where I staid at least three or four hours. What could you do there? A lot of things, like :

• drink a Hollandia from the fridge,
• try to prepare a bit the BEST Knowledge Transfert by mail with Salua,
• prepare the 170 survival guides and welcome packs.
  

Just to print and to staple the survival guides, we (Sjoerd, Rudy and myself) spent at least one hour. The kind of thing everybody should do at least once in his/her life to enjoy more the life afterward.

Sjoerd (Dutch) and Rudy (Austrian) busy with the magic machine, spending about 1 hour for making 170 the survival guides...

After all this great moment, it was time to leave Eindhoven and to go to the rukbunker. There, after a - unexpected - good dinner (pasta, nothing very different than my current Italian diet) and the arrival of more or less everybody, we were ready to start the party (and also to prepare the trainings, case studies and knowledge transfer sessions of the saturday) till early in the morning (around 5 or 6 a.m.).

Let's start the party!

Céline (LLN), Jean (LLN), Jan (Bxl), Emilie (Bxl), me, Shreg (LLN)

Saturday 21th

As usual in BEST events, the moto "work hard, party hard" was respected. In practice, it means firstly : wake up, shower and breakfast at 8 a.m.! Then case study about how to organise a Summer Course (easy : just be sure that there are enough old and experienced members ;-), followed by a travel to TU/e. There, BEST knowledge transfer (i.e. explaining to the newbies how works BEST), lunch and presentation of one of the sponsors of the event.

BKT session (yes, we don't party all the day!)

Afterwards, something more interesting (I agree, I'm speaking like an alcoholic, but I'm not) : the drink with the representants of the sponsor company.

The drink after the presentation of the company

The afternoon was already almost finished, but we had to wait for the bus bringing the second group to the rukbunker.
But what can we do after a drink ? Another drink for sure ! This time, it was without the representants of the company, in front of the BEST office. Let about 50 BESTies together, cheap beers and wait at least one hour. At the end, you can hear sweet songs in the TU/e building, and also in the bus (look at here and here).

BESTies from Eindhoven, providing the beers during the second drink.

Xavier (Fr), Nicolas (Fr), Jeannette (Finnish), singing some unfamous Finnish/French drinking song during the second drink...

Finally, we arrived at the rukbunker, ate some fries, had a speaker corner (I write it in a few words, but actually arrival+dinner+speaker corner last two or three hours) and started the International Evening (IE).
The principle of an International Evening is quite easy : everybody brings typical food and drink from its country, you play some music and that's all. It's the most famous evening in BEST. Almost every BEST event has an IE.

International Evening !

Louvain est là, chalalalala!

DJ Egbert!

Sunday 22th

Like on Saturday, wake up, shower and breakfast around 8 (maybe 9) a.m. Unfortunately for me, it was already time to say goodbye and to go to the airport. The end isn't very funny : flight Eindhoven-Milan, bus Milan airport-Milan central station, train Milan-Turin.

I know, it was maybe a bit expensive (in time and money) to spend only one weekend at the LLM, but I can ensure you that you should go there to feel what I felt!
Thanks again to LBG Eindhoven for this weekend!

Goodbye Eindhoven !