Brussels, Belgium.

Hello my lovely people,

A warm welcome back to eatsleepcityrepeat!

After the lovely weather we had this Monday, why not have this blogpost to read on your way home from work/school/college.

This post is kind of different to my usual posts but as said in the last post, I would like to change things up.

I’m sure a lot of you (had no choice in the matter) but seenI was in Brussels last week! What was I up to?

Brussels, Belgium.

Stop number one of this year’s travels.

To begin, I would like to share with you all my idea todocument my travels from 2019 forward.

I decided to get a large Irish flag in my local discountshop, a sharpie marker and voila! The perfect little souvenir to create for yourself.

Each country I visit, I shall write down the city / town Igo to along with the country name and the date that I was there.

I attended the final event of the ‘messagetoeuropeans’ project. I would like to mention here that little did I think that a few days in Brussels would leave me feeling so inspired / motivated in moving forward.

‘The methodology of the Message to Europeans 3.0 was alsointroduced with an emphasis on the explication on how to elaborate the new EUnarrative through an active collaboration.’

The two-day event, was organised by EUCA, the EuropeanUniversity College Association.

I was going to put into my own words what this project was,but I know that the website did a more in-depth explanation –

‘43 student leaders, 15 countries, 3 teams, 1 mission. Theseare the numbers of the Student Leaders, a group of young people selected fortheir ability to enthusiastically engage people online and offline and fortheir passion for Europe.

Their mission consists in building engagement to raiseawareness and understanding in their local, national and internationalcommunities about European issues, creating thus a new narrative of theEuropean political project.

Organised in 3 teams, the Social Media Team, the NewNarrative Team and the Civic Initiatives Team, they will work from differentcountries but with the same purpose, a renewed European narrative.’

These people were amazing humans, I created great relationships with them all and I know for sure we will all cross paths again soon to build something special.

The two-day event was filled with activities such as –

Speakers.

Group work.

Debates.

The project was held in a comic book museum. It was so fun throughout our coffee breaks to have a look around and take in the moment.

The students had presented their proposals and received feedback from European Liberal Forum and executive director – Daniel Kaddik along with Wilfred Martens centre for European studies and policy director – Roland Fruedenstein.

They also received more feedback from the European Parliament, director general for internal policies – ‘Riccardo Ribera D’alcala’.

We also did exercises such as groupwork, discussing ingroups ‘The Future of Europe’. My groups topic was ‘Two Speed / Multi-speed Europe’.

We had three debates, all so exciting (things may have gotten a little heated).

On the final day we went to the European Parliament in Brussels and listened to more feedback.

Dutch politician and Member of the European Parliament, ‘Jeroen Lenaers’ was in attendance. This was also exciting for me as I am currently learning Dutch.

During the day, we tried to save the world and then when thesun went down, we got to take a step back and enjoy what Brussels had to offer.

Tasty waffles, cheap beer and lots of laughter.

This is where I feel like I got to really know the other participants and just create real connections.

It is crazy that you can spend but only three days with certain individuals and feel like you have known them for a lifetime.

Now I have been to many conferences before, so I know how they work – but I just feel that each person I had encountered had some life advice or story to tell me.

I felt and still feel so embraced by each person who attended the conference. I have an idea of how where I want to go now and how I am going to get there.