July 10th-12th, 2009: Aachen
For almost one year we’d been thinking of spending a day at the high ropes course with people from the Local Unitech Chapter Germany, but it never became more than just lip service. During the Winter Session in Brussels I was telling Melanie (UAA Council, Special Initiatives and Events) about this idea and about my thoughts to invite the LUCs close by. She immediately got excited and suggested to turn it into a UAA session. I liked the idea and, together with Christian, Sebastian (both 2008) and Jan (2003), I agreed on organizing something. To motivate Unitech Alumni from abroad to join we upgraded the program to a whole weekend with good food, partying, climbing, beach sports and barbecue. In addition we offered everybody from abroad to stay at one of our places to save the money for a hotel and to dive into the German culture.
So on Friday, after accommodating the guests from Paris and Delft, we started with a Welcome Dinner and some Drinks in one of the numerous restaurants at Pontstraße. There, we had the chance to catch up and get to know everyone we hadn’t known before. Since people from six different Unitech Years and five different nationalities were joining, we had lively conversations and good laughs. Thereafter, we sallied out to a 90s Party in the “Aachener Westbahnhof” and enjoyed good vibes and drinks.
On Saturday we met up at the University to take the RWTH shuttle to get to the climbing forest nearby. There we had to gear up and got an introduction and some instructions from the climbing guides. The forest offers six routes for climbing with a broad variety of obstacles, long slides, shaky ropeways and swinging steps. The bravest of us could even experience the thrill of a mountain bike ride over a narrow bridge in an altitude of 15 meters. After regaining solid ground under our feet we headed for the Rursee, a small lake, and were lucky to find the weather gods smiling upon us. We spend the time playing beach volley, soccer, ping pong and some of us couldn’t resist the urge to take a dip in the lake (which was actually very refreshing!). Having been active all day, we started barbequing with a ravenous hunger. Back in Aachen we went out to a dj set in the club “Jakobshof” and partied all night long…
Before our guests departed on Sunday we assembled for a big lunch buffet at a restaurant called “Galilei” and spent some more time together.
In the end, I want to thank everybody who contributed to this great weekend – it certainly was a lot of fun.
See you all at the annual reunion in Aachen,
Jona