Friday, June 8, 2012

Hel Surfin' 2012

Well, I spent 6 days in Hel, Poland just recently and had the time of my life. I flew from Munich into Warsaw, Poland and then on to Gdansk (where part of the EM 2012 will be held beginning today), enjoying both my first time in a non-English/non-German speaking country and a delightful read of "The Andromeda Strain" by Michael Crichton during the transit. I gained so much from this trip, but above all else are definitely my new friends and my first-time windsurfing experience.

The group consisted of a very interesting mix of students: many Germans (so I got to speak plenty of German while I was there), many Polish students, many Spaniards, a group of 4 South Koreans that all study at the same Uni in Munich as me, and many more. I was the only American and the only native English-speaker.

We all slept in small campers, mostly in groups of three. Each day we all had breakfast together after being awoken by loud music and banging on our doors at about 7:45am. We then had two windsurfing lessons through the day separated by lunch, and followed by grilling all together for dinner. Everyone grew ever more fond of the sausages we ate every night. Each night was also ended with a themed party, some examples being a pajamas party, sunglasses party, European party, and so on. We also did many supplementary activities, whether program-organized or not, which included soccer, kite flying, frisbee, "Kartoffel," banana boat riding, tight-rope walking, and many more.

I happily ended the trip on the last night very early in the morning, when I and two others went to the beach to watch the sunrise and run "free" through the sand and in the water. Apparently that morning, the small black dot which we had noticed in front of the sun at one point was actually Venus (http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/last-transit-of-venus-in-21st-century-will-happen-in-june-2012), which we later found out will not happen for another century and so is the one and only time we will see that for our entire lives. I'd say that's quite a unique event to have happened at the end of an already memorable trip.