Cultural Exchange, Leuven, March 2012

Time to wrap up another great CE. This time seven besties went to Leuven in Belgium. The CE started on a sunday, but since all of us wanted to visit Brussel too, we went down a day in advance. In Brussel we got soaked wet trying to find the way to the EU parliament, our dear sponsor. Luckily the rest of the CE didn't continue the same way since we had awesome weather. One day it was even 23 degres warm in March!!!!

Belgium, a country of beer drinking french fries lovers, that they eat with clams was a positive surprise. Leuven ofcourse has their own beer, the famous Stella Artois. The beer that even the beer haters among the swedes gladly poured down the throats in the end of the week. The picture below is from a beer store that claimed they had every beer in Belgium, lets say that it was a few more shelfs than the one we see.

 

Beer was the word this CE hovered around. A stella was priced at one euro in the student bars, an irresistible price, we had a drafting class, a cantus (after all we were in belgium) and ofcourse a brewery visit. The brewery was located in the small town of Mechelen and was named something hard to spell. But they made beers like Gouden Carolus and Manblusser after a local cuffer. By the way, we had an awesome tour guide that appears on the pic below


 

A visit to Bruge was also on the schedule, nice city great day and all the belgian cities are all so damn cute.

 

Most days were spent in Leuven however, this student city with a vibrating nightlife from sunday evening to thursday. Yes you read right. In belgium all the students go home for the weekends to there parents to study we assume, because they partied like it was no day tomorrow the whole week. The student bars were plenty, but also the ordinary bars were ok, a stella was priced 1.7 euro....

However, everything wasn't all glamour and happiness, in Leuven it was the funeral for a lot of kids that died in a bus accident in Switzerland a few days before the CE started. Wasn't that Heverle you might say. Yes it was in the town of Heverle. But seriously, these belgians have a screwed up idea about when its one town or another, Heverle was at most a suburb to Leuven. We stayed in a house in Heverle less than 5 minutes with a bike from the old market in Leuven. So, in a swedish mind, the town of Leuven with a 90000 thousand inhabitants rather would be something like a few hundred thousands. Well thats if we not count Leuven as a suburb to Brussel since its only a 15 minute train ride center to center, hmmm.

Well underneath is a picture from the library, its more impressive from the outside, but it was so many cool buildings that we didn't care to take a picture. It was burnt twice by the germans and split once when they divided the university into two, so that the flamisch students wouldn't have to be friends with the french and vice versa. Makes sense right?

So, they built another city for the french ones, Louvain-la-neuve that also contains a BEST group by the way.

 

The swedish girls made some fools of themselves, once again :)

They got all nuts when we came to Vincents place. He had a really nice party crib in the middle of Leuven and posh homemade design like the tv-bar underneath, so I understand them a bit. But to scare the poor guy with asking him if its ok to bring the drunk food kebab to eat in his bathroom, since its so nice is on the borderline to crazyness. Well, I hope he will get over it...

 

 

Except that already have been written, check out the pics below, some nice houses, swedish dining and a pic on the really cool old market that also has europe longest bar, atleast according to the belgians.




Cultural Exchange with Nancy, Lund part



After almost a year and a half it was finally time for BEST Lund to host BEST Nancy. After a great CE in Nancy, their expectations was high. But since they made the lego here underneath, we think they were satisfied.


 

During the days we took them to Malmö there we visited the technical and natural science museum as well as the cold outdoor bath, which was very appreciated. During the week it was also a visit to Helsingborg and Helsingör as well as a city tour in Lund.

 

 

Also LTH, was visited, underneath is a picture from vattenhallen science center.

 

During the days it was only a few organizers with the people from France, since we all had school during the day hours. In the evening and the night we tried to make up for this. It was a swedish, indian and french evening during the week for example. In the picture underneath, the french people are learning the latest swedish dance moves with "Dansa med Leroy" classics as milk the cow and milk the bull received immediate succes.


Ofcourse we also had to show them the nightlife at the student nations. Here is a pic from a dinner at Krischansta nation, the night went later on to VG's nation. Also Lunds nation was visited during the week.

 

All in all it was a fantastic CE, with a group of great people, see you somewhere in Europe Nancies...

EBEC Lund, Ingenjörstävling i Case study och Team design med ÅF



BEST Lund tillsammans med ÅF inbjuder dig till tävling i Case study eller Team design. Vinnarna går vidare till den nordiska finalen i Stockholm 1-5/4 med möjlighet att avancera till den europeiska finalen i Zagreb senare i år. (Resor och uppehälle är betalt)

EBEC (European BEST engineering competition) är Europas största ingenjörstävling och varje år deltar mer än 5000 studenter från över 80 europeiska universitet.

EBEC Lund är första omgången för tävlingslystna LTH studenter. Ni studenter tävlar i lag om fyra i antingen kategorin Case study eller Team design.

Case study innebär att ni teoretiskt ska ta fram en lösning på ett verkligt eller fiktivt problem. Er lösning ska sedan presenteras för en jury som korar en vinnare.

I Team design ska det istället tas fram (byggas) en produkt som ska klara vissa krav, till exempel ett mindre fartyg som ska kunna transportera så mycket vikt som möjligt. Även här koras vinnaren av en jury.

Tävlingen äger rum under en skoldag och ni har ca fyra arbetstimmar på er att lösa uppgiften. Under lunchen håller ÅF ett lunchföredrag där ni bjuds på lunch. Kaffe och fika kommer att finnas tillgängligt under hela dagen.

Även icke deltagare är varmt välkomna till lunchföredraget! Föranmäl er på teknologkårens hemsida för att säkra en gratis lunch!

Preliminärt dagsschema ser ut som följer

09.00 Samling, genomgång av tävlingsregler mm
10.00 Tävlingsstart
12.00 Lunchföredrag med ÅF
13.00 Tävlingstid
15.00 Presentationer
18.00 Resultat/Prisutdelning

Ta chansen att sätta dina kunskaper på prov! Anmäl ditt lag idag på best.eu.org

Mer info om tävlingen och anmälningsproceduren hittar du på http://best.tlth.se/

End of the BEST fall 2011 and a look into the spring 2012

Yesterday was the last meeting for the year. The location was changed from the ordinary meeting room at kårhuset to the restaurant V.E.S.P.A next to clemenstorget. 13 besties got together for italian food, christmas gift exchanges and a good time. Almost everyone had given a lot of thought into the gifts, except one of the vice presidents who gave away a potatoe peeler in protest about the lack of help she received with this task during the BEST birthday party a few weeks ago...

The fall have been hectic but fun period, with events like pre- and post president meeting, WHIP-party, 20 years birthday party, the launch of the new homepage and so on.

The 20 years party which included a lot of alumni of the best group was a very fun two days event. The first night was a pub night, while it was a traditional student sittning during the saturday. The day of saturday was killed with some get to know games, socializing and talk about the development of BEST.

In the spring a lot of stuff will happen for the group in Lund. Next semester will take off with the organizing of the Lund local round of EBEC. EBEC is a european wide engineering competition. For an competing LTH student the event will look as follow, if lucky. First he/she wins the local round in Lund, which qualify them for the semifinal in Stockholm. In Stockholm teams from 10 of the nordic countries top universities will compete. From Sweden those universities are LTH, Uppsala, Chalmers and the hosts of the semifinal KTH. The winners will qualify for the european final.

More stuff that will happen for the BEST group is another organized WHIP-party, hopefully hosting a best-group from Nancy for a week. One week of cultural exchange in Leuven Belgium. And lastly preparing and organizing a summer course in Lund.

So for now, God Jul & Gott Nytt År

or we wish you a merry christmas and a happy new year

Interested in BEST, next meeting will be as usual in Perstorp, Kårhuset 17.15. Thrusday the first week of classes.

A short update of the summer and fall 2011

So, it have happened quite some stuff since last we wrote on this blogg.

First, we organized a very nice summer course in the first half of June. The course was about food technology and went under the name EAT ME!

Two weeks with a typical swedish summer weather, nice parties and lots of new friends.





In the beginning of September next big thing happened for us. We elected a new board.
At the same time we launched our new homepage, take a look, it's not all that terrible: best.tlth.se

On the page you can find who got elected and pictures of most of the members, or the ones who haven't been to lazy.
We also shar some other information that could be a fun read.

This fall, have been a bit busy, we organized a great WHIP party with 700 people attending. After that we have hosted the working meeting for BESTs international board, before and after Presidents meeting that have been hold in Copenhagen.

PM, from two different sides :-)




Cultural Exchange, Lund 2011

So, this last week, we in BEST Lund organized our part of a Cultural Exchange with Leuven in Belgium. In the fall we will visit them. 8 people from Leuven and a russian girl came to visit us for a week in Lund. In the days they had activities such as study visits; Maxlab, Vattenhallen, city tours; Malm, Lund and Museum visits and a Nature trip.

In the nights we had theme parties like swedish-, belgium night and sauna party together with ordinary eves at the student nations. It was a pleasure to have them all here, and now we will do as usual, here comes the pics.


The Natural Science Museum in Malmö


Submarine

Marlies as an old Queen fronting her troops

The cultural heritage museum in Lund

Flesh eating plants in the botanical garden in Lund

The lightbulb experiment

BBQ in Söderåsen national park

Crayfish instructions at Swedish evening

Regional Meeting, Lund 2011

BEST Lund organized a quite big event a couple of weeks ago, the Regional Meeting or RM. This is a meeting for nordic BEST members to have fun, share experiences and especially to discuss the future decisions that might be taken at GA - General Assembly.

This spring we had 80 people arriving to Lund on the Thursday. We when went to a scout cabin in the Scanian country side. Well, during the weekend it was a lot of seesions and some trainings, but anyway here are the pics.

Working Session ongoing


Time to play

Our Regional Advisor, Morten


Denmark, Iceland, Finland and Brazil (well somewhat :) is presented in this pic


PATRIK!! don't play with the food

WHIP-Wild Huge International Party

And it was time again, for BEST Lund to organize WHIP. This time in Gasque-salen, which means bigger than in several years. Almost 500 tickets was sold before the party, which meant that it was 100 at the door. To handle all the people the group had gathered all its members and got an extra hand of some outside friends. 2 bars had to be open during the night and several other tasks should be carried out. But its quite boring to write about, so watch the pictures, and remember that it was once again an awesome party.


a delicious meal of BBQ chicken was served before the party



To learn how to handle the cash machines wasn't the easiest

Some pictures from the night

I WANNA DAAAAANCE

It looks like people had fun atleast

And some workers even had time to be photographed

This guy (the main organizer) seemed to have all the possible time this evening, he got a date, and he played air guitar all alone on the dance floor so often that a guy finally approached him and said " Man, I really like your style, to come here to a party all alone without any friends, but just so you know, I can be your friend"
:P



Sara atleast was on here post while getting photographed

Some even worked (with a smile :)

And Jan, well Jan constantly worked as usual. Sometimes I even feel that he takes his responsibilities to serious. These guys just sneaked in to pee, but as you see



Patrik thought he had a middle name of 007 somewhere



Ok, those bastards look lazy, but they worked really hard, standing in front of the Carlsberg fridge and posing with a case even if we didn't sell any of that kind of beer.

A short look at the year 2010 in rear

(if you want to read more about a single event, go on to older posts)

We started the year of 2010 with a motivation weekend in Aalborg. Ten excited Lund members drove the five hours to Aalborg to meet with the local group and the BEST members from Copenhagen. In the weekend we both had a lot of fun and exchanged experiences and tips on how to work better with our tasks.

 

Back from Aalborg we organized our first Engineering competition at Lund University and was able to send two teams to NordBEC

 

 

The year before we had hosted one BEST group from Gliwicze in Poland and one group from Veszprem in Hungary as part of a three-way cultural exchange. And now it was time to check Veszprem out. 9 Members from the group in Lund headed to Hungary for an exciting week.

 

Right back from the Cultural Exchange, it was time for NordBEC. NordBEC was organized by the BEST group in Copenhagen but a few members from BEST Lund went south to helpout. After four days with engineering solutions it was sadly clear that neither of the Lund teams would go any further in the competition.

 

After NordBEC the organizational part for the group was on hold for a while. During the rest of the spring we did send delegates for GA or general assembly which is a big european meeting.

In the summer quite a few of the members went travelling through BEST and visited several cities around Europe, either as co-organizers or as participants.

In August it was time for the Lund summer course and we had 30 participants and 6 extra co-organizers here for two weeks.

 

Right after the course, it was time for a Board switch, Mia, David, Maria and Daniel left the board. While Patrik and Johanna decided to be part also of the new board but one different positions. Marie and Tobias joined them.

 

After this it was time for a new Motivation weekend, this time in Copenhagen, from foggy sources they think that a lot of good ideas came up, however they forgot to wrote them down. But, from somewhere a rumour was hanging around that the decision that Copenhagen would apply to organize Presidents meeting 2011 (which is an all europe event) with some help from its neighbours came up, and so got decide at PM 2010....

 

In the beginning of November it was time for the most exciting part of the fall, the Cultural Exchange with Nancy. 15 Lundies went to France for a week and had a lot of fun. As can be seen below.

After the Cultural Exchange we haven't done anything, except eating cookies. Btw what you have seen here it has been numerous small things that I'm to lazy to write here.

This spring we will organize:

A Cultural Exchange (in Lund this time) with Leuven and Nancy

(Hopefully) A regional meeting (Our application is being treated at the moment) Which is an event when all the nordic groups meets.

And in the beginning of the summer, a summer course.

Now, we all have exams, but on Saturday we will have a christmas party :)

Cultural Exchange [Nancy]

Friday, October 29

A group of excited besties met up early in the morning outside of kårhuset in Lund. Ahead of them was a long but fantastic trip awaiting. Two cars were rented and after a quick pack-in the group left Lund and Sweden behind. The journey time was spent with a quiz marathon, the winner will not have his name published here since he will be to cocky about it, so enough about that.

During the day we had a longer stop to stretch our legs and do some sightseeing in the wonderful town of Göttingen.

Close to midnight we finally arrived to Nancy. The BEST Nancy group was patiently awaiting our arrival and a glass of wine was immediately placed in our hands. We had a couple of hours to get to know each other before we went to bed.

Saturday, October 30

We had an early breakfast before we went out on a shorter city sightseeing. Most amazing was the beutiful square of Nancy, according to our french hosts, voted the most beutiful in Europe.



City Tour

'The Square'  in panorama

After lunch we went to the river, first we all paddled dragon boats. When this was done, the brave of us could paddle kayak in a bit more streamy water.





Sebastian had some troubles


It went better for others



In the end even Sebastian managed to stay on
When the day changed to dawn we took our cars and drove to Les Vosges. Finally there we were served a fantastic french dinner of melted cheese, ham and potatoes together with wine.





The traditional Pakito song

Sunday, October 31

In the early morning we took off to go to Strasbourg. In Strasbourg we had an guided river tour there we saw the fantastic architetcture of the city centre, the old defense systems, the modern european parliament and much more.

Lunch, eat as much as you can, we like


Some had trouble to keep the eyes open, others. Well he is just scary!

In the end of our time in Strasbourg we had a couple of hours of free time when we could wander around the city. In the night we went back to our Cabin house and played the game cantus dressed for Halloween.


They don't own the natural talent as Samsam on the former pic

and our dear President, well she is just embarassing, the most she can do is probably to tickle!
Monday, November 1

Still in the cabin we used the day to hike in the beutiful mountains. The weather was really nice, actually the best during the whole trip which was lucky and made the day great.

In the evening we headed back to Nancy and had a pub crawl.




Tuesday, November 2

As part of the cultural exchange the Lund group was going to be part of a creativity competition at the university. In the morning it was the introductory presentations, sadly everything was in french but it gave us a good chance to get some extra sleep.

In the evening our hosts had transformed the living room in the house to a replica of the Casino in Monte Carlo. Someone won a bottle of Champagne as the last one standing at 4 am in the morning, not a single Swede was among the last, so I can't remember right now who it was.

Wednesday, November 3

The day started as usual at 8 am, we was the whole day at school. In the evening it was Swedish evening. The evening started with a pre-course of knäckebröd and sill. After that we had potatoes, meat balls and cream sauce. Later in the night we served surströmming and snus. Sadly not everyone of our host could keep there food after that. During the evening we also tried to teach the french some useful swedish words and pick-up lines.



The waitresses, in traditional swedish costumes



Mmmm



Mmmm....


Mmmm, but most said uaagghh, an eloge to Daniel who served them
Thursday, November 4

The last day of the innovation competition we had to present our ideas. We had to choose two of them and decided to go for one idea about a hearing aid phone device and an interactive family schedule site. Both the ideas got positive responses from the company representatives (orange) and the professors. The presentations should be able to be seen on some french website, somewhere.

In the evening we had our last night together, Our hosts had set up an cabaret with highlights of Ocean carried out on a twelve strenged guitar and a number from moulin rouge. Of the swedes Christian stand out with his standup.



Yeaah, about that



He was more skilled than he looks


Swedish girls could learn from the french (anynomous)
Friday, November 5

It was time to travel back to Lund. The journey didn't start to well for one car, since we realized that the got a female GPS(based on behavioural similarities). Our GPS had, if nice, problem to decide a route there to go. The route continued to switch between Luxembourg and Hannover. A few times we drove out in a forest apart that it looked like a perfect highway. We got lost in Metz a half hour after we had started. But as the logical engineers as we are we took out a route based on the sun and memorizing and found our way home.

Whoever more problems were to come. The other car got into an accident on Autobahn and we both stopped until the police was done with examinating the damages and so on.

After all that happened we missed bordershop, but late in the night we were atleast back in Lund without more obsticles.

So at the end thank you Nancy for a wonderful CE and hope to see you all in Lund in the spring.


AND the group picture

October [update]

This October BEST Lund haven't made much noise around the campus of LTH, but a lot is happening in the shade.

To prepare for the exams last week we had our thank-you party for the Summer Course. The people who had been organizers in the summer was cooked a delicious meal of the members who were unable to participate in SC. During the dinner we also finished off the leftover beverages from th SC before some of us went to Lunds nation while other decided to call it a night. Normally we try to have some pictures in the text, but we will let that part be up to your imagination this time.

During October we have also been putting a lot of effort into fund raising. Right now we have two events that we are fund raising for, first we are going to organize an Local round of the engineering competition NordBEC and have been contacting companies for sponsorship.
Secondly, we have written a grant application for our hosting part of the Cultural Exchange as we will have with Nancy and Leuven.

Right now, everyone in the BEST group is looking forward to our soon to come trip to Nancy. 15 members will drive to Nancy for a week of fun on friday. More about the cultural exchange will come when we are back in the beginning of November.

See you

BEST Lund Annual Meeting 2010

 

After a year full of activities it was once again time for the Annual meeting in BEST Lund to elect a new board and other positions.


ex-MissPresident Mia is opening the Annual Meeting



Coockies, cakes, coffee and lot of motivation in the room




Johana holding a speach about why she is running for president of BEST Lund




Full suppor for our new president! :)




The tradition in BEST Lund goes as for each position you get elected for you are allotted a beer.





The blond part of the new board celebrating






Congratulations BEST Lund!

Motivation Weekend in Copenhagen

After a few weeks of no activities after the summer course, it was time for some work and party again :)
It was time once again for a Motivation Weekend (MW) the weekend from the 17th to 19th of September.

It was the It was a much needed one for us especially, after a bit of stress from the summer course and re-exams. The MW was in Copenhagen and even the LBG (Local BEST Group) from Aalborg was also joining us.

We were 3 people from Lund, and we were the dinner responsible for the first night.
Since everyone was really hungry when we arrived we got a lot help form other hungry BESTies to prepare the meal. After a great dinner we started with some get-to-know games since there were a lot of new people, which was good to see.
As one would expect we also had lots of Danish BEER, and I am not sure how many of us could remember each others names ;) :) but, still it was a lot of fun.
After a few round, no one remembers much what followed, it was just great music, some Tunak-Tunak dancing and all ended only after everyone went to bed.

3 BESTies from Lund relaxing after the dinner


The next morning everyone was a bit sleepy and no one woke up before 10 am. After some breakfast, it was time for some serious work.
We had two parallel sessions, one with PM preparations for the expereinced members and one for new members about the structure of BEST.

President's Meet (PM) is a big BET event for which Copenhagen, Lund and Aalborg are planning to be the host 2011.
It was necessary to do some brainstorming about it since it will be decided during this year's PM during November 2010 in Krakow, Poland. The session was rewarding and we came up with some great ideas of how to convince other BESTies that we will make it L-E-G-E-N-D-A-R-Y.


Silvia and Fernanda doing some brainstorming about the PM
while others take a well needed break.

 




Morten teaching new BESTies more about the organization


After a long day it was time for the last evening together, International Evening (IE).
Usually, we represent our own country in IE, but to make it more memorable, we were asked to choose some other different country and represent it.
So, we had countries like Scotland, Australia, Unknown Country from Africa and so on, the countries we usually don't see in IE's in BEST :)
We, from Lund, decided to represent, the country that no more exists, USSR, so we had our leader Lenin, Stalin and Gorbechev at our table and it was so much funny ;)


USSR present on the Motivation Weekend


The Scottish team trying to learn us some traditional song and dance
.


Rest of the evening was a typical IE!
Lot of fun and tastng food and drinks from different countes. We even got complaint from the neighbours and we had to lower the music. But, it did not stop us from continuing dancing and having singing sessions, Hel-And-Gore and some Danish drinking songs. It was an evening to remember for ever :)

BEST Lund Summer Course 2010

This year BEST Lund held the second edition of the biotechnology course that we had last year. Once again 30 highly motivated international students showed up in Lund and they got accompanied of 6 international BEST members (co-orgs and dis-orgs)  and the BEST Lund members in an unfirgettable two weeks.

The students attended ofcourse lectures during the days, but its about the evenings and nights you will be able to read about in this post.

Several traditional BEST Lund nights were carried out, like:

International evening
City Rally
Viking night
All year round
Sauna Party
und so weiter

and maybe the most memorable, the nobel party.

Actually, lets just see the pictures..... :)

Our dear main organizer, Patrik

A very scared guy

Moldova - International evening


Ukraine - International evening

Happy participants after viking games


Mmmm.. crayfish (chinese tho)

Please, don't look to close on this one

Group picture - Nobel Party


The course as remembered of the participants

From BEST Lund, we just want to say thank you to everyone who was here and we hope you had an as unforgettable time as we did, keep on rockin!

NordBEC 2010

LBG Lund was present at NordBEC (the nordic engineering competition) with two teams and four organizers. We were hosted right next to christiania in an old navy base for four nights. The schedule was packed with activities and people looked forward to the competition. Since I'm tired of writing, I will just show some pictures tho. The final result was that Copenhagen won both the case study and the team design, so this time LTH will not be represented at EBEC in Cluj-Napoca.

Check-in

Schedule

Count-down, case-study

Organizers, having lunch break

Uppsala, team design competition

NordBEC

Yesterday the first NordBEC in the history started. For you who don't know what NordBEC is, it is the BEST nordic engineering competition[Nordic Final]. This time its BEST Copenhagen who are the hosts. One hundred participants and organicers have gathered here in a big house on an old marine base.

If you want to see some livestreaming from the event, follow this link
http://www.livestream.com/nordbec2010

And here is the official site, there you can read more about it
http://www.nordbec.com/

Cultural Exchange in Veszprém 2010


This is the story of how BESTies from Lund invaded the country of Pálinka.
- and how they survived.

Arrival

We arrived in Budapest on a Sunday afternoon and after some comfused trips with the Public transport we mamaged to reach the Budapest train station where two nice girls met with us to join on the trip Veszprem.



We are not really sure why Jan and Jimmy got Love [louvae], but the rest of us believe it had something to do with the fact that it was Saint Valentine's Day and the stewardesses were giving it out to all the romantic couples on the plane...

 


Chillin' in da metro from the airport.


After arriving to the hotel, which was outstanding for being BEST standard,  we met up with the rest of our Polish and Hungarian friends.  We did some introduction games before we headed to the local pub where we stayed until, well…no one knows exactly…


At the hotel having an introduction and playing some welcome games.
- straight-cross?
- No, it's straight-straight!



Friendly Polish-Hungarian
foosball cooperation.


Day 1 - Start of the CE

The following day was the first planned day so after the breakfast we had the official opening where we received welcome packs containing some useful stuff like a shot glass, some maps and brochures about Veszprem and a very nice pillow!  We also got a presentation about Hungary including a language lesson with some useful phrases which later came very in handy, like micsoda fenek means 'One beer, please!' - a very useful phrase!

Official opening in the hotel.


This snowgirl awaited us outside our house in the morning.
I wonder who made her...

In the afternoon we had a traditional city rally, we were divided into 3 teams and got a list of various tasks to solve, everything from take a picture with a policeman to trade a lollipop for a condom with the locals.
While walking around in the sunshine solving the tasks we saw most of the central parts of Veszprem, a really beautiful city I must say!


You can almost see Sweden from this hill.


A beautiful day for sightseeing.


Old town of Veszprém


Snowball fight on the streets.


In the evening we had a 'Hungarian night' where we got to try different traditional Hungarian dishes, very delicious! We then continued with a Hungarian dancing lesson learning some basic dance steps by a professional dancer. Even though it was a basic lesson I’m not sure if our teacher was so impressed all the time by our attempts to follow his movements – in any way, we had loads of fun!


Barney presenting his "homemade" hungarian cookies.


Playing Twist to warm up for the dancinglesson.




Our dancing teacher showing some "easy" moves.



100 % focus all the time.

Day 2 - Museum & International Evening

On Tuesday morning we visited the Dezső Laczkó museum with an exhibition about the history of Hungary.
We were guided from the very beginning of the roman empire, followed by the middle ages when the first Magyars settled in the region, and later forming of the the Austro-Hungarian Empire and how it lead to Hungary today.


Maria is enchanted by a suit from the 20's

 

After the museum we had some free time so we did some last minute shopping for International Evening in a supermarket. However the security guy in the store was not so happy about us taking pictures inside and were threatening to call the police if we didn’t delete the images, which we of course did...
During the rest of our stay in the store the security guy was following every step we took and it was pretty funny to see his head sticking out from the shelves here and there in the store observing us.


This image is forbidden acording to Spar, so dont look at it!


I
n the afternoon we had some language lessons and presentations about Sweden & Poland and since Balaji is from south Asia we even got a presentation about his home country, India!

In the night it was time for a traditional BEST party – International Evening.
All of us prepared some traditional food and drinks from our home countries and presented it to the others.



Swedish table.
Unfortunately due to some problems with the logistics the kaviar and sill was left in the hotel. However after comming back to sweden we were told from the organaizers it tasted good :)




Jovic(s) is singing for us while the rest of the organizers seem a bit embarrassed :)



Balaji offering the camera-man some refreshments.


Too much for Love tonight.


When all plates were emty and all the bottles finished we went to THE place to be on a Tuesday night in Veszprem - Diák Centrum or “DC”.  With a big dance floor and lot of people it was an awesome party, as far as we remember…

Day 3 - Ice Skating & Pub crawling


The next day (Wednesday) it was time for another visit, this time a bit outside Veszprem to  the famous Herend Porcelain Manufactory which has been active since the mid-19th century manufacturing hand painted porcelain.
When we arrived we were served coffee while we got an introduction from the production manager, I must say that the coffee tasted better when drinking from a 200 euro cup instead of the usual paper mug at school.


It's all about the details!


The price of this horse had more digits than my phone number. No impulse purchase this time...

In the afternoon we went ice-skating which was really cool considering it was 10 years since last time for me, luckily I was not the only one who was a bit stiff in legs.  But after some time it went pretty well and I guess my long days at the ice rink as a kid was not in vain after all.



The only thing you had to watch out for was the walls and the crazy kids.

On the schedule for the evening it said Pub crawling, we were divided into teams and just as the city rally we got a list of tasks to complete during the night. It was truly L-E-G-E-N-D-A-R-Y and we did a lot of cool, crazy, stupid and funny things while walking between the pubs.




Maria taking the easy way down.


When the ground is moving, you better hold on to something.
Radio is setting an example.


As we remember, no animals were harmed during the pub-crawl.
Only a few plants, lamppost and paintings
.


Day 3 - Csopak trip

This day we had to get up really early since we had a full day at the Lake Balaton, the biggest lake in central Europe. After spending some time on the bus we arrived to the village Csopak at the lakes’ north shore.
A Hungarian gentleman welcomed us to his home where they would prepare a whole pig for us.


As the Hungarian tradition goes we had to drink a shot of pálinka before they would start preparing the pig. It surely woke us up considering we didn’t have had breakfast yet.

After breakfast we headed down to the big lake but to our disappointment it was frozen - so no swimming.
On the other hand we have a reason to come back in the summer when the lake is full of German tourists :)


It's Jesus, he is walking on the water!


Back at the house we had wine tasting together with our host, and we got to try different wines from all over Hungary.  After this cultural activity we finally got to taste the pig, everything from sausages to steaks - everything homemade, it was delicious!


As winemaster emeritus Jimmy is making sure the wines are in safe hands.
Or is that a moon?


Grapevine according to the organizers. We trust them.


Like a big family!

When arriving back to our hotel in the evening most people were pretty tired and went to bed while some of us went for “just a beer” in the nearest pub...


Day 4 - Cooking lesson & Film character party


The Friday was our last day in Veszprem, even if there wasn’t anything planed in the morning we didn’t complain since we were quite exhausted after a week full of activities and no sleep. The "just a beer" the nigth before lasted untill 7 in the morning.

In the afternoon we had a Hungarian cooking lesson, it was Langos on the menu and turned out pretty good – it almost looked like langos actually.


Not really sure what is happening on this picture but Roberto is grating the cheese...


...while Love is preparing the Langos.


And here is the result!


The last party in Veszprem was a film character party where we dressed up as different film characters, some more lookalike than others. We played some games and did some improvised acting before we headed out in the blurry night making Veszprem an unsafe place, again.


Zorro & the Joker. Or is it the opposite?


Flying main organizer.


Walker texas ranger is carrying some diesel for his jeep outside... or is it wine?



5 engineers trying to fix the sound system...they gave up after an hour.

Day 4 - Budapest day

The day we didn’t want to think about was eventually upon us and it was time to leave our hosts for this time, after goodbyes we took the bus to Budapest together with our polish friends.
A nice hostel awaited us and we did some sightseeing around in Budapest. Some went to a thermal while me, Roberto, Balaji and Jimmy felt a bit more cultural minded and did some sightseeing from trams and tried some of the pubs of Budapest.
A great ending of a great week!


After a hard week full of activities, this looks like heaven.



Ordinary turists in the Metro


The owner of this pub offered to to change jacket with Jimmy for some strange reason.



Jan only took a "small" burger this time

 

Maria is stydying the architecture in Budapest




/Patrik

he following day was the first planned day so after the breakfast we had the official opening where we received welcome packs containing some useful stuff, like a shot glass, some maps and brochures about Veszprem and a very nice pillow. We also got a presentation about Hungary including a language lesson with some useful phrases which late came very in handy.

BLuE - BEST Lund Engineering competition

The day was the 24th of February 2010 and BEST Lund was about to organize its first engineering competition ever. 28 stoked participants was hanging on the locks at noon, eager to dash their knowledge.

The competition was held in Gasquesalen, Kårhuset on LTH:s campus and the BEST group had cooked moussaka to start the day with for both participants and other hungry students at the university.

The moussaka was a great hit and filled with energy the teams was informed about the competition. 3 hours of working time, rules, points etcetera.

The competition was on a basic level and the task was to build a boat that could carry an as heavy load as possible, from the same base of material.

The pool of competition

Let's present

The boats up for inspection

Hmm, one more maybe!

The teams that was most succesfull was in following order:

1) Grabbarna Grus

2) Zero Space

3) Äh, hur svårt kan det va?

Be aware nordic, Lund has their team for NordBEC ready now!!!

The winners together with the main organisers Patrik & Balaji

Motivation Weekend in Aalborg


After spending a few weeks in hibernation, finally it was time for some real and fun-filled activity at BEST. It could not have been better than a Motivation Weekend (MW). For those of you who are wondering what this MW is, it's a weekend activity at BEST where members from one LBG (Local BEST Group) host the members of another LBG and have some activities and get motivated to work for BEST. It was the weekend from 5th to 7th February and this time it was double the fun since we had 3 LBGs meeting together for the MW. The hosts were LBG Aalborg and the other LBG joining us was Copenhagen. In total we were about 30 crazy BESTies having one hell of a weekend, just the kind of motivation everyone needed.



We started late afternoon on Friday, 5th February. It was a great idea for us from Lund, to travel by a big car since Aalborg was not that far away and it is always more fun to travel by car.So, for us the party started on car itself. We never realized how we arrived at the cabin in Aalborg although it was nearly 5 hours journey. The cabin was outside of Aalborg city. It was a summer house and it would have been heaven if it was summer but still it was a great place, specially when you want to get away from your usual routine. It was typical BEST Friday night party, and it was even more bigger, since it was lot of Danish people and some cheap danish beer and alcohol. Most of us were new, it was a bit difficult to remember all the names. The rest of the night was just partying and more partying.


The next day there were some interesting sessions. The session about "Time Management" was something very useful, there were also other sessions going on in parallel. After this there was a session about "Fund Raising", which was mainly about how to organize activities through which we could raise some funds for BEST activities. In the evening it was time for the theme party, the theme was FASTELAVN which was basically Carnival of Denmark, so everyone had to dress up really funny and crazy. After the dinner it was time for a traditional Danish game. It was Patrick from LBG Lund who won the game and he was crowned the King for the evening and he had the chance to select a Queen and no one knows why he chose a guy to be the Queen :) After this it was yet again time for another party night.



Next day it was soon time to leave, it was so quick, it looked like the weekend was over in just a few seconds. But, it was quite amazing and an awesome weekend. As we were leaving, everyone looked motivated and ready to take part in the activities of BEST. Just as we were leaving, we decided to take a small tour around Aalborg since none of us had ever visited the city. Although the city looked deserted with no one on the streets (since it was a freezing cold Sunday), it was nice to go around the city, a much bigger city than Lund. It was around 10pm on Sunday night by the time we reached Lund. It was a perfect weekend, taking a break from the normal weekend activities.

November, December

Sorry for the few updates lately, but most members of LBG Lund have been busy with school now when exams are getting close.

However, during the last few weeks quite many things have happened.

After the promotion at ARKAD we organized a small information meeting and engineering competition that attracted a dozen students from LTH. After the competition we had som food together and I hope all the people there enjoyed the night.

That weekend we also celebrated BEST Lunds 18 years birthday. We had a ¨sittning¨ at kårhuset, there we ate a splendid buffé.

And that's not all the partying, a few weeks ago we had a very fun tour de drinks, with the basic concept that every member served a drink and some snacks at their place. We ended the night at the crazy house-party that was thrown at vildanden.

Of course we have also done some work. At this time of the year its time to find a teacher for the next years summer course and to apply for some grants. We are also currently working on planning a motivation weekend together with LBG Copenhagen and LBG Aalborg.
We are also actively searching for a company to sponsor our engineering competition that will hopefully be organized during the spring. Our local engineering competition would be the first round of several, there its even possible to be the BEST engineering team in Europe by winning the european final.

If anyone have missed it, the application period for the spring courses are open until december 13th, apply on

http://best.eu.org/student/courses/coursesList.jsp

Well, now its soon time for our Christmas dinner, so see ya around

Answers and Winners BEST-ARKAD-Quiz

So, here comes the answers to the BEST-ARKAD-Quiz

(1) I vilken stad finns tavlan Mona Lisa utställd?

Paris

(2) Vilket land har flest insjöar även känt som de tusen sjöarnas land?

(Vår käre finne har fått ge efter, efter lite efterforskningar, varför två svar räknas som korrekta)

Sverige
Finland


(3) I vilken stad finns vinterpalatset?

St. Petersburg

(4) Vad har Paris haft för tidigare namn?

Lutetia

(5) Från vilken stad är Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Graz

(6) Vilken av städerna ligger i ett land vars flagga har samma färger som sveriges?

Kiev

(7) I vilken stad badade Anita Ekberg i en fontän i filmen ¨La dolche vita¨?

Rom

(8) I vilken stad föll skotten som startade första världskriget?

Sarajevo

(9) Vilken stad har en världscupstävling i utförsåkning?

Maribor

(10) I vilken stad arbetar tidsvis Marita Ulvskog?

Bryssel

(11)

I Rio de Janeiro finns det en känd Jesus staty. I Europa finns en kopia, var?

Lissabon

Sista frågan var inte del av poängberäkningen.



We had one person with a score of 10 points:

B. Sunesson

Your price can be picked up november 19 at 17.15 in Kårhuset, Hollywood

9 Points and a mention for the honor

L. Lundin
Emma ?
T. Barbas
G. Svebring
H. Truong
L. Melin
G. Pukys
L. Svensson
N. Alduhahi

Promoting BEST at ARKAD

The last two days Teknologkåren (TLTH) have arranged the jobfair ARKAD. Since BEST is a part of the student union we managed to get a spot where we could promote BEST to the students.

 

If you did not find us, or if you are interested in getting more information about BEST and BEST courses, then you are welcomed to our information meeting next Thursday (19th of November). The info meeting will be in Kårhuset at 17.15.

 

There we will present you some short information about BEST and you will be able to take part in a small engineering competition. Afterwards we will have dinner and some sangria and you will be able to ask more questions about what we do.

 

Hope to see you there! :)

Escaping the Swedish cold and going to Rome with BEST

Every year BEST arranges several of internal trainshops to improve the members of the organization in different areas. These usually last around one week and can for example have the focus on marketing and PR, fund raising and company relations or recruitment and motivation.

I’ve always wanted to go to Rome so when I saw that they were going to arrange the trainshop beRICHER there I decided to apply. After about a week I got the answer; I was accepted. beRICHER  has a focus on fund raising and company relations. In simple words: how to get money for BEST Lund so we can afford to reach our goals.



Before the event I spent a couple of days in the warm Italian autumn sun and explored the beautiful Rome. Then I met up with 20 motivated BESTies, the organizing BEST group and the trainers for the event, in a little house in the mountains a bit outside of Rome.

 

There we stayed for one week and learned a lot about fund raising and how to cooperate with companies and the university. It was also very good for my personal development because we had trainings about presentation skills, negotiation, goal setting and a lot more. We also had time to have a lot of fun, visit Rome, great parties and eating delicious Italian food. So to sum up, It was a fantastic week!

 

Going on a trainshop is the perfect way of combining traveling, learning and meeting new people. So what are you waiting for???

 

/Daniel

Regional Meeting

It was time for yet another Regional Meeting (RM) for the Nordic Region between 23rd and 26th October 2009 . This was my 2nd BEST event and it lived up to it's expectation of a BEST event, lots of fun, new friends, parties and drinking every night and of course some good learning. The organizers this time were LBG Uppsala, also celebrating their 5th year birthday. There were suppose to be 3 participants from each LBG but we were only 2 from Lund, myself Balaji (the newbie) and Jens (the experienced). Overall there we were about 60 people including the organizers and the trainers, at a cabin some where in between Stockholm and Uppsala. The cabin was right in the middle of the woods, there were just no one else around and you had to drive 10 mins to reach the town. A perfect place to spend the weekend and have BEST fun ( specially for me, it was a perfect one since I had just completed my exams and I needed to relax). The weather was not really perfect, it was cold and raining sometimes, but it really didn't matter since all of us were in our BEST spirit.

There was nothing much on 23rd, it was just the arrival day and introduction. There were presentations from a few LBGs and Stockholm LBG had a presentation in a different way, they presented a surprise dance, since the theme for the RM was "Dance me away"!!! After that it was time for some get-to-know games. All paritcipants were divided into groups and there were lots of fun games for each group. Later on it continued with some drinks and party until all of us were tired.


Sleep is one thing you can never expect in any BEST event, but it's worth it, we have the whole life to sleep :) but BEST events come once a while. So, after going to sleep late at night or some of them even early morning, it was time to wake up and get ready for the sessions the next morning, 24th. The breakfast was at 8:30 am and sessions started at 9 am. There were different sessions going on parallely. I, being a new BEST member took the BEST Knowledge Transfer session. It was an interactive session where I got to know more about BEST, the activities that happen in BEST, the acronyms, RM (Reginal Meeting), PM (Presidents Meeting), GA (General Assembly), LBG (Local BEST Group), JBT (Joint Board Training), TS (Tain Shop) etc etc... All the way it was a great session where I had lots of fun and at the same time got to know about BEST. This was followed by a session EEC (External Events Committee) about organizing Local Engineering Competion (LEC). We were split into groups of 4 and our task was to plan and organize a LEC. Again it was a very interesting session and it gave us an idea of how to organize a LEC and what difficulties we might face during the event.

There were a few more sessions until the evening which were mainly disccussions. Then it was time for party again!!!! As said mentioned before, the theme for the RM was "Dance me away" and each LBG had to present a dance and all the other participants had to follow and dance accordingly. It was yet another fun filled BEST dance party, all of us danced the whole night, had lots of drinks and no one knew when we went to sleep, at least I don't remember when I slept, I remember only when I woke up the next morning, again pretty early, since we had few more sessions.

The next day 25th, again we had to gather for break fast at 8:30 am. It didn't matter even if it was sunday, you had to be there for the session, so not much sleep. There were sessions from the training groups, I attended a session on "presentation skills". This was one of the truly BEST sessions, I definetely improved my presentation skills and it gave me more confidence to face large audience and make a more effective presentation. This was followed by BEST session for all, in which there were presentations from different teams about some changes in the BEST activities. Later on in the evening, there was a workshop by the Fin-Team (Financial Team).

Unfortunately it was soon time for me to leave. It was such a pity that I could not stay on for the most awaited event, the International Evening. The International Evening is one of the BEST party night, you get to taste drinks from different countries and then the party is one of the most crazy parties ever. I still remember the International Evening during the BEST Spring course that I attended in France, simply superb and awesome.
It was sad but I had to leave. But I heard some crazy stories from Jens, that one of the main organizers was so drunk that he was almost naked :). Well, whatever happens at BEST stays at BEST, so no more details.



Overall it was a great event with lots of fun. Personally, I got to know more about BEST and I am now motivated to work more for LBG Lund. I also improved my personal skills, met many new friends and of course got a chance to visit Stockholm. That's what BEST is always about: travel around Europe, make new friends, have fun and parties every night, try something crazy and not to forget, there's always some learning involved. If you haven't been at BEST, then you are for sure missing something!!!

WHIP- Wild Huge International Party

Was once again hosted by LBG Lund.

During a rainy November friday night had the BEST group of Lund invited the international Mentors and their menteés for the semesters most crazy international party. The 300 tickets were sold out a week before and the party fulfilled the high expectations. For five straight hours was Lophtet in Lund a dancing, hot, steamy mass of people having a good time.

We will thank everyone who came and let us organize this event once again. Also a big thank you to everyone who worked and took their time to help us out.

over and out

The cleaning patrol

Nordic Joint Board Training

Between the 8-12 October the board of LBG Lund went to Gothenburg for the event Nordic Joint Board Training. The nordic BEST groups have since some years back combined the trainings of their boards into one event. This year the event was held in Chalmers Sportstuga outside Gothenburg and could count in around 50 participants.



Atleast the weather in Gothenburg is predictable


Trainers had been flying in from Romania, Belgium and Slovakia together with the local ones. The trainers had a big variety of trainings to fit everyones needs. It was possible to learn about Motivation & Leadership, effective meetings & facilitation, fund raising, PR, HR, knowledge transfer and much more.


During the Sunday each BEST group sat down with their own board to set up SMART goals and SWOT analyses for their groups and plan the upcoming year. Much time was also set aside to discuss and plan the first regional engineering competition what will be organised of LBG Copenhagen this spring.

 

Since BEST is a student organisation some time was also put aside to have fun. The lake next to Chalmers sportstuga and Swedens largest wooden heated sauna made the theme for one party. As what heard of the boardies of LBG Lund it was only one drawback during the event. It was to be in the same room as the danes during the Sweden-Denmark game or should we say, especially afterwards.

Winter promotion video

The promotion video for the Winter season is here, take a look on where you can go this winter. And don't forget to apply to a BEST course!


Winter courses!

You can now apply for the winter courses!

If you want to check out the new trends in Paris, experience winter in Russia or just have heaps of fun with other European students - don't hesitate to apply for a BEST course this winter!
More information at www.best.eu.org under events.

Thank You Party for the Summer Course

After working (and lots of fun) at the summer course the main organiser arranged a party to thank us. We went to a sittning at Helsingkrona nation. Nice three course dinner and lots of singing (a little bit to much of lambo though). I danced until my feet was hurting and had a great time. Thank you David for arranging it :)

David and Maria at the preparty at Kåren

 

Patrik and Daniel at Helsingkrona Nation

 

Daniel and Maria at Helsingkrona nation

 

Information meeting

Don't forget to come to our information meeting.

When: September 15 at 18..

Where. Hollywood, second floor in Kårhuset

Sangria and Snacks afterwards