Exchange: Karlsruhe goes to Vienna (7. bis 11. August 2010)

After meeting at the “OlympiXX” Event in Karlsruhe, LG Vienna and LG Karlsruhe decided to have an exchange in Vienna to deepen friendship and sharing knowledge.

After the “OlympiXX” Event in Karlsruhe, where we - LG Karlsruhe - met some cool Vienna guys, we quickly came up with the common idea to organise an exchange in order to see each other again and for sharing fundraising knowledge. But this time not in Karlsruhe – our destination should be the beautiful Austrian capital Vienna! So it didn´t take very long and we spontaneously agreed about an exchange on 7th – 11th August 2010. At the same time in Vienna was set up a great event agenda with a city-sight-seeing-tour, a visit of the UNO buildings, swimming in a lake, wine-tasting, the working part and of course great parties! With this great looking agenda the first participants had been found very quickly - so that we finally flew to Vienna with six people. Yeah!

After the arrival we met our host and got some food – we cooked the great typically Austrian “Kaiserschmarrn” which convinced us immediately. Thereafter we had a visit at the Austrian Parliament and the first tour through the amazing city of Vienna. In the evening after few rounds of “Looping Louie” we went to the club “Loco” where we had a great birthday party of mine... ;)

After this party night the next day was more comfortable. After lunch with the legendary and well known “Wiener-Schnitzel” we had an extended city tour and in the evening a nice get-together at the “Kaktusbar”.

In the morning of 9th of August we hurried up for a guided tour through the big glass buildings of the UNO in Vienna where we learned a lot about the meetings and work of the UNO. After this we drove to the lake “Neusiedler See” and had a great day with playing football, volleyball and swimming. The highlight was the Vodka-Melon which we prepared very carefully before eating... ;) In the evening we went to the wine-growing estate of a Vienna ESTIEMer and had a great wine-tasting there – we hope that we have been successful in convincing the other Austrian guys there to join the ESTIEM LG in Vienna by spreading our ESTIEM-Spirit around.

On our last day in Vienna we had the working part with training about fundraising, especially “How to contact companies”, visited the beautiful castle of Schönbrunn and played a few rounds of the famous “Flunkyball” in front of the castle ;) Our last party was at “Flex” and we celebrated our second birthday in Vienna, the birthday of Julian Beisecker!

At his point again a really big “Thank You” to LG Vienna for this great program, hosting and all the crazy people. We all had some awesome days which we won´t forget soon and came back to Karlsruhe with a lot of new motivation to spread the ESTIEM-Spirit and get people to travel around with ESTIEM.

We are looking forward to our next exchange in order to get to know other great ESTIEMERs, share knowledge and spread the ESTIEM-Spirit in Europe :)

Andreas Schoenle

LG Karlsruhe