Visiting Brussels with Erasmus+

Visiting Brussels with the ERASMUS+ YES U2!! project

The visit to Brussels at the beginning of the year (January ’25) was awesome. Not only did we, members of the student council from Fördegymnasium, get to travel to the center of European politics for free, but we also had time to go sightseeing and meet new people while working on different projects with students from all over Europe.

We arrived by train, and after a long journey, we got to the hotel and met the groups from the other countries. After a bit of staring and silence, we started to get to know each other. It’s so nice to know that even though we are divided by language and culture, there is something tying us together: Europe. And that feeling is truly comforting.

We had dinner in mixed groups and started exchanging facts and stories from our daily lives. There were delegations from Greece, Spain, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands and Italy.

In the following days, we were often split into groups so that there was one person from each country in every group. We were given a list of tasks to complete while visiting different sights, like taking a selfie in front of a statue, interviewing people, or discovering three interesting facts about parks, churches, or political institutions. With that knowledge, we had to create presentations to be shown at the Greek embassy.

We also visited the House of European History as well as the Parlamentarium and had free time to explore the city on our own. And of course, I couldn’t forget the European Parliament itself. We listened to an informative talk by an MEP and got to see the Leopold Space, where the plenary sessions take place.

Aside from politics, we went shopping for books, records, and Belgian waffles and chocolates. And we never stayed up past our curfew 😉